Gates' advice to future defense secretaries

EVERY NOW AND THEN a high-ranking Washington official says something that reminds us that all is not lost in the maze of political gobbledegook. So it was with the words of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in his plain talk to a West Point audience. Referring to something said many years past by a famous American general, Gates declared:

"Any defense secretary who advises the president to again send a big American land army into Asia or into the Middle East or Africa should have his head examined, as General MacArthur so delicately put it."

There was no question that Gates was alluding to Don Rumsfeld, who is making the rounds with his new book that relieves him of any responsibility for the many mistakes he engendered during the Bush years. Too bad, Rumsfeld wasn't in the audience. He might have learned something. On the other hand, maybe not.