Who will be cleaning the floors at the White House?

Gates prepared to stay on, but will Obama ask him to?

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On Monday, John Podesta, Obama's transition co-chairman, refused to say whether Gates has been asked to remain at the Pentagon.

Obama "has great respect for Secretary Gates" but before any decision is made, a transition team will be briefed at the Pentagon about "ongoing operations" and Obama will "render judgment as a result of and after those briefings occur and he's had a chance to meet with his key advisers," Podesta said.

No joke. Except that one has to ask the question that if Hillary is more right wing than Obama, why did Obama do this deed? Gates at the DOD, and Clinton at state, Emanuel as Chief of Staff? This is a bipartisan war party.

And you are right, this is the sense of what I am saying. But not just any "military man" Erich Ludendorf, was a founding member of the Nazi party, and author of Der Totale Krieg -- more or less the book that became the theoretical foundation of Hitlers foreign policy and rebuilding the German war machine:

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At Hitler's urging, Ludendorff took part in the Beer Hall Putsch in 1923. The plot failed but Ludendorff was acquitted in the trial that followed. In

 1924, he was elected to the Reichstag as a representative of the NSFB (a coalition of the German Völkisch Freedom Party and members of the Nazi Party), serving until 1928. He ran in the 1925 presidential election against former commander Paul von Hindenburg and received just 285,793 votes. Ludendorff's reputation may have been damaged by the Putsch, but he conducted very little campaigning of his own and remained aloof, relying almost entirely on his lasting image as a war hero, an attribute which Hindenburg also possessed.

So regardless of whatever kind of falling out happened between Luddendorf and Hitler, he is the theoretical architecht who set forth the plan for rebuilding Germany's military machine.

The Clinton camp are the ones who are the architechts of the new unilateral interventionist policy of the post cold war era, not the Bushies.

 Let me put it to you this way. This is not about Obama. This is about being president of the United States. And being the candidate of the Democratic party. And both titles come with obligations. The fact is that US foreign policy is not some kind of football that gets kicked from the war camp to the peace camp whenever the Republicans or the Democrats clear out their offices to be replaced by functionaries of the other brand. The concept that the Republicans are "hawkish", and the Democrats are "dovish" is a pretense that really only has currency in the American media, and among some voters, and has everything to do with election posturing, and nothing to do with policy.

US foreign policy is a clear continuum handed down from one president to the next, and has been such since George F. Kennan (a Democrat) first set forth the principles of the Containment (AKA the Truman Doctrine) in the 1940's. Prior to that there was a quantifiable difference between the parties in terms of isolationism and interventionism, of which I am sure you know the former was most often the cause followed by the Republicans not the Democrats. But since then, any serious analysis will show that neither is less hesitant to express US power through force, in order to protect the "interests" of the country, and its ruling class.

What we see here, is not a break from the past, but a reintroduction of the old guard Clinton foreign policy team that gave us such wonders of policy as allowing military infrastructure training companies like MPRI to operate under State Department License in Croatia, in order to build the Crotian army into a military machine capable of executing the largest ethnic cleansing in European history since the end of the WW II: Operation Storm.

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MPRI, formerly known as Military Professionals Resources Inc., may provide the best example of how skilled retired soldiers cash in on their military training. Its roster includes Gen. Carl E. Vuono, the former Army chief of staff who led the gulf war and the Panama invasion; Gen. Crosbie E. Saint, the former commander of the United States Army in Europe; and Gen. Ron Griffith, the former Army vice chief of staff. There are also dozens of retired top-ranked generals, an admiral and more than 10,000 former military personnel, including elite special forces, on call and ready for assignment. "We can have 20 qualified people on the Serbian border within 24 hours," said Lt. Gen. Harry E. Soyster, the company's spokesman and a former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. "The Army can't do that. But contractors can."

America's For-Profit Secret Army

Later, in 1999, they also gave us the first unilateral attack by the NATO alliance on a soveriegn nation, in its entire history, as the first "coalition of the willing", while they were busily trying to starve Iraqis in order to prepare the ground for regieme change, an operation that commenced under the Bush adminstration in 2003.

Someone above thought it was apropos to note that Clinton is to the right of Obama on foreign policy issue. If this relative estimation is correct, one would surely find someone in his new cabinet to the left of the Clinton/Gates/Emmanuel triangle, more of Obama's presumably "progressive" ilk. So far all the important posts are going to the war party.

 Linked items in bold.

Who likes Clinton? None other than Henry ("the issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves") Kissinger: Saying that Senator Hillary Clinton would make “an outstanding appointment” as America’s top diplomat.

"Pffft" associated to a link does not amount to a discussion point. Perhaps you can explain your point for everyone's edification.

That is irrelevant to the main case which is that Clinton/Albright were the first to undermine the UN system, in the post Cold War era,  by unilaterally attacking Serbia in 1999, without an express use of force mandate from the UN. The same principles were applied by Bush in 2003.

Also, the fact that the contractor system was already in use prior to the Clinton Adminstration giving a license to MPRI to oversee the creation of the Croatian army, and MPRI/NATO involvement in the subsequent ethnic cleansing in Krjaina, in no way removes the Clinton administrations culpability for those acts.

These are two seperate, but related developments. The principle that the US could unilaterally abrogate the sovereignty of a nation state, without the express approval of the UN, was first set by the Clinton Whitehouse, in respect to the post Cold War period.

