It never ends.

Daniel Ortega elected President of Nicaragua (after being out for 16 years). Good for him.

Meanwhile - here at home - Rumsfeld is out and Robert M. Gates (former CIA director) is in (or at least nominated). You have to wonder with the Gates appointment if the intention is go more under-cover. More like the Iran-contra days. Just like our gov't was interfering with Nicaragua and Iraq and Iran back in the 80s - so it goes again. Gates was a big part of that back then. Bush seems to be keeping that era alive. (Oh, and Gates was part of the scheme to do away with a paper record of votes - HAVA and all that).

Ortega Wins Nicaraguan Election
In Nicaragua, Sandinista frontrunner Daniel Ortega has been declared the victor in the country’s presidential elections.

Nicaraguan President-elect Daniel Ortega: "We need to give Nicaragua a sign of stability, a sign that goes above all of our political stances. the responsibility that we have, above all else, is to take Nicaragua out of poverty."

The Bush administration has not yet responded to Ortega’s victory after threatening economic sanctions if he won.

(The irony is not lost on a lot of people who see our interferance with other countries elections as being very undemocratic - where supporting democracy becomes a pretence.)

Bush introduces new secretary of Defense
Criticized for failing to send enough troops to Iraq to quell the insurgency and for interrogation tactics at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay prisons that gave the United States a black eye around the world, Rumsfeld, resigned as one of the longest-serving Defense chiefs...

To replace him, Bush announced he was appointing Gates, who served as director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President George H.W. Bush. Gates is the president of Texas A & M University and a close friend of the Bush family. He first joined the CIA in 1966 and served in the intelligence community for more than a quarter century under six presidents..
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Some history. This was written in 2001 - when the US was attempting to block Ortega:

White House Revives Iran-Contra Memories
Mr Ortega was a leader of the Nicaraguan revolution which removed the dictator Anastasio Somoza in 1979. He was elected president in 1984, but lost in 1990 to a coalition candidate, Violeta Chamorro.

While he was president the US backed the contras - counter-revolutionaries - in the civil war. This led to the Irangate scandal: the use of profits from secret weapons sales to Iran to finance the contras after Congress voted to deny them aid.

And from Znet:

Twenty Years After Iran-Contra, Washington’s Role In Nicaragua Still a Scandal
But the US Central Intelligence Agency soon brought guns and money to the enforcers of the toppled dictatorship, Somoza’s hated National Guard. Before long these re-named “contras” were killing health care workers, teachers, and elected officials – the CIA actually prepared a manual which advocated the assassination of the latter. The contras preferred attacking these “soft targets” rather than the national armed forces. In that sense they were very much a terrorist organization; they also used torture and rape as political weapons.

These atrocities brought the contras universal condemnation from humans rights groups such as Amnesty International and Americas Watch. The Sandinistas took the United States to the World Court for its terrorist actions—the same court where the US had won a judgment against Iran just a few years earlier, for the taking of American hostages. The court ruled in favor of Nicaragua, ordering reparations estimated at $17 billion.

The heinous nature of these crimes and the direct involvement of the Reagan Administration disgusted millions of Americans, even more so after Ortega was democratically elected in 1984. Led by activists in the religious community, some hundreds of thousands of US citizens organized against US funding for the contras and convinced Congress to cut it off. That’s where Ollie North came in: on behalf of the Reagan Administration, he illegally sold arms to Iran and used the proceeds to fund the contras. This became the infamous “Iran-Contra” scandal of twenty years ago.
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Esp. after listening to Democracy Now! this morning (11/9) - where they discussed Gates roles in Iran-Contra, in having Iran hold the hostages until Reagan's inauguration, his lying to Senate Committees about stuff that was widely know.... it doesn't sound like someone who would be good to have in any position and esp. as Defense Secretary. I suppose - deals will be made. Bush will say - "you guys go along with this and I'll go along with blah, blah, blah".