Why Give Gates a Free Pass?

Looks like the U.S. Senate is preparing to give George H.W. Bush's creature, Robert Gates, a free pass in his confirmation process to replace outgoing defense bungler Donald Rumsfeld.

I think this is bad for several reasons, but I'll list a couple of them here for the sake of brevity.

1.) Gates is Bush Sr.'s creature. This means he has skeletons in his closet. Dinosaur skeletons. According to The Nation's David Corn, Gates has his own history of deception as Daddy's former CIA director, and one of the intelligence fixers who tried to falsely label Nelson Mandela a communist. Gates was also part of the Reagan administration when the Iran-Contra business went down; he was originally a Reagan nominee, but was withdrawn when Ronnie-boy got caught red-handed selling weapons to Iran and using the profits to fund the Nicaraguan Contras. Reagan and Bush Sr. escaped prosecution and impeachment, but Gates' dreams of becoming CIA director were denied fulfilment until Daddy Bush got elected president.

2.) Senate Democrats, empowered by their incoming majority, should know well enough by now that anyone Junior nominates is a motherfucker, a ruthless sycophantic liar who will say whatever his master tells him to say. It doesn't matter that Daddy chose him to wipe Junior's ass for him after the mess he made in Iraq. He is a Bush family creature.

These are reasons enough to give him a gut-wrenchingly hard time as Gates lies his way through confirmation hearings. Had Republicans kept control of Congress, Rumsfeld would still be around. But they didn't, so now Daddy is coming to Junior's rescue again, wiping his shit-stained ass for him because he made another monumental mess he can't clean up.

The party is over. Democrats will resume control of Congress in January, after twelve years of being shut out of the legislative process. George W. Bush now faces a Congress that, for the first time in six years, will not be the rubber stamp he has enjoyed. For the first time, Democrats are in a position to investigate his crimes and those of the rest of his regime. His dismissal of Rumsfeld in exchange for one of Pappy's pets was a demonstration of mortal terror blossoming in Shrubya's foul gut.

So why go easy on him? Why give Gates a pass, without the threat of exposing his entire shady history for all the world to see? Gates wasn't picked to reform the policy regarding Iraq; he was picked to save the Shrub's useless, treasonous carcass. Democrats need to demonstrate that whoever Shrubya nominates is not going to be someone of his choosing, but someone to Democrats' liking. Someone competent, who will stand up to Bush and tell him he will do as he is told and get us out of Iraq, and follow whatever plan he has to extract America from that quagmire.

But no, that won't happen. Which is a real shame, because people are dying over there for no good reason, and it is far past time Democrats got tough with the traitor-in-chief.