Army Lt. Dan Choi, a West Point graduate and Arabic translator who famously challenged ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ last year, has been recalled to active duty, according to The Advocate. That’s a strong sign that even ahead of a full repeal of the so-called gay ban, proceeding at More…
Robert Gates repeated at his Pentagon press conference that he wants to give troops at war at least two years’ time at home for every year deployed. But there’s a new surge going on in Afghanistan, and accordingly, the plan takes a back seat to that. So when More…
The commission Defense Secretary Robert Gates appointed to investigate how the Army failed to notice the radicalization of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged gunman at Fort Hood, has apparently taken a very structural examination of the failure. Look at this portion of its assessment:
As Hasan’s training progressed,
Earlier this year, Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he would put in place a plan to expand the time that soldiers spend at home between deployments. By 2011, Gates said, he and Army officials wanted to give war-weary soldiers two years at home for every year deployed, up from the More…
The progressive Iraq/Afghanistan veterans group VoteVets has been, to the best of my knowledge, supportive of a properly resourced and focused Afghanistan strategy for quite some time. But it surprised a lot of people when it announced that it couldn’t support the Obama administration’s “extended surge” on Tuesday. That’s because More…
A conference call with senior administration officials previewed the major themes in tonight’s presidential announcement of a refined Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy. Those are: a 30,000 total troop increase arriving by the summer of 2010; a transition to Afghan security control beginning — not ending but beginning — in July 2011; a More…
John Soltz of VoteVets makes an absolutely crucial point in an interview with TPM’s Christina Bellantoni:
Soltz said VoteVets members are worried the policies such as the 2-year dwell time between deployments are “at risk” because “the math doesn’t add up.”
This is an under-noticed shift that I noted More…
Jamal Baadani was driving home from work outside Washington on November 5 when a friend called to tell him a gunman had shot up the Army base at Fort Hood, Texas. It didn’t take long for Baadani to learn that the suspect, Nidal Malik Hasan, was an Arab-American, a Muslim, More…
Don’t miss this mammoth USA Today investigation into retired generals and admirals receiving heaps of Pentagon cash for occasional “mentoring” work to their previous service branches — usually while they’re receiving not only their duly-earned pensions, but also generous military contractor dollars. Tom Ricks, who thinks the piece ought More…
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) might have postponed this week’s planned Senate Armed Services Committee briefing on the Fort Hood shooting after President Obama asked Congress to await the results of ongoing Army and FBI inquiries. But today the committee will go forward with a closed-door briefing on Fort Hood, More…
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