Baby You Can Sign My Car

But Mr. Gates’s low-wattage exterior masks a wily inside player, and he knew enough to keep his counsel early in the process to let it play out more first. “When to speak is important to him; when to signal is important to him,” said a senior Defense Department official. From: How Obama Came to Plan for ‘Surge’ in Afghanistan/NYT.

At this point, I can almost imagine “Rummy” becoming the trivia answer to “who was the Defense Secretary before Robert Gates?”

Gates is so stealth, he barely even earns mention in the charge that Obama got commandeered by the military establishment. Above, he’s captured by military media autographing megabuck defense hardware rolling off the assembly line — in this case, a more bomb-resistant Humvee too late for Iraq, unfortunately, but just in time for the year nine Afghan ramp up.)

More Bobby: Goodbye McKiernan! Goodbye terror photos!

(photo: Cherie Cullen/ Department of Defense. caption: Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates signs an MRAP-All Terrain Vehicle (M-ATV) during a tour of the Harrison Street production facility in Oshkosk, W.I., on Nov. 12, 2009. The M-ATV design combines the crew protection war fighters have come to expect in MRAP vehicles with the extreme mobility and durability needed to negotiate mountainous off-road terrain.)

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Michael Shaw
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