European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - October 10, 1991, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Thursday october 10, 1991 the stars and stripes Page 13 commentary Mary Mcgrory eager to please Gates is a Tightrope artist like George Bush Robert Gates is neat polite and quiet. Like George Bush he has advanced steadily by being secretive sycophantic Loyal and injurious. The expected confirmation of Gates As Cia director will represent a major Victory for the president. It is also a Triumph for Ronald Reagan who invented the curious ethical Standard whereby an offence is disqualifying Only if it is indictable. The corollary truth is that which the democrats can to prove. This Reagan legacy informs the whole Gates appointment process. And that is As it should be because from the Day it was discovered Reagan maintained that there was no Iran Contra scandal which was Bush a position too although he admitted that a mistakes were  naming Gates makes the denial official Dogma. The first Absurdity of the appointment is that Gates whose official Job will be to ferret out the worlds darkest secrets is considered wildly eligible by All republicans for the contradictory reason that he insists he had no idea what was going on in his own office. The republicans faces at the hearings lit up every time the Point is made that Gates a allegedly Cut out of the Loop by Oliver North and Willian Casey the old rogue who was Gates Boss at Cia a was in the dark. The republicans Learned the essential lesson of the Reagan years too done to worry about How silly a thing sounds or looks get with the program. They Are solidly behind Gates. They trumpet his ignorance which May be slightly at Odds with his vaunted grasp of facts but hey he a a shoo in and look at Bush a polls. Several of Gates subordinates attempted to inform him of the doings going on under his nose. One Charles Allen who was aptly called a warning officer reported in August 1985 his suspicions that the arms profits were being diverted to the contras to a Superior Richard Kerr. Kerr told Gates who can to remember being told that North was involved. Kerr followed Allen to the Quot stand. Both of them could be midwestern insurance agents there a not a Jot of James Bond in either. Kerr said Gates just did no to Register. Gates fans who include Allen and Kerr say Many people told him Many things. Still it does seem Odd that a Man who went so far by noticing his masters wishes would have passed Over something so startling about a project that obsessed Reagan and preoccupied Bill Casey. A certain delicacy and a Lack of a hard evidence caused Allen to Couch his a analytic judgment in a Way that hardly reflected his fear that the matter went straight to the White House and perhaps even to the president. But As the frantic Calls from Manuchehr Ghorbani far the iranian middleman became More frequent a Ghorbani far was losing his shirt in the prodigious Price markup a Allen decided to speak directly to Gates. Gates told him to make an appointment with Casey to inform him of a plot that Casey was of course masterminding. The scene Allen described the Day he presented his memo of what he Felt was a dangerous situation sounds As if it were taken right out of Cusa Bunca a of the immortal sequence in which Claude Rains pronounces himself a shocked shocked to discover that gambling was taking place in Ricks cafe. Casey and Gates promptly marched Over to the White House to confront John Poindexter who May Well have been amused at being called to account for following Casey a orders. Allen painted another picture of farcical confusion at the Agency on nov. 20, 1986, five Days before the roof fell in and attorney general Edwin Meese announced the arms Sale and the diversion to a genuinely startled press corps. Twenty spooks dashed around trying to paste up a plausible account of what Casey had been up to for the preceding 15 months a carefully ignoring the Central fact of the diversion. Gates was the impresario of what would be called perjury if the Cia thought lying to Congress was wrong. Gates record at analysis on which the a new Ciao will focus is not stunning. He overestimated the red menace misread soviet Leader Mikhail s. Gorbachev and promoted a Star  in Short he told his superiors what they wanted to hear. He was so anxious to please that he advocated bombing Nicaragua a Macho initiative that had to go Down Well with Casey who was aggrieved at the outcry against his mining of Nicaragua a harbours. Republicans exult that there is no a smoking gun against Gates. Smoking rubble does no to count. In the mysterious Alchemy of Washington Gates has gone from unmarketable to inevitable so nobody wants to hear about it. Besides Iran Contra never happened. C Universal press Syndicate Carl Rowan Bush ignoring real problems of americans i recently was Riding with a civilian employee of the Navy who told me that he had moved to Virginia after being jobless for More than a year in Ohio. This Man spoke in Blue Collar eloquence about the Shock and pain of being Laid off when he had a wife and six children to support. He told of being denied Par time work by people who would say a no we know you la leave for your old Job if they Ever decide to rehire  i got a sense of the family conflicts that arise when a wife is saying if Only in looks and body language a when Are you going to earn some Money a and when the Man assumes his children Are wondering a a what a wrong with dad a you talk to a Man like that Navy employee and know that the phrase a More than 8.5 million americans out of work is More than a statistic a that it says something about the High rate of i votes desertion juvenile delinquency and general crime in America. That is Why it seemed so absurd that when president Bush was in new York talking to soviet foreign minister Boris Pankin about the United states giving billions of dollars in a humanitarian aids to the soviets even As his allies were telling the . Senate that that president will veto a Bill to extend unemployment Bene fits for some 2.3 million americans. The Senate voted 69 to 30 to allocate some $6 billion to extend for up to 20 weeks benefits for those whose eligibility for jobless pay had been exhausted. The Bush administration says this is too costly. Yet Bush was talking to Pankin about a soviet declaration allocating $13.7 billion in food assistance this Winter alone not to mention billions More for technological and other assistance. You done to have to be an isolationist or a America firster to sense that the Bush administration has got its spending priorities screwed up. People like that Navy employee sympathize with Senate majority Leader George Mitchell a Maine and sen. Lloyd Bentsen d-tex., when they accuse Bush of caring More about kurdish and turkish refugees than he does about jobless people in America. One obscure office in the do Arment of health and human services is spending 410 million this year on the resettlement of soviet jews and armenians in this country. We have a situation in which Bush gives priority to trying to use . Dollars to buy off the threat of thousands of soviet missiles and to Purchase a a new world order that Bush expects to dominate. He seems to think that his forays abroad have made him so popular that he can ignore pressing humane needs in the United states. Bush is doing things worse than ignoring the jobless. He is through republicans such As sen. Phil Gramm of Texas trying to use the miseries of the jobless As a Way to squeeze the Congress into reducing the capital gains tax. Mitchell says that americans will recognize a the cruel hoax of telling anguished jobless americans a that the solution to their problem is to Cut taxes for people whose income exceeds $200,000 a  its time for George Bush to look homeward and see the real problems of the real people in the real messed up America. 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