Defense Secretary Robert Gates Slips on Ice, Breaks Shoulder

[ReformedChris]

Source: MSNBC.com

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary Robert Gates fell on some ice Tuesday night, and fractured his right shoulder, NBC News has learned.

Gates was supposed to appear before a U.S. House Appropriations sub-committee today at 10 a.m. ET. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England is likely to attend the hearing in his place.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not say where Gates was when he fell, only that he was not at the Pentagon at the time.

He was examined last night and is said to be recovering

Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23144664/

---

Updated.

[tekisui]

1. Karma happens.

[davidinalameda]

2. my thoughts exactly

[LiberalFighter]

10. * Karma * Karma * Karma * Karma * Karma *

[reprehensor]

20. Amen. He deserves worse.

"On one issue in particular we had sharp disagreement, I criticised the US for its support during the 1980s for the fanatical Afghan mujahideen. For Gates this was not an issue: the US, he claimed, had delegated responsibility for spending the money and providing the arms to the Pakistanis and it was their decision to support the more extreme groups.

In any case, he added, this was not the issue at the time. "People lost sight of the fact that our objective was to throw the Russians out of Afghanistan, or at least cause them to pay a terrible price there. Frankly, we weren't particularly concerned about what post-Soviet Afghanistan was going to look like".

http://www.opendemocracy.net/globalization/gates_4106.jsp

He lieth with great aplomb.

[bdamomma]

38. yes indeed.

[Solly Mack]

3. He surged across the ice

and the ice SCORES!

He came. He slipped. He landed.

[lunatica]

25. LOL

:headbang: :rofl:

[Xenotime]

4. Ice is now the #1 threat to national security

[liberalla]

21. WARNING! the next two months are particularly hazardous...

We'd be at RED if the colors hadn't become such a joke.

[zanne]

5. I shouldn't get pleasure from another person's pain...

I shouldn't get pleasure from another person's pain...I shouldn't get pleasure from another person's pain...I shouldn't get pleasure from another person's pain...I shouldn't........

[Xipe Totec]

8. Poor guy; the pain must be torture n/t

[ReformedChris]

9. Maybe Broken Shoulders can be classified as "Torture" now that Gates has felt the pain nt.

[melody]

6. "Ice" in the form of some BFEE thugs trying to keep him in line perhaps n/t

[jdadd]

23. Maybe......

Might have been the serious arm twisting,to get him to agree to something. :think:

[Xipe Totec]

7. Was he surfing on a frozen water board?

[LiberalFighter]

11. They should try ice boarding him. Or...

take him out to the river froze over. Cut a hole in it and dump him in. Then cover the hole so he can't get out. Give him 1 minute and pull him out. Then repeat adding a minute each time.

[Divernan]

13. That would really turn Scalia on!

nt

[TwilightGardener]

12. Robert Gates is an OK guy. I wish him a speedy recovery.

[struggle4progress]

33. The Robert Gates File

November 9, 2006
By James Ridgeway

WASHINGTON—While Donald Rumsfeld was Ronald Reagan’s errand boy to Saddam Hussein in the mid-1980s, Robert Gates, the man named yesterday to succeed him as Secretary of Defense, was at the very heart of the American intelligence apparatus, actively planning and carrying out covert operations in Central America and the Middle East.

Gates, a 26-year CIA veteran and the agency’s director between 1991 and 1993, has long been accused of undermining competent, unbiased intelligence analysis at the agency during his tenure, opening the way for its role in partisan politics, a reality brought to the fore again as the Bush administration made its flawed and phony case for war with Iraq. Gates was a high official at the CIA at a time when the U.S. intelligence community experienced one of its most humiliating debacles: the failure to predict the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Instead, under CIA director William Casey the U.S. concocted evidence showing the expansion of Reagan’s “evil empire.” ...

Nicaragua wasn’t the only place Gates wanted to take action. In 1985, sounding very much like one of today’s neoconservative hawks, the then head of intelligence analysis at the CIA drafted a plan for a joint U.S.-Egyptian military operation to invade Libya, overthrow Col. Muamar Ghaddafi, and “redraw the map of North Africa.” On the basis of this idea, CIA Director Casey, sometimes said to be the man who invented Gates, ordered up a list of Libyan targets and the National Security Council developed a plan to have Egypt attack Libya with U.S. air support and seize half the country. The Joint Chiefs drew up plans for a military operation involving 90,000 troops. Alarmed, the State Department subsequently succeeded in downsizing Gates proposal to “contingency” status ...

Critics have long thought Gates was heavily involved from the very beginning in putting together and implementing the secret Iran-Contra war. In his book, “Firewall: The Iran/Contra conspiracy and Cover-Up,” Lawrence E. Walsh, the independent counsel in the Iran-Contra investigation, wrote that he was skeptical of Gates’ repeated denials of having been aware or involved with the details of the Iran-Contra operations with Oliver North ... In blunt terms, Walsh thought Gates was a liar ...

