President-elect Barack Obama is readying a US Department of Defense transition team staffed with Clinton-era appointees: a move that signals he may move quickly to staff the Pentagon with his own people. Initial media reports claimed the Obama transition team - headed by John Podesta of the Center for American Progress, a Washington think tank - was debating whether to ask Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to stay on to allow him to see out the Iraq war and begin withdrawing troops with minimal disruptions. However, sources in the Obama camp and close to the Pentagon told Jane's they thought that this would be unlikely; keeping Gates would mean keeping the entire Bush team, which has endorsed a policy on Iraq that is fundamentally at odds with Obama's plans for a set withdrawal timeline.
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