Word: stating
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...pictures of Obama's first state dinner...
...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...
...story Gates' staff loves about him: Shortly before Obama's first state dinner, for the Indian Prime Minister in November, Gates was told that when he entered through the East Wing, a gauntlet of press would ask him what he was wearing. "Why would they ask me that?" he replied. Not wanting to be part of the red-carpet scene, he slipped in through the quiet West Wing entrance and went straight to the bar. For dinner he ate half a basket of dinner rolls, preferring them to the gourmet Indian-fusion cuisine being served to the dignitaries...
...office overlooking the Washington Monument, Gates has hung portraits of the leaders who most inspire him, Eisenhower and Marshall. Since 2007, when Gates re-emerged on the government speaking circuit, he has had one consistent obsession - the relationship between State and Defense. Like a nervous tic, he never misses the chance to tell an audience how, for most of his career, the secretaries of State and Defense have barely been on speaking terms...
Gates has gone out of his way to woo Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, so much so that they've come to seem inseparable. "Gates needs her," says Bruce Riedel, who led Obama's strategic review of Afghanistan early last year. "No one would take Gates' view on what the Democratic Party would support in Afghanistan seriously. He's not a Democrat...