I covered Donald Rumsfeld during his second incarnation as defense secretary, from 2001, through 9/11, and the two wars it triggered. President George W. Bush ousted him in 2006 as ever-grimmer news continued to flow out of Iraq. Rumsfeld vanished from the world stage. But he’s back, as of Tuesday. His autobiography, Known and Unknown, …
National Security
Wither Egypt
My colleague Massimo is right, for once. Things have slowed down dramatically in Egypt in recent days. But folks I have been talking to aren’t convinced this is necessarily a good thing, or in the U.S.’s long-term interests. Here’s Washington’s pickle: now that the protesters — and the international community, led by Washington — have …
The Future of War
[youtube = http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDnvxNdez84%5D
A strange-looking bird of prey took off from California’s Edwards Air Force Base on Friday, flying for a half hour at up to 5,000 feet before landing. While it flew above the Mojave Desert, make no mistake about it: this stealthy, unmanned aircraft will change how the U.S. fights …
Super Bowl Munchies For The Troops
The nearly 150,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chowing down like many other Americans when the Packers meet the Steelers in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Here’s what you’re feeding them. It sure seems like a lot of stuff, but maybe they like leftovers as much as we do — or perhaps they’ll just invite some of the roughly …
Gitmo: Exercise Can Kill
It was less than two weeks ago that we quoted lawmakers detailing how sunny life can sometimes be for the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:
While it’s no tropical paradise, GOP lawmakers said it isn’t the hellhole that many paint it. “Despite some of the earlier and changing popular perceptions about Guantanamo Bay, there is a
…
The Good News Between the Lines of the Grim Fort Hood Report
A Senate report into the murderous 2009 shooting spree at Fort Hood released Thursday traces a familiar and depressing pattern: once again, as was the case in the months leading up to 9/11, dots telegraphing terror yet to come were ignored, overlooked, or slighted by federal personnel paid to detect and connect them.
The report found …
"Fill 'Er Up, Please! Premium!"
How isolated are some U.S. posts deeps in the nooks and crannies of Afghanistan? So isolated that they’ve been supplied totally by air — for years. Over two recent days, three huge C-17 aircraft parachuted in 120 bundles of fuel to keep Forward Operating Base Waza K’wah in the Paktika province of Afghanistan up and running. It was the …
The Pentagon's Marauding Fraudsters
Fraud is big business at the Pentagon. Always has been, always will be. When you’re spending more than $1 million a minute, some is bound to be pilfered one way or another. But it’s rare to find all such chicanery cataloged in one place. Thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, we now have one-stop shopping for Pentagon fraud.
He …
Pentagon Fat
The Pentagon has always been larded with fat. It’s just that until recently, it involved gold-plated weapons, not super-sized soldiers. But as this chart shows, troops labeled overweight or obese more than tripled between 1998 and 2010. While the article in the latest issue the Pentagon’s Medical Surveillance Monthly Report didn’t …
U.S. Weapons to Egypt Never Linked to Human Rights
Pentagon officials have been delighted at how the Egyptian army is treating its citizens, and hope such conduct continues. Some Americans wish U.S. leaders over the past 30 years had used the weapons the U.S. provided Egypt as a lever to press Cairo to relax its repression, but that has always been a no-go zone. U.S. officials concede …
Sharing Democracy With the Egyptian Military
The two men now running Egypt — Hosni Mubarak, 82, and his hand-picked successor, 74-year-old Omar Suleiman — both attended Moscow’s Frunze Military Academy as young officers (Mubarak also trained as a pilot in Moscow). That’s where they learned how to command subordinates — and deal with challenges. Like the rest of the …
Not Just Packers, Steelers On Defense This Sunday
Looks like there will be some other folks in the secondary, protecting against the long bomb:
WASHINGTON, Jan. 31, 2011 – Military fighter jets will be busy this week preparing to protect the skies around Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas, during Super Bowl XLV on Feb. 6.
Amalgam Virgo 11-05A, a North American Aerospace Defense
…
The Rest of The Story
For almost a decade, I’ve been getting statements from the Pentagon like this one:
If you can’t make out the small print, it’s an announcement of the combat death of Marine Cpl. Chad Wade, in Afghanistan, two months ago today. These terse messages are heartbreaking in their directness and numbing in their number. It’s important to …