As reported on Monday, the Pentagon didn’t embrace Stuart Bowen’s proposal to create a new agency — the U.S. Office of Contingency Operations — to help plan and coordinate civilian-military operations in conflict and post-conflict zones and failed states. But that’s not to say that Robert Gates, the secretary More…
That’s what Laura Rozen is hearing:
Controversial defense contractor Blackwater, now known as Xe, is being told that it is likely to win a major contract to do police training mentoring and logistics in Afghanistan, a source tells POLITICO.
Check out what Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to say about the passing of Rep. Charlie Wilson, Gates’ partner during the anti-Soviet Afghanistan jihad. Note how quickly this statement becomes a pledge of administration policy intent:
If there was any doubt that Republicans in Congress will oppose this year’s push from President Obama to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Sen. Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) speech Wednesday to the Heritage Foundation ought to have laid it to rest. In the course of a half hour’s worth More…
Remember Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn? He was the former Raytheon lobbyist who joined the Obama administration almost immediately after the president announced new ethics rules barring lobbyists from joining the government in their relevant fields. His nomination survived after getting an ethics waiver, whereby he swore he wouldn’t have More…
The Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership made an unequivocal and at times emotional appeal Tuesday to end the decades-long ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and spelled out a year-long process for securing uniformed and congressional support to change the policy.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates More…
Carrying forward a conservative attack on the Obama administration’s handling of the interrogation and prosecution of would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Abdulmutallab should be tried in a military commission instead of More…
Marc Ambinder has a preview of what Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee today about the administration’s plans to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell.
See this guy? Marine Corps Maj. Gen. David Heinz? He’s the program manager for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a program plagued by cost overruns. Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, just fired him.
One reporter called it a “bombshell” in a still-ongoing press briefing. But Gates canceled the More…
President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that national security programs would not be subject to his proposed spending freeze. But that hasn’t stopped Pentagon officials from placing what they consider to be outdated military programs in the budgetary icebox.
In its master planning document for More…
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