Gates Retiring: Obama Selects Panetta for Defense Secretary

Source

The article states Robert Gates "has long wanted to retire." Nothing unusual in that. Another article makes rather light of his intention.

A favorite parlor game in Washington’s national-security circles is guessing how long Secretary of Defense Robert Gates plans to stick around.

WSJ

Is it just me perhaps or do any others find the timing too co-incidental?

The way I see it is: Gates had been wanting to spend his days fishing and drinking cold ones or whatever retired politicos do, but there just never seemed any right time to step down as there are those two pesky wars we're involved in. Perhaps he was hoping for a platinum watch, but instead he got a "humanitarian" situation in Libya.

Thirty days to the day after Gates and Sec. Of State Clinton made the rounds of Sunday morning political talk shows in which he admitted that Libya was not a threat to US interests, his retirement plans have been finalized and announced. Add to the conspiracy soup, Gates recent testimony and his refusal to speak about Middle Eastern CIA operations, ran by the agency headed up by Panetta and who will be replacing him, this appears doubly damning.

Asked in a House Armed Services Committee today whether there would ever be U.S. military “boots on the ground” in Libya, Mr. Gates was blunt.“Not as long as I’m in this job,” he said.

Is this a case of finally getting the platinum watch or a case of getting the boot? Did he foresee the inevitable deeper involvement in Libya and bow out before the government made him a liar? ...or a case of ushering out the old and useless (who's not wholly on board with the administrative objective) and installing Panetta, who has had his fingers in the Middle Eastern pie up to his armpits?

In light of ramped up rhetoric regarding Syria, escalating area troubles, and an utter failure to accomplish the stated goal in Libya, what more may we expect (other than the usual lies)? If boots do indeed hit the ground, then I'll have another serious axe to grind with this asinine administration.

I WANT MY SON HOME, MR. PRESIDENT. I've worried through Iraq. I've worried through Afghanistan. If he winds up in Libya, I'm not going to worry. I'm going to Washington,DC.