I asked Rob Fuller, Lockheed Martin’s chief spokesman for the F-22 jet that it manufactures, what his reaction was to the Senate’s vote to strip funding for the F-22 from the defense authorization. And since the House’s companion bill has F-22 money in it, will Lockheed lobby to keep More…
I don’t yet have the transcript of his presser this afternoon, but according to Reuters, Defense Secretary Bob Gates has embraced the measure to reduce the deployment strain on the Army. The increase is less than the 30,000-troop expansion that Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) wanted, but according to the More…
Via Adam Serwer at Tapped, the New America Foundation has a new report out addressing that slippery, demagoguery-filled claim about Guantanamo detainees “returning” to the battlefield after the Bush administration released them.
Contrary to recent assertions that one in seven, or 14 percent, of the former prisoners had
In an internal 2003 memo, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously warned that the struggle against terrorism would be a “long, hard slog.” His successor, Bob Gates, viewed that as an excuse for tolerating a deteriorating situation in Afghanistan and Iraq. He tells Julian Barnes of The Los Angeles Times More…
In this corner: President Obama, Defense Secretary Bob Gates, (reluctantly) the service secretary and chief of staff of the Air Force, this very smart Air Force captain, Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), and the current threat environment the U.S. faces. In that corner: Rep. More…
Building on yesterday’s announcement that Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) didn’t have the votes to strip funding for the Air Force’s F-22 fighter jet from the defense authorization bill, here’s an Air Force captain providing some really useful context — namely, the Air Force’s problems with adjusting to a More…
Today was supposed to be a critical day for the Obama administration’s efforts to kill the troubled F-22 fighter jet. It goes like this: the Senate is taking up the fiscal 2010 defense authorization, which 13 pro-F-22 Senators on the Armed Services Committee last month used as a vehicle More…
Something I didn’t know but Brandon Friedman at VoteVets did: a staff sergeant leading an infantry squad in Afghanistan makes, with combat pay, about $44,500 per year. And it costs about $42,000 per hour to fly an F-22, a fighter jet never used in post-9/11 combat at a time More…
Curious choice of words from Defense Secretary Bob Gates yesterday on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” He’s talking about how to deal with the law-slash-regulation in advance of attempts to overturn it, as President Obama reiterated was his intention last week:
And so one of the things we’re looking at
Use the initials if you don’t understand, but that was what Gen. Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, told commanders in Afghanistan would be the president’s reaction if they asked for more troops on top of the 17,000 extra combat troops and 4,000 extra trainers that Obama already ordered More…
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