"Nuisance"…"law enforcement another chapter in the book Kerry was right.

Robert Gates, unveiled a National Defense Strategy this week that sounds quite similar to what Kerry said.

Kerry said in 2004,

''We have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance. As a former law-enforcement person, I know we're never going to end prostitution. We're never going to end illegal gambling. But we're going to reduce it, organized crime, to a level where it isn't on the rise. It isn't threatening people's lives every day, and fundamentally, it's something that you continue to fight, but it's not threatening the fabric of your life."

Gates said in a newly released Pentagon report,

"The struggle against violent extremists will not end with a single battle or campaign. Rather, we will defeat them through the patient accumulation of quiet successes and the orchestration of all elements of national and international power. We will succeed by eliminating the ability of extremists to strike globally and catastrophically while also building the capacity and resolve of local governments to defeat them regionally. Victory will include discrediting extremist ideology, creating fissures between and among extremist groups and reducing them to the level of nuisance groups that can be tracked and handled by law enforcement capabilities."

And, from the writer of the article,

"Do the President and Vice President think their Secretary of Defense has a view of the world that's dangerous and naïve?

Or did they never really think that about Kerry?"





http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/08/new-pentagon-re.html


I apologize for another one of these "Kerry was right" posts, I know I have lost count at the times that...well...Kerry was right. And, they are getting redundant, but I think he deserves to be credited for being correct- even if it to late in coming.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/08/terrorism-as-a.html

I think keeping him on a year is not a bad idea. Not sure beyond that, but Gates has been sounding the right notes, and has been a competent Defense Secretary. Obama is the "Team of Rivals" guy, so this is not an inconceivable notion. And given the mess this country is in, is it a bad idea to keep someone on who knows what is going on?