Jack Murtha

Last week I urged people to watch Sens. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) and Jack Reed (D-R.I.) and Reps. David Obey (D-Wis.) and Jack Murtha (D-Pa) for barometric measurements of deflated Democratic congressional support for the Afghanistan war. Levin, of course, came out on Friday for deferring a second troop increase this year. Now Murtha is opposing [...]

Congress is back, and Karen DeYoung has a good section in her Washington Post story on the administration’s Afghanistan choices about what that means:
The pending 2010 budget legislation for the first time requests more money for Afghanistan-Pakistan operations than for Operation Iraqi Freedom — $68 billion compared with $61 billion. Administration officials said they expected [...]

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. Jack Murtha (D-Pa.), Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.), a [...]

Two weeks ago, a Pentagon official thought aloud to me about how the defense industry would resist President Obama’s attempts at procurement and acquisition reform. The “ground game,” this official said, would rely on defense-reliant members of Congress. For a baroque example of how this works, don’t miss The Washington Post’s piece on Rep. John [...]

Today a cohort of progressive bloggers unveils a new effort against the planned 20,000-troop increase of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. A website called GetAfghanistanRight, set up by bloggers at the Seminal and Brave New Films — and with the support of Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel — went live today, with the intent of blogging [...]

The Wall Street Journal files from that parallel universe today: Thanks to the financial crisis and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Pentagon must make some crucial spending decisions. Should money be spent preparing for counterinsurgency, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, or buying state-of-the art weapon systems to fight more a conventional war with [...]