Open the Gates

Robert Gates, former Acting Director of the CIA, will replace Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense. This is going to be interesting. Does this signal a new direction in Iraq? Is going to a former top CIA official the best move after Tenet's numerous blunders? What's scary to me is that Gates was a top executive in the CIA throughout Reagan's terrorist wars in Central America, specifically in Nicaragua and El Salvador. How fitting Gates now heads the Pentagon as ex-guerilla leader Daniel Ortega has just won the presidency of Nicaragua and all of the Western Hemisphere below Texas has shifted further left.