Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced Monday he will retire by the end of 2011, Fox News confirmed.

Gates, the only Bush holdover in President Obama's Cabinet, made the announcement in an interview conducted at the Pentagon with Foreign Policy magazine on July 12 that was published Monday.

Gates has been expected to leave the administration before the 2012 election.

"I think that by next year I'll be in a position where, you know, we're going to know whether the strategy is working in Afghanistan. We'll have completed the surge," Gates, 66, told the magazine.

"We'll have done the assessment in December, and it seems like somewhere there in 2011 is a logical opportunity to hand off."

Gates was a key supporter of Obama's war strategy in Afghanistan that authorized 30,000 more U.S. troops to the region, raising American numbers to 100,000 and calling for them to begin pulling out next summer.

Gates' top Afghan commander, Gen. David Petraeus, however, said he's not sure whether troops will begin withdrawing next summer, saying any drawdown will be based on conditions. Gates insists the drawdown will begin next July.

Gates replaced Donald Rumsfeld in 2006 after the midterm elections, determined to turn around the faltering war effort in Iraq and to improve relations between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Congress.

Gates' decision to accept Obama's request to continue serving as Pentagon chief reassured lawmakers on both sides who were wary of major changes in the middle of two wars abroad.

Gate is now overseeing a controversial plan to find $100 billion in savings in the next five years to reinvest in a military ravaged by years of war.

Gates is currently on vacation for two weeks in Washington state.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/08/16/report-gates-leave-pentagon-end/

What do you wanna bet he is being forced out too?

Gates needs to leave NOW. He's already killed the F-35 and is seriously cutting the F-22 budget, and his latest move is to cut the Marine Corps. He's far too 'obama-esque' in his role as 'protector' of our nation. I didn't like him before O appointed him, and I haven't like him one damned bit better since then. The longer he hangs around, the more damage he can inflict.

Gates has no worries.

He got rich selling weapons and ammo.

He always has that to fall back on. He has lots and lots of connections, buyers and sellers.

He has the authority to order Canadian made ammo and weapons to be drop-shipped anywhere in the world.

I'm sure Russians would gladly give him discounts on military surplus. You can get a decent sub for just a few million

Cartels, Gorillas, Freedom Fighters, Mercs, Muslims, Hamas etc. will always need guns, ammo, tanks, planes, ships, etc.

I was pissed when he axed all the F-117's in the middle of two wars.

It will be a long goodbye. Robert Gates confirmed today that he intends to leave his post as Secretary of Defense – at the end of 2011.

That is no surprise. The only Bush hold-over in the Obama Cabinet, Gates always vowed to quit before the end of President Obama’s first term; he has been famously keen on returning home to the Pacific Northwest ever since he accepted this Mission Impossible of a job.

But having served eight presidents, Gates is clearly not a cut-and-run-kind of guy. By the time he retires, as he pointed out in his interview with Foreign Policy, it will be clear whether or not Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is working. (He said little about Iraq, by the way, which is not exactly an unmitigated success). If it is not, he’ll propose “adjustments” in December, he confirmed.

Aware of the growing public fury over wasteful government spending, especially in time of war, Gates has most recently proposed to cut $100 billion dollars worth of Defense spending over five years, close an entire command, and eliminate 50 of the Pentagon’s 1,000 generals and admirals, whose ranks have swelled by 13 percent in 15 years, even as the armed forces themselves have contracted. That may prove as tough a fight as Iraqand Afghanistan.

In his most recent Newsweek column, Fareed Zarkaria noted that every layer of the Pentagon bureaucracy is larger today than it was during the Cold War’s peak.

Quoting Paul Light of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service, he writes that in 1960, there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense.

Today there are 530. While Gates has often complained that there are “more musicians in U.S. military marching bands than members of the Foreign Service,”

Zakaria observes, the Pentagon now has “10 times as many accountants as there are Foreign Service officers.” The portrait behind the SecDef’s desk is that of Dwight Eisenhower -- the legendary general-turned-president who so presciently warned about the threat to America of the “military-industrial complex.”

Fred Kaplan, who conducted the interview for Foreign Policy, praised Gates for having done more to change the way the Pentagon does business “than any defense secretary since Robert McNamara.” (Several at the Pentagon took exception to this encomium, saying that Gates was a cautious insider whose ostensibly revolutionary changes are less substantive than they would seem and more smoke-and-mirror accounting. ) But Kaplan also wondered whether Gates might be bluffing by signaling so early plans to leave.

I think Gates is deadly keen on leaving. When Obama first nominated him, I praised the then president-elect for appointing someone who was almost everything he wasn’t, especially experienced. Unlike the president-elect himself, Gates was ultra-savvy about Washington's bureaucratic ways. In other words, he not only knew where the proverbial bodies were buried, he had probably buried a few of them himself. And he was able to change his views based on those pesky “facts on the ground,” a rare quality in Washington. Though he initially opposed the “surge” of forces in Iraq, for instance, he gradually changed his mind and implemented the surge and the rest of the counterinsurgency strategy that dramatically reduced the violence in Iraq. Later on, he publicly chastised the Air Force for failing to pull its full service weight in Iraq, fired the Air Force's civilian secretary and top military officer after nuclear weapons and components were mistakenly shipped across country and abroad and slashed weapons systems he considered obsolete. Now he’s tackling some of the waste – perhaps not deeply enough – that I saw on my most recent trip to Iraq.

But part of his success, argued one Pentagon insider, is due not only to his legendary pragmatism, but also to what he is not. Just as Obama’s initial popularity was boosted by the fact that he was not George W. Bush, on whom much of the country had soured, Gates benefited greatly from not being Donald Rumsfeld, his hugely unpopular predecessor. If Rumsfeld was fire, Gates was ice.

Unlike Obama, Secretary Gates has remained popular and well-regarded – at least so far. How he will be regarded in history rests largely on the success or failure of his administration’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In announcing his impending departure so long in advance, he’s giving himself, and his administration ample time to adjust for failure.

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/08/16/judith-miller-long-goodbye-robert-gates-legacy-taking-shape/

So in the middle of two wars and on the brink of two more he wants to cut defense spending? He got rid of the Stealth f-117 Fighter(stupid move). Cancelled the order for the new line of military helo's for the President and vips, cut the pruduction and order of the F-22 Raptor from several hundred to less then two hundred and before we even get the F-35 in combat. He also is looking to kill a lot more of our R&D and equipment.

What a moron.