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Obama's Vietnam?

Ray McGovern: Will Afghanistan be Obama's Vietnam?

WASHINGTON

In our second segment with Ray McGovern, The Real News elaborates on Barack Obama's appointment of Robert Gates to his cabinet. Ray McGovern is a retired CIA analyst who worked with Gates and conducted his fitness reports; reports that raised concerns with McGovern about Gates' emphasis on his own ambition, not good intelligence.

Obama and Bush are supported by the corporate media in representing the surge in Baghdad as a success, McGovern feels that there is "a lack of objective information from..the fawning corporate media." He feels the surge was succesful in it's intended purpose which "prevented a definitive loss of the war..on Bush and Cheney's watch," but this is not how it is being reported in the corporate media.

He says the appointment of Gates demonstrates a continuation of the mentality that led the United States into war in Vietnam, Iraq, and now again, in Afghanistan, noting "Afghanistan, if Obama does this wrong, is going to be his Vietnam, it's going to be his Iraq."

While Obama campaigned and won on the idea of change his continued appointments are proving to be less in line with such change, seeming more like a continuation of the Bush protocols. According to McGovern, "Obama has really missed a good chance to get a thoughtful Secretary of Defense in there who would be open to new ideas and who would do things right."

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