The Pentagon’s decision, announced this afternoon, that it is now permitting openly gay men and women to enlist is just the first bump in what could be a long road. The second bump could be — as the Pentagon is already warning — that their service is no longer needed.
That could happen in the days to come if a higher court rules …
Once-mighty Britain scales back her ambitious defence-spending plans today. It marks a turning point in its place in the world. It plans to announce it is scrapping and/or delaying warplanes and warships in a major way. This was all foretold in an amazingly prescient — and amazingly funny — “interview” on British TV three years ago. …
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a gathering Sunday that the nation must appreciate the sacrifices its troops are making in Afghanistan and Iraq. “These years of battle have steeled them for an uncertain future, because when our men and women come home, the battle doesn’t end,” Mullen said. “Quite frankly, …
Less than three months after 9/11, the Bush Administration was planning for war with Iraq. These talking points prepared for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s meeting on November 27, 2001, with Army General Tommy Franks, the U.S. Central Command chief, make clear the justification for the coming war: “Focus on WMD.” Much of the …
The federal judge who ruled the Pentagon’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy unconstitutional last month — and then ordered the military to stop enforcing it last week — gets a third bite of the apple today when she is slated to rule on the Pentagon’s request to halt her injunction until an appeal can be heard. The betting inside the …
The U.S. military is on a tear about how green it’s getting — bio fuels for jets, solar panels to cut down on fuel needed for generators, all that kind of stuff. Heck, even we’ve written about it. Hate to spoil the party, but after nine years of war, the U.S. military is still burning gobs of garbage in more than 250 open pits in …
Pentagon spending has been shielded from cuts ever since 9/11. Amid a public numbed by economic woes and fed up with the war in Afghanistan and the non-war in Iraq, get ready for the first defense-spending showdown of the 21st Century. Such a battle royale requires arsenals, and each side is busy rolling out its weapons:
— If you …
There are lot of reasons to doubt it, but folks are bouncing his name around as someone who might replace Defense Secretary Bob Gates next year. Be fun to watch his confirmation hearing, much of which would been spent swatting away questions about his February 2003 speech to the United Nations charging Saddam Hussein with hiding weapons …
For the first time in 17 years, no one is going to be booted from the U.S. military for being gay, at least for now. At least while the Obama Administration’s appeal seeking relief from such action wends its way through the courts.
The chart below shows how traumatic brain injuries — which usually happen when troops’ brains are violently shaken inside their skulls due to roadside bombs — have soared among U.S. troops in Afghanistan and Iraq. They’ve jumped from less than 80 a month in 2003 to more than 450 a month this year. That’s more than 15 U.S. troops a day …
It’s easy to poke fun at military bands. Like shooting fish in a bugle. Given the Pentagon’s tightening budgets, they make for a tempting target. But then you come across a newspaper story like this, detailing a short concert by a five-piece U.S. Navy brass band at a Freetown, Sierra Leone, school earlier this week.
The Principal of the
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And you thought the real war was between the U.S. military and the Taliban. Or the U.S. military and Saddam’s army inside Iraq? Actually, the most brutal conflict was between Army Gen. Hugh Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his boss — Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. That’s the bottom line in Shelton’s fat, …
Thomas P.M. Barnett is an old Pentagon hand and heavy-duty national-security thinker. He’s perplexed by a glaring omission in Tuesday’s front-page New York Times‘ piece on the growing distrust expressed by young Chinese military officers towards the U.S.
“This is the same U.S. military that assembles multinational war games in China’s …
