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Gates v. Air Force

One interesting Iraq-related subplot has been the escalating sniping between Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and the Air Force over the latter’s foot-dragging on making itself useful for the conflicts the United States is actually engaged in rather than building up for hypothetical great power conflicts. A new edition comes today with Gates chiding air force students at Maxwell-Gunter Air Force Base.

I have somewhat mixed feelings about this, because Gates is basically right on the merits, but the whole issue has gotten tied in with the merits of the war in Iraq in complicated and fairly contingent ways.

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