The First Gulf War, had the clear authorization of the UN. The bombing of Serbia did not.

I didn't say that the Democrat's started the practice of using "contractors" (aka Mercenaries). Get real, the practice is as old as armies. At one time all armies were private contractors more or less. What I said was that the Clinton Democrats allowed a license to MPRI to operate in Croatia. That was their idea. No. The Canadian Liberals had nothing to do with that. MPRI can only operate with a license issued by the US Department of State. The authorization is a mandatory requirement of the terms that MPRI can operate. As such, MPRI's activities in Croatia, are an explicit act of the policy of the US government.

NATO's involvement, was direct military activities aiding the assault on the Krajina enclave, including removing the roadblocks put up by the defenders to speed the Croatian advance, and attacking Serbian anti-aircraft and communications facilities with NATO aircraft.

I don't care wether you approve of Clinton's actions or not. I simply want to get the record straight.

Please follow the concept through from the begining. There is nothing in the history of the Democratic party that is particularly dovish. In fact, I assert that US foreign policy is a continuum of bi-partisan action. As an example of that, I am pointing out that in the post Cold War period, it was the Clinton administration that first set the precedent that the US, with the aid of its allies, could unilaterally step beyond international law outside of the context of a UN "use of force" resolution, and this practice was continued by the Bush administration.

 Antiwar groups fear Barack Obama may create hawkish Cabinet

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The president-elect has told some Democrats that he expects to take heat from parts of his political base but will not be deterred by it.

Aside from Clinton and Gates, the roster of possible Cabinet secretaries has included Sens. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) and Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), who both voted in 2002 for the resolution authorizing President Bush to invade Iraq, though Lugar has since said he regretted it.

[b]"It's astonishing that not one of the 23 senators or 133 House members who voted against the war is in the mix," said Sam Husseini of the liberal group Institute for Public Accuracy.

djelimon wrote:

There are some interesting speculations in the blogosphere that
by being nice to his political rivals and giving them personal stakes
in the success of his policies, he is engaging in some sort of
Machiavellian power play. If Clinton or Lieberman fucks it up, now
they'll have problems instead of I-told-you-so capital. Also, as
adversaries, they may well  have mental sweat equity on how someone
could make things go wrong. It's an interesting idea I never really
came across before. Perhaps more interesting (from my POV) is that
Harper seems to be sort of mimicking that approach here.

Food for thought:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jacob-heilbrunn/obama-is-killing-the-gop_b...

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1860727,00.html?imw=Y

 I think, looking at this for its silver lining, one might be thinking that Obama is intentionally handing over foreign policy to the right, as part of a deal to reform the system domestically. That for me, is really the best case scenario.

As I have said before, the presidency, is the presidency and the president has obligations. For me, it is the system that is corrupt. I also don't think it can be repaired, frankly.

Obama looks at border governor for homeland spot

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Napolitano also has been a prominent figure in the debate over REAL ID, a federal program launched after the 2001 terror attacks to make driver's licenses more secure. In 2007, Napolitano struck a deal with the Homeland Security Department that was supposed to lead to her state adopting the REAL ID standards. But in June of this year, she signed legislation refusing to implement the standards.

John Brennan, Torture-Tainted CIA Prospect, Alarms Obama Supporters

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To appoint someone as CIA Director or Director of National Intelligence who was one of George Tenet's closest aides when The Dark Side of the last eight years was conceived and implemented, and who, to this day, continues to defend and support policies such as "enhanced interrogation techniques" and rendition (to say nothing of telecom immunity and warrantless eavesdropping), is to cross multiple lines that no Obama supporter should sanction. Truly turning a page on the grotesque abuses of the last eight years requires both symbolism (closing Guantanamo) and substantive policy changes (compelling adherence to the Army Field Manual, ensuring due process rights for all detainees, ending rendition, restoring safeguards on surveillance powers). Appointing John Brennan to a position of high authority would be to affirm and embrace, not repudiate, the darkest aspects of the last eight years.

Change in intelligence?

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Ms. Miscik was deputy director of intelligence for Mr. Tenet during the run-up to the Iraq war, when intelligence was manipulated to support the Bush administration's decision to use force in Iraq. She endorsed the politicized findings of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in October 2002, as well as the unclassified White Paper of October 2002 that was designed to sway votes on the authorization to use force against Iraq. Ms. Miscik was also a willing participant in the crafting of Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's regrettable speech to the United Nations in February 2003, which was designed to sway the international community.

Other key members of Mr. Obama's intelligence advisory panel have been former CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin, who helped to suppress proof that various sources of intelligence in Iraqi WMD were in fact fabricators, and Rob Richer, a senior clandestine services officer who was a key implementer of the renditions and detentions program.

Mr. Obama will not be able to change the culture of the intelligence community and restore the moral compass of the CIA unless there is a full understanding and repudiation of the operational and analytical crimes committed in the Tenet era. If Mr. Obama genuinely wants to roll back the misdeeds of Vice President Dick Cheney, restore the rule of law at the CIA and create the change that Americans want and can believe in, he should not be relying for advice on the senior officials who endorsed these shameful actions.

Melvin A. Goodman was an intelligence analyst at the CIA from 1966 to 1990 and is the author of "Failure of Intelligence: The Decline and Fall of the CIA."