Gates: US Will Be "Very, Very Cautious" About Aggression In Future

By Steve Hynd

I should bloody think so, too!

"The lessons learned with the failure to find the weapons of mass destruction and some of the other things that happened will make any future president very, very cautious about launching that kind of conflict or relying on intelligence," Gates told PBS television in an interview.

Any future president is "going to ask a lot of very hard questions and I think that hurdle is much higher today than it was six or seven years ago," he said.

His comments came in response to questions about the lessons of the Iraq conflict and the controversial "Bush doctrine," which asserts the right to take preemptive action to prevent a terrorist strike.

... "I think that the barrier first of all will be are we going to be attacked here at home. As one of the thresholds," he said. "And then the quality of intelligence would be another."

That statement stands strongly against any pro-Israeli or neocon wish for the US to attack Iran.Dennis Blair has made it clear that the US doesn't see Iran as able to attack the US at home and doesn't think Iran has an active nuclear weapons program at present.

Still, given that aggressive and premeditated wars such as Bush's on Iraq are entirely and clearly illegal by international law, a lot of us could have wished for something a bit stronger than simply "very,very cautious." A flat "hell, no" would be better.

Gates also rained all over the PR campaign by certain generals aimed at keeping US troops in Iraq past the deadline set in the SOFA agreement.

He said there was no link between recent insurgent attacks in Iraq and Obama's decision last month to withdraw most combat troops out of Iraq by the end of August, 2010.

"I don't think that there is a correlation between the president's announcement and the spike in violence," he said.

"I think it's tied more to the successful completion of the provincial elections and Al-Qaeda trying to disrupt the positive impact that the elections had around the country."

On Tuesday, McClatchy had run an article saying that a "recent spike in violence in Iraq has some military commanders worried that their Afghan strategy could falter with the need to keep a large force in Iraq to quell the mayhem there." It quoted an anonymous "senior military officer who closely monitors Iraq" as saying:

"There was always an underlying feeling that once we start the drawdown the attacks would increase. But the fear is that these spikes will turn into an upward trend,"

and continued:

On Monday, Gen. Raymond T. Odierno told ABC News that the Iraqi government may ask the U.S. forces to stay beyond the June 30 deadline in the status of forces agreement, which spells out the U.S. presence in Iraq. His deputy, Lt. Gen. Lloyd Austin, later that day told reporters at the Pentagon that Mosul "can put us off track and cause violence to really re-ignite in a greater way."

Gates' words are a clear warning for those generals and their neo-whatever backers to stay on message and not attempt to play politics with the chain of command.