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2006/11/Gates%20Files.html

[struggle4progress]

34. CIA Veteran: How Robert Gates Cooked the Intelligence

By Daniel Schulman
December 4, 2006

... MJ: As you mentioned, Gates has denied having knowledge of Iran-Contra. You were at the agency during that period. Is that plausible?

MG: Now, fortunately, we have documented evidence about what he knew and who told him what and what meetings he sat in on. He was briefed by about three different CIA officers.

Gates denied the meetings he had with Poindexter, which we know he had. He met regularly with Poindexter, he met regularly with North, he sat in on meetings with North and Casey. I myself think the reason why Casey made Bob Gates his deputy in 1986 is he needed someone who was involved in all the operational matters of Iran-Contra as some security fence within the bureaucracy, someone who knew all of this stuff and could protect it.

In '87 that's why Gates never got to a vote, because no one believed he was telling the truth when he said that he wasn't part of this operation and he knew nothing about it. In '91, they were prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt, but there were still 31 votes against Bob Gates, which is more than all of the negative votes against all of the CIA directors going back over a 59-year period ...

http://www.motherjones.com/washington_dispatch/2006/12/melvin_goodman.html

[struggle4progress]

35. Gates Pushed for Bombing of Sandinistas

Published on Saturday, November 25, 2006 by the Los Angeles Times

His 1984 memo called for 'hard measures' against Nicaragua.

by Julian E. Barnes

WASHINGTON — Robert M. Gates .. advocated a bombing campaign against Nicaragua in 1984 ...

http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1125-04.htm

[Ian David]

14. Slipped and fell, or was he "Propelled to the ground" ?

As evil as this guy is, he still occasionally contradicts The Bush Junta. He's a bit of a loose cannon by Bushie standards.

[Nihil]

26. I've had enough of this wowdy wabble webel behaviour.

CENTURION Hail Caesar.
PILATE Hail Caesar.
CENTURION Only one survivor, sir.
PILATE Thwow him to the floor.
CENTURION What sir?
PILATE Thwow him to the floor.

...

PILATE I want him fighting wabid wild animals within a week.
CENTURION Yes, sir.
PILATE I will not have my fwends widiculed by the common soldiewy.

:-)

[struggle4progress]

32. It does remind one of the odd case of Gates' former CIA boss, Bill Casey, who

(the day before he was due to testify before Congress about the Iran-contra scandal) suffered a sudden inability to speak and was rushed to the hospital, where he lingered speechless for some months and then died

[UpInArms]

15. karma would have been his neck - not his shoulder

but - shoulder was close to karma

:evilgrin:

[Ian David]

16. "Bryan Whitman would not say where Gates was when he fell..."

[Buzz Clik]

17. Let's hope he mends properly is back to 100% very soon.

I object to picking on people who aren't well.

[sharp_stick]

18. I wonder if he had to wait 8 hours to see a Dr.

like I did when I broke my shoulder a few years ago doing the same thing? I kinda doubt it, I bet the shit never even had to sit with the common people.

[underpants]

19. NO it's not like he fell in CANADA or something

I mean COME ON!

:sarcasm:

[OnyxCollie]

22. Send him to Walter Reed. nt

[paparush]

24. Check out the Karma in the DU Headlines...LOL

[damntexdem]

27. He should have settled for a triple axel.

He should never have tried to do that quad!

[xxqqqzme]

28. It's probably part of some tear-rist

plot. One that * will claim was thwarted because gates discovered it when he fell. He'll probably get a medal of freedom for falling.

[truthisfreedom]

29. Here's the real question...

"...Bryan Whitman would not say where Gates was when he fell, only that he was not at the Pentagon at the time..."

Where was he, and why are they trying to cover that up? Was he drunk? Has he cracked up and spiraled out of control? My guess is he got drunk off his ass, slipped and fell outside an exclusive club somewhere, and was whisked away before anyone got wind of it. Pressure's gotten to him.

[MiniMe]

36. I read another story that he slipped at his home on Tuesday night

and broke his humorous, which is the bone between the shoulder and the elbow. We had a nasty ice storm in the DC area on Tuesday night, so I would tend not to read too much into it. Here is the article on CNN:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/02/13/gates.arm/index.html?eref=rss_topstories

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates returned to work Wednesday afternoon after breaking his upper right arm in a fall on the ice outside his Washington home, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Gates suffered a broken humerus, the bone that connects the shoulder and elbow, Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said.

Gates, 64, didn't seek treatment until Wednesday morning when he checked into Walter Reed Army Medical Center, said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell.

"I think he's in a lot of pain," Morrell said.

Gates apparently slipped as he returned from dinner, he said.

...snip

[Xipe Totec]

30. I wonder if he can bite his own elbow now n/t

[daleo]

31. Defense Secretary on the rocks

Goes down smooth.

[MilesColtrane]

37. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman would not say where Gates was when he fell

He was reporting to Lord Cheney.

Gates slipped on the frozen lake, Cocytus.

The ice of the 9th circle is kept frozen by Cheney's six flapping wings.