A trifecta of trouble in three Pentagon inspector-general reports released Thursday concerning the U.S. military’s continuing struggle to build Afghan security forces so U.S. troops can come home.
Here is the first finding …
BattlelandSnafus
BattlelandSnafus
BattlelandReading Between the Lines
“About Face!”
“Funds for Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO) are fully exempt from the sequester, so added costs for wartime operations would not be affected.”
— Letter from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Sen. John McCain last November
“Upon further review of the law and after consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, the
…
“If they get nuclear weapons, we will get nuclear weapons.”
BattlelandTroops
Navy Brains…and Heart
Sure, it gives one pause when the top graduate among the 1,099 midshipmen to be graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy this week isn’t — for the first time in the academy’s 158-year history — an American. Here, Defense Secretary …
BattlelandWar Story
Building a Secure Afghanistan
Much of the more than $600 billion the U.S. has spent over the past decade in Afghanistan has gone into developing its security forces – the Afghan army (ANA) and police (ANP). Major William Nordai, a member of the Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), returned from Afghanistan last June after spending a year in the northern part of the …
BattlelandMilitary Spending
On Cyber Warfare, the American Public Is Constantly Being Played by the Pentagon
From a Washington Post piece describing “Plan X,” the Pentagon’s new push to develop cutting-edge offensive cyber weapons:
It makes sense “to take this on right now,” said Richard M. George, a former National Security Agency
…
BattlelandPacific
“Delicate Dance” for Panetta in China’s Backyard
TOKYO – When U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta arrives in Singapore this week to talk about containing China – and that’s really what this trip is all about — he’ll find plenty of support from friends in the region. …
BattlelandMilitary Mental Health
Memorial Day 2012: Advancing or Retreating?
I posted my first piece on Time’s Battleland a year ago, troubled by the disconnects between the verbal thanks to America’s veterans — and the rising problems with unemployment and homelessness.
This is too reminiscent of
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The Few. The Proud. The Anonymous.
BattlelandNational Security
Cold War Calculations
Fascinating study out from the folks up at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, Mass. George J. Borjas (of Harvard’s Kennedy School) and Kirk B. Doran (of Notre Dame) studied U.S. mathematicians to see what impact the collapse of the Soviet Union 20 years ago had on their work.
They were interested in exploring …
“Congress, in writing the Budget Control Act, did not design sequester to be rational. Sequester was supposed to be the trigger, a trigger so irrational that the prospect of it would drive and force the leadership to do what was needed, which is to put together an overall budget package for the nation's finances that could win wide support. Sequester was designed to be irrational.”
BattlelandSyria
When Military Intervention Makes Sense
Gideon Rachman at the Financial Times says that “diplomacy is still better than bombs” and that “moral outrage is just the starting point for a decision to intervene.” He then goes through all the major powers in his piece …
BattlelandAfghanistan
Picking on Girls
Insurgents allegedly attacked a girls’ school Tuesday for the third time in a week in Afghanistan, sending about 160 students and four teachers to a local hospital in the north of the country. It’s hard to fathom how a …