Robert Gates

But that budget, like many others in conflict-riddled Washington, never passed, leaving the Pentagon to function under several continuing spending resolutions that set funding at 2010 levels, which amounted to a $23 billion cut. Gates said the military needed $540 billion minimum to operate in fiscal year 2011, excluding the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, which are typically funded in emergency supplemental legislation.

Gates has also taken aim at what he sees as wasteful weapons programs not tailored to the needs of today's unconventional warfare.

In spring 2009, Gates clashed with senior lawmakers over the troubled F-22 program . After it was approved by the House, Gates gave a "sometimes withering" July 2009 speech at the Economic Club of Chicago in which he asked: "If we can't get this right, what on earth can we get right? It is time to draw the line on doing defense business as usual." Gates ultimately won the F-22 battle.

And in February 2011, Gates won another key cost-cutting measure when the GOP-led House, backed by the new tea-party freshmen, voted to eliminate funding for the controversial F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, whose maker GE is a big employer in House Speaker John Boehner's (R-Ohio) district.

Killing bin Laden

Under Gates' watch at the Defense Department, the world's most-wanted terrorist, al-Qaeda leader Osama bin-Laden was killed by U.S. special forces after years of painstaking intelligence work.

On May 1, 2011, President Obama ordered a risky special-operations raid on a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan that U.S. intelligence officials had been monitoring for months. Inside the compound, they found and killed bin-Laden, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the target of a massive and frustrating 10-year manhunt.

bin Laden's body was removed from the compound, idenfitied positively through DNA evidenve, and buried after administering Islamic rites and rituals, at sea.

"I think we can all agree this is a good day for America. Our country has kept its commitment to see that justice is done. The world is safer. It is a better place because of the death of Osama bin Laden," Obama said.

Gays in the Military

Gates supported President Obama's decision to end the ban on homosexuals openly serving in the military. The Pentagon released a report in November 2010 concluding that a repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" could be implemented, even given the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, with minimal impact on troops.

The 17-year ban was repealed the week before Christmas in December 2010, right before Republicans were slated to take the House majority and increase their numbers in the Senate.

Pentagon Budget Cuts

Gates has also taken a bold approach to tackling programs he believes are wasteful or ineffective. In spring 2009, he succeeded in scrapping the F-22 fighter program, and in February 2010, fired the general in charge of the F-35 fighter program and withheld bonuses from its maker, contractor Lockheed Martin.

In April 2009, Gates held a news conference to announce a major change in Pentagon spending priorities in the 2010 budget. Gates said the department was seeking to shift spending from complicated and futuristic weapons that often take years to develop and land with huge cost overruns, to weapons more likely to benefit troops fighting today's unconventional wars.The plans drew ire from lawmakers.

In that announcement, Gates made some controversial decisions on key weapons programs. He said that the Navy would purchase just three additional DDG-1000 destroyers, a ship whose costs have ballooned over the years, and then return to making the Arleigh-Burke class destroyer. Gates announced a halt to production of the Air Force's F-22 fighter at 187 jets, four more than it has currently, and cuts to the Future Combat Systems program that has been in production for years and had envisioned replacing heavily-armored vehicles with less protected ones because of improved surveillance capabilities.

Afghanistan

Gates was perhaps Obama's most influential adviser in crafting the temporary surge plan (announced in December 2009) to send 30,000 additional U.S. troops to Afghanistan. Called "Option 2A," the plan was chiefly authored by Gates and called for a quick infusion of troops, followed by withdrawal beginning in mid-2011.

But Gates denied that there was a "date certain" for withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan."I think beginning that process in July 2011 makes a lot of sense, because the other side of that process is open."

"Two to three to four years," Gates answered in 2009 when asked the timeframe of having a significant U.S. presence in the country.

The 30,000 troop spike came on top of a 21,000-troop increase issued by Obama in March 2009.

But in fall 2009, Gates was in the middle of a fierce power struggle between his handpicked Afghan commander, Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, and Obama administration aides over the future of Afghan policy. McChrystal argued that the situation was deteriorating rapidly in Afghanistan and needed a major troop boost, while others like Vice President Joe Biden, said that the U.S. should focus on al-Qaeda, not the Taliban.

Iraq

No matter what else happened during Gates' Pentagon tenure, he can always take credit for the removal of combat forces from Iraq in August 2010.

Gates spent much of his tenure at the Pentagon arguing in favor of the Bush administration's resistance to rigid withdrawal timelines for U.S. troops. "I would urge our nation's leaders to implement strategies that, while reducing our presence in Iraq steadily, are cautious and flexible and take into account the advice of our senior commanders and military leaders," Gates told a congressional panel. "I would also urge our leaders to keep in mind that we should expect to be involved in Iraq for years to come, though in changing and increasingly limited ways."

But since the 2008 presidential election - and, perhaps more importantly, since Washington and Baghdad inked a security pact that includes a 2011 withdrawal timeframe - Gates has softened his rhetoric. In early 2009, Obama announced that most U.S. troops will leave Iraq by Aug. 31, 2010, but that a force of about 35,000 to 50,000 were likely to remain there until the end of 2011.

The U.S.-Iraqi agreement is structured in two major phases: first, it mandates that U.S. combat troops be out of Iraqi cities and towns by June 30, 2011; and second, it requires all U.S. forces to be completely out of Iraq by the end of 2011.

In short, Gates has said, the security pact was a game-changer. An important "bridge has been crossed," Gates said during a December 2008 press conference. "And so the question [now] is: How do we do this in a responsible way?"

In July 2009, Gates argued that American troops could leave Iraq even earlier then expected because violence had decreased.

Nuclear Non-Proliferation

In April 2010, Gates helped reshape U.S. nuclear weapons strategy. The new policy outlined in the Nuclear Policy Reviewnarrowed American use of nuclear weapons to primarily a deterrent function. It also renounced the use of weapons on non-nuclear states in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if those countries attack the U.S.

The announcement came just weeks after another breakthrough by the Obama administration in which the U.S. and Russia agreed to cut their their long-range arsenals by about a third. The countries currently hold more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons.

Closing Guantanamo

Obama and Gates also agree on several other key issues, such as closing the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama plans to shutter the prison, but his efforts to do so have been fraught by political troubles and legal realities about what to do with its difficult prison population.

Gates was one of the first Bush administration officials to come out in favor of closing the facility. "I think it is possible to close it," Gates said Dec. 2. "Trying to move forward on that, at least from my standpoint, should be a high priority."

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