The Senate Armed Services Committee just announced a hearing next Tuesday morning to get a status update on Afghanistan war strategy. Testifying will be two of the strategy’s architects: Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy; and Gen. David Petraeus, the commander of U.S. forces in Central and South More…
There were lots of signals from Defense Secretary Bob Gates at his press conference today. I didn’t want to let my imagination run away with me, but his body language was tight and his face looked tired. He looked like he had to make precisely the kind of momentous decision More…
We still don’t know what it says. Not even Defense Secretary Bob Gates does, apparently, though it went to the Pentagon and NATO. The initial reports are that it says a lot of what it’s been expected to say: the war is hard but not hopeless; more Afghan More…
Anthony Cordesman, a highly respected defense analyst and adviser to Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s review of Afghanistan strategy, writes an op-ed that has an undercurrent of “McChrystal versus the world” running through it. For instance, there’s this blink-and-you’ll miss it reference, in a section about what it will take More…
At the bottom of Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s deeply reported story about why Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Michael Mullen relieved Gen. David McKiernan from his command in Afghanistan is this bit of insight into some of the value added by the 60-day strategy review recently More…
Nathan Hodge, in Afghanistan for Danger Room, reported last week that U.S. officials in Kabul don’t like to refer to the planned near-doubling of civilian advisers to the Afghan government as a “surge,” preferring the term “uplift.” And, you know, whatever. McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef and Warren Strobel have a More…
A pattern is developing with respect to the Afghanistan war. No one who advises Gen. Stanley McChrystal on his 60-day strategy review — results coming soon! — thinks the war effort is adequately resourced. First Andrew “Abu Muqawama” Exum of the Center for a New American Security came back from More…
Has all this bated-breath excitement about Defense Secretary Bob Gates scrubbing the fiscal 2010 Pentagon budget, due next month, been for nothing? Is the defense-spending “spigot” remaining open after all? God will I be embarrassed if so; and according to the Pentagon’s deputy comptroller, it might. From subscription-only Inside More…
Anthony Cordesman, a longtime defense wonk at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has been around long enough to see effort after effort of Pentagon procurement, acquisition and contract reform founder. He doesn’t appear impressed with President Obama’s new attempt either.
Jason Sigger publishes an email Cordesman’s More…
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