Last week, Defense Secretary Robert Gates argued that President Obama’s order to cut $400 billion from national-security spending over the next 12 years will force the U.S. military to curtail some of its far-flung duties. “This needs to be a process that is driven by the analysis,” he said, “as well as missions that our elected …
National Security
Top Two Officers Overboard
…once again, the Navy has relieved the top two officers on a warship — in this case the USS Ponce — for poor performance. The ship recently participated in the attacks on Libya.
These stories are always distressing, but it’s also bracing to see the service hold senior leaders accountable. Something we don’t see a lot of any more.
A Trillion Here, a Trillion There
When I started covering the military shortly after the War of 1812, million was a word you heard a lot. Then, once Cap the Knife (for his budget-cutting prowess during his Nixon Administration tenure running the Office of Management and Budget) became Cap the Ladle Weinberger when he ran the Reagan Pentagon, billion became the big …
Overdosing on `Tea’
We will not be bombing Syria for reasons that are unclear
President Obama late last month told the American people that he would dispatch U.S. military might against Libya’s Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to avoid the slaughter of innocent civilians, killings that had already “reverberated across the region and stained the conscience of the world.”
That’s a clear standard. President Bashar al-Assad …
The Predator Feud Drones On
A peek inside the tensions between Islamabad and Washington over the CIA’s use of armed Predator drones over Pakistan to take out Taliban operatives in safe havens along the Af-Pak frontier, from Time’s Omar Waraich in the Pakistani capital.
Welcome Home, Soldier…
The gap between our publicly professed pride for our returning troops – and how they actually are treated when they need help – never ceases to amaze. The latest on this care chasm is explained on the front page of Saturday’s Washington Post. It details the woes faced by veterans who believe they have been short-changed by the …
Libya: McCain On What a Political Solution Would Look Like
Asked Friday in Benghazi what a “polical resolution” to the Libyan crisis would look like, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., had a brief answer:
I think the political resolution is one that calls for Gadhafi to be one of three places: with his friend Hugo Chavez [in Venezuela], in the International Criminal Court [in the Hague], or with Hitler
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Libya: Status Report
…speaking of Libya, colleague Ishaan Tharoor brings us up to date about a rare win for the rebels in the western part of the country, also at Global Spin…
Libya: McCain Swoops Into Benghazi
Over on Global Spin, Time colleague Bruce Crumley notes Sen. John McCain’s visit to Benghazi on Friday. Talk about sending in the drones:
As an ardent and vocal backer the anti-Gaddafi rebels, it’s hardly surprising McCain made the journey to Benghazi to demonstrate his support of the opposition. Nor is it illogical he used that
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Hellfire: Now Debuting Over Libya
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aU1ukWWOFqg]
So we’ve got up to four AGM-114 Hellfire missiles hanging from a pair of Predators now flying over Libya. The advantage to piggybacking these missiles on drones is that they can loiter over hostile territory for hours, often without people on the ground aware that they’re circling …
Libya: “Progress,” By The Numbers
The U.S. military has shied away from enemy body counts during wartime since Vietnam. Enemy attrition, not so much (attrition, noun — a wearing down or weakening of resistance, especially as a result of continuous pressure or harassment). So Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, rolled out this new preferred …
Electronic Agent Orange?
Those of you of a certain vintage will recall how the U.S. military dumped dioxin-laced Agent Orange defoliant all over Vietnam in hopes of an instant autumn — stripping leaves from the jungle so the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese couldn’t hide. But the cost of chemical defoliation was so high, and so tragic, that an electronic …