on CSPAN via Satellite radio, without even seeing his face or demeanor, I knew this guy was the right one. I recall a couple of questions, including one about "sharp elbows" that put my mind at ease. One son was in the sandbox, and one had been twice already and was slated to go back. I sensed Gates was the perfect choice and was truly relieved. And to remain on under Obama showed the kind of patriot and statesman he is. We could use more like him but I sincerely thank him for his service and wish him well if he chooses a well-deserved retirement next year.

"new strategy, similar to Petraeus's counterinsurgency strategy in post-2006 Iraq, that would focus on protecting the Afghan population and taking explicit steps to minimize civilian casualties".

If that is the case, and the strategy is as it is represented here, then the US military needs to add a finger to it's current thinking. While we certainly need nukes as a deterrent, and jets and missiles and all that other stuff, there is one thing that we need to change, and change in a major way - the role and training of the boots-on-the-ground soldier.

Right now, in Afghanistan, about 200,000 rounds of ammunition are fired for each enemy casualty. The way that encounters are fought is with a lot of rat-a-tat-tat - and very little aiming. It is inefficient, it is dangerous to civilian personnel, and it causes a lot of property damage.

Contrast with the sniper, who lays in wait for two to four days to take a single shot - but it is one shot, one kill. Snipers average 1.3 bullets expended per enemy casualty. A single enemy sniper can pin down a whole US Marine battalion - it was in the news this week.

Our soldiers are not trained to AIM. They need to be. Training needs to concentrate on aiming and positioning oneself strategically - and waiting as long as need be to make the bullets count and kill the enemy. Imagine what would happen in Afghanistan if the combat troops there were only one fifth trained snipers. If you only had 10,000 trained snipers, and each one took out one enemy combatant every ten days, that would be 1000 enemy combatants killed each day. And the cost - material cost - would be 1300 bullets.

We are no longer fighting in lines with red or blue coats, standing 100 feet across from each other and firing muskets in unison. We are no longer pushing along trenches or trying to throw grenades into machine gun nests. We are no longer nation against nation - we are fighting individuals that cross national boundaries as if they don't exist, and seek to kill us by using our own outdated tactics against us. And IED can kill off a platoon if they are all in one armored vehicle. We need to shift tactics. We are no longer in the open battlefield, we are now hunting dangerous game.

We need to adopt the tactics that are taken by the deer hunter. We need to have the scoped rifle, the accurate shot, the portable blind, the stealth and quietness, and we need to hunt down our enemy and kill them. If we would do that, so that the bullets we fire are aimed and accurate, then our enemy would no longer be able to hide. Civilians would need not fear the gun battle or the missile - the sound of a single shot would become a comfort, not a reason for fear. And they would want to help us a whole lot more than they do now. Now, if they identify an enemy holdout, a missile or an RPG takes out the holdout and everything (and everybody) within 30 feet. A single bullet would be much more effective.

War is not civilized. It is time to recognize that, and fight the war we are in. The day to recognize and reward the sniper has come. This is a war that is made for snipers. We need thousands of snipers in Afghanistan. The cost is small, the effectiveness is huge, and the onus is on US.

The biggest and the worst legacy that Secretary of Defense Gates will leave behind will be the legacy of Afghan mess that he engineered with other Bush officials by mollycoddling Pakistan at the expense of Afghanistan.
Of all the people in administrations of Bush and Obama, Gates knew that Taliban’s Pakistani connections are fueling and sustaining Afghan insurgency as reported by Matt Waldman in ‘The sun in the sky‘ on 6/13/10, corroborated by WikiLeaks leaks on 7/25/10 and then further corroborated by Chris Alexander, Canadian ambassador to Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005 and Deputy Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Afghanistan from 2005 until 2009 in his article on 7/30/10 titled ‘The huge scale of Pakistan‘s complicity‘.

Yet Gates has continued to justify Pakistani government’s (Pakistani Army as well as civilian government) terrorist connections by always evading to answer most fundamental question - why didn’t he order drone attacks on Mullah Omar’s QST in Baluchistan?

General McChrystal had warned about Pakistan’s sheltering of Taliban terrorists in his August 2009 report to Obama: Quetta Shura Taliban (QST) based in Quetta, the provincial capital of Baluchistan, is the No. 1 threat to US/NATO mission in Afghanistan. At the operational level, the Quetta Shura conducts a formal campaign review each winter, after which Mullah Mohammed Omar (Afghan Taliban Chief) announces his guidance and intent for the coming year‘.

All American officers in southern Afghanistan know that they can not prevail in the ongoing military operations, unless Taliban strongholds across the Durand Line in North Waziristan and Baluchistan are neutralized. Adm Mullen and Gen Patraeus evidently do not want to acknowledge that hard options have to be considered if their soldiers are not to die at the hands of radicals, armed and trained across the Durand Line.

As Matt Waldman reported, “support for the Afghan Taliban is ‘official Pakistani ISI policy’ and is backed at the highest levels of Pakistan’s civilian administration. Pakistan appears to be playing a double game of astonishing magnitude. There is thus a strong case that the ISI orchestrates, sustains and shapes the overall insurgent campaign in Afghanistan.”

The ISI is said to compensate families of suicide bombers to the tune of 200,000 Pakistani rupees, claims the report. Thus US aid to bankrupt Pakistan finances the death of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan. So in a way, US is financing the death of its own troops in Afghanistan.

Pakistani government issued its usual denials just as it had denied umpteen times the existence of Mullah Mohammed Omar’s ‘Quetta Shura Taliban (QST)’ in the provincial capital Quetta of Baluchistan. But General Stanley McChrystal called QST as the biggest threat to US Afghan mission in his report to President Obama in August, 2009.

Pakistan has denied presence of Osama bin Laden on Pakistani soil umpteen times and just recently Adm Mike Mullen repeated in Islamabad that Osama is hiding in a very secure place in Pakistan.

But US can not even use its drones to destroy QST that is causing daily deaths of US/NATO soldiers in Afghanistan since 2002! That shows Obama’s continuance of Bush’s mollycoddling of Pakistan.

As Afghan President Karzai told a news conference in Kabul on 7/29/10 after WikiLeaks leaks, “The time has come for our international allies to know that the war against terrorism is not in Afghanistan’s homes and villages. But rather this war is in the sanctuaries, funding centers and training places of terrorism which are in Pakistan. Our international allies have the ability to destroy these Pakistani sanctuaries, but the question is why they are not doing it?“

With the trio of Pakistan apologists - Gates, Mullen and Petraeus - guiding US Afghan policy, no wonder US Afghan mission is headed for failure.

Sec. Gates--no revisionist!

Yes, in Iraq, we warred against a Lie at horrific cost--but which One? Perhaps, his Memoir will say.

Former Sen. Chuck Hagel to replace Sec. Gates when the Sec. steps down.

The Afghanistan war is not civilized. We all have to recognize that... This war is made for snipers. We need a lot of snipers in Afghanistan war. The cost is small, the effectiveness is very high, and the bonus is on United States.