Robert Gates, George W. Bush's choice to replace Donald Rumsfeld as Defense Secretary, is a trusted figure within the Bush Family's inner circle, but there are lingering questions about whether Gates is a trustworthy public official. The 63-year-old Gates has long faced accusations of collaborating with Islamic extremists in Iran, arming Saddam Hussein's dictatorship in Iraq, and politicizing U.S. intelligence to conform with the desires of policymakers -- three key areas that relate to his future job.

Gates skated past some of these controversies during his 1991 confirmation hearings to be CIA director when leading Democrats agreed to put "bipartisanship" ahead of careful oversight. The current Bush administration is seeking to slip Gates through the congressional approval process again, this time by pressing for a quick confirmation by the end of the year, before the new Democratic-controlled Senate is seated. If Bush's timetable is met, there will be no time for a serious investigation into Gates's past

Washington Press and Politicos Ignore Gates' Past

Now accustomed to looking the other way when unconstitutional acts are being committed

BUSH'S STRANGE VIETNAM VISIT

This past week found the president sitting before a bust of the victorious Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, seemingly unaware that the United States lost its war with the Communist-led country. Bush seems not to have noticed that we succeeded in Vietnam precisely because we did quit the military occupation of that nation, permitting an ideology of freedom to overcome one of hate. Bush's rhetoric is frighteningly reminiscent of Richard Nixon's escalation and expansion of the Vietnam War in an attempt to buy an "honorable" exit with the blood of millions of Southeast Asians and thousands of American soldiers. In the end, a decade of bitter fighting did not prevent an ignominious U.S. departure from Saigon.

While op/eds in the American press drew attention to Vietnam ironies, less noticed was the complete failure of the purpose of Bush's trip. The 21-nation APEC bloc rejected the U.S.-backed proposal to make the region into one vast free-trade zone, and even slapped down Washington's attempt to have the Pacific rim group of nations go beyond its economic mission and take a tough stand on regional security issues. This was the more important story: Asia sent a clear message to the U.S. that it is no longer economically relevant

Clueless in the Shadow of Ho Chi Minh

The lesson of Vietnam is not to keep pouring lives and treasure down a dark and poisonous well, but to patiently use a pragmatic mix of diplomacy and trade with even our ideological competitors

Bush Seen as Irrelevant at Asian Summit

Hoped-for free trade deal dead

Journalists Miss the Real Vietnam at APEC Summit

Swept up by forces of globalization quickly after end of Cold War

Bush Brings Nothing to the Table in Pacific Rim Trade Summit

As rights group fears U.S. will force deals on poor countries

Today, the United States presides over a far-flung new network of maximum security penitentiaries, detention centers, jail cells, cages, and razor wire-topped pens. Guantanamo Bay has been the public face of the Bush administration's semi-secret foreign prison network -- a collection of camps, cells, and cages that today holds 437 prisoners. But "Gitmo" has always been the tiny showpiece, the jewel in a very dark crown, for a much larger, less visible foreign network of military detention facilities, CIA "black" sites, and outsourced foreign prisons. It is a prison camp that rightly attracts opprobrium, but it also serves to focus attention away from shadowy ghost jails, borrowed third-nation facilities, much larger prisons holding thousands in Iraq, and a full-scale network of detention centers and prisons in Afghanistan.