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CBS' anchor Katie Couric started the week filing from Afghanistan, where she profiled Gen David McKiernan, unaware of the fact that he had just lost his job. She rounded out the week with a Katie Couric Reports feature on Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who, unknown to Couric, had gone to Kabul in order to fire McKiernan. This feature served as a promotion for Couric's longer piece on Gates for 60 Minutes. Couric traveled to Helmand Province to check on the new counterinsurgency tactic of moving troops into rural villages. "Some tactics, like rooting terrorists out of safe havens, are a double-edged sword," she mused, reflecting on a US airstrike that may have killed 140 civilians last week. "Missile strikes by unmanned drones along Pakistan's border with Afghanistan have infuriated the local population." Gates refused to comment about "any specific military operations or activities."
Clearly, the Secretary of Defense has the horrors of war on his mind. His Pentagon office uses furniture from the carnage-ridden conflicts of the Civil War and World War I. In his show-and-tell, Gates name-dropped Ulysses Grant, Robert Lee and Jack Pershing. He referred to himself by an anachronistic title: "The truth of the matter is, being Secretary of War in a time of war is a very painful thing…So, no, I do not enjoy my job."
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