Word: gateses
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Today Gates is fighting to buy more of those Russian helicopters, considered the Kalashnikovs of the sky. The Iraqis and Afghans are familiar with them. They're hardy and easier to fly than Black Hawks, and their engines are better at handling the tough Afghan altitudes.
The symbolism of Gates employing the very machines left behind by the Soviets is more unsettling than ironic. Before finally throwing his support behind McChrystal's push for a troop surge late last year, Gates repeatedly warned that even the Soviets could not win with 110,000 troops in Afghanistan...
In that Russian cockpit, however, Gates looked less like the pilot of the world's most powerful military machine and more like a man in a bubble. Does he worry that he'll end up like the Soviet generals he once fought against, steering a strategy that ends in defeat...
Gates replied, "That's like going back and saying, 'If you'd known the mujahedin would morph into what they became, would you have supported them against the Soviet Union?' My view is, having done this for a long, long time, you never know. You make the best call you...
Lately Gates has been pressing Pakistani generals to go after the jihadis they helped create - men like Jalaluddin Haqqani, whose son now wields the deadliest force in North Waziristan, from which he launches attacks against U.S. troops in Afghanistan. To Afghan and Pakistani audiences, Gates likes to reiterate that the...