In my piece on Friday about Bob Gates’ agenda in the Obama administration, Larry Korb raised the question of what outmoded programs he’s going to ax. After all, anyone can posture about defense reform. Budgetary priorities are where the adults distinguish themselves from the children.
So it’s fortuitous that More…
Yesterday I highlighted the departure of Gen. William Wallace from the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine command as an example of the end of the Rumsfeld era — and, if I can be so bold, the rise of the counterinsurgents. At Wallace’s retirement ceremony, Defense Secretary Bob Gates More…
Every now and then, as I turn from Florida Avenue NW and walk north on Connecticut to get to The Washington Independent offices, I come across Donald Rumsfeld, ambling down the hill and toward Dupont Circle, heading for a destination unknown. He typically has a bodyman behind him, wearing a More…
Americans overwhelmingly approve of President-elect Barack Obama’s cabinet appointments, but that hasn’t resulted in increased confidence in Obama’s ability to lead the country.
According to a CNN poll released Wednesday, 75 percent of Americans support Obama’s cabinet nominations, including 71 percent who back his choice of Hillary Clinton for More…
Read this sentence and tell me some dirty hippie didn’t write it:
Where possible, what the military calls kinetic operations should be subordinated to measures aimed at promoting better governance, economic programs that spur development, and efforts to address the grievances among the discontented, from whom the terrorists recruit.
That’s More…
Clearing the way for an Obamanik, Gordon England, the deputy secretary of defense since 2005, is on his way out. From the official Pentagon announcement:
I was on the phone during Bob Gates’ first presser since being reappointed as defense secretary by President-elect Obama, but my man Matt DeLong kept me covered and sent along his notes. And look at this! Gates is OK with Obama’s timetable for withdrawing combat troops from Iraq in 16 More…
When last we left the question of who would staff a Gates Pentagon — GOP appointees or Obama’s people? — it looked pretty much like Obama would put his team in at the sub-cabinet level. Trusted defense adviser Richard Danzig would get the deputy secretary position and probably More…
Matthew Yglesias flags this aspect of a New York Times story about the Obama national-security team:
Yet all three of his choices — Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as the rival turned secretary of state; Gen. James L. Jones, the former NATO commander, as national security adviser, and Robert
You know whose opinion you should really value when assessing the impending retention of Bob Gates at the Pentagon? Larry Di Rita, the last living Rumsfeld acolyte — seriously, put him in the Smithsonian or something — says that sure, sure, Gates does lots of nice things competently, but More…
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