The Invisible Defense Secretary

Just about anyone would have been an improvement over the imperiously snarky Donald Rumsfeld as defense secretary, but in his nine months in the job the mild-mannered Robert Gates has been a revelation less for what he has said than how little he has said.

Make no mistake about it: Gates is not out of the loop. He just sees his place in the loop very differently than did Rumsfeld.

There was Gates in recent days praising Pakistan for its role in the war on terror, meeting at the Pentagon with a delegation from Finland and performing the other titular duties of his office, but not surprisingly he was nowhere to be seen -- or heard -- in the media frenzy surrounding the Petraeus progress report on the Iraq war.

Notes Reuters correspondent Andrew Gay:

"As befits an ex-spymaster, Gates has given away little about his views on Iraq strategy, while being praised for openness. . . . But his frank reputation has come largely from admitting mistakes made on his watch and before."

Indeed, Gates has acknowledged Rumsfeld's many mistakes in the conduct of the war, although without mentioning his predecessor by name. But he has not spoken publicly about how long the additional surge troops should be kept in Iraq and when withdrawals should begin, although he meets regularly with President Bush, is a key behind-the-scenes player and is said to be outspoken in private meetings regarding the strains to the Army and Marine Corps from repeated tours of duty in the war zone.

Gates hand writes notes to the families of each U.S. service member killed in Iraq and is said to favors the findings of the bipartisan Iraq Study Group, which called in December for U.S. combat troops to be out of Iraq by spring 2008, a recommendation that Bush pointedly refused to accept.

Peter Rodman, a former assistant secretary of defense who worked under Gates before joining the Brookings Institution think tank, notes that:

"The surge has been implemented on his watch I think he is identified with it."

But Rodman said Gates was right to keep his views to himself because his advice carries more weight if the president president does not feel he was being put under public pressure.