Word: neveral
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...killed by roadside bombs. Gates had a message for them: "We're in this thing to win." Obama had said nothing of victory during his speech to the West Point cadets. "You can't tell soldiers to fight for a draw," says one of Gates' staff aides. But Gates never got to give his pep talk. There would be no trip to Kandahar, or anywhere for that matter. The helicopters were grounded by the Afghan weather...
...they work, what their needs are and how to successfully contribute to their offices," says an aide. It's what allows him to adapt his positions to changing times. Under Bush he justified the missile-defense program; under Obama he took charge of canceling it. Similarly, while he's never been a champion of repealing the "Don't ask, don't tell" policy, he has agreed to carry out the President's order to do just that...
...were to ask Gates about his influence within the Administration, he'd stress that he serves at the pleasure of the Commander in Chief. But that too is a mark of his craft. "I have never seen anyone more effectively maneuver in the Executive Branch of the Federal Government than Bob Gates," says his old friend David Boren, the former head of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee who is now advising the White House on intelligence. "He knows just when to give his advice, to whom to give it, and he's extremely good at forming alliances with other people...
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 can with the information and judgment you have...
...Soviet Union as an implacable and evil adversary. During the Reagan Administration, he sided with hard-liners who got the Soviets wrong. He failed to recognize that Mikhail Gorbachev was a true reformer. He didn't believe that Soviet power was collapsing. "He said the Soviets would never leave Afghanistan. They did. He said [former Afghan President] Najibullah would never survive the Soviet departure. He was totally wrong. Najibullah survived three or four years," recalls Mort Abramowitz, who was Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research at the time. "People make mistakes. Bob is not infallible...