robert gates

Laura Rozen reports a few post-Asia trip scheduling conflicts:
Hillary Clinton is hosting an all-day retreat for her senior staff Friday at Blair House. Deputy secretaries, undersecretaries, and assistant secretaries are due to attend. On the agenda: briefings on policy & budget, an urgent challenges panel on Iran, the Middle East, Afghanistan/Pakistan, and North Korea; around the world priorities, [...]

Defense Secretary Robert Gates has had enough of internal administration debates appearing on blogs like this one. Gates:
“I think a lot of different places are leaking. I’m confident that the Department of Defense is one of them.To have details or options that are being considered out there in the middle of the president’s deliberative process [...]

Check out this New York Times piece about the Afghanistan debate’s latest shifts in the White House. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates are now on board with a 30,000-troop increase*, as is Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The president is said to be [...]

The Secretary of Defense:
“I am deeply saddened by the tragic events today at Fort Hood. My thoughts and prayers are with the families of the fallen, the wounded, and all those touched by this incident. There is little we can say at this point to alleviate the pain or answer the many questions [...]

Great profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Christian Science Monitor. I’ve been writing for months now that Gates is the key swing vote in the Afghanistan debate within the Obama administration, and it’s good to see other reporters coming to a similar conclusion. But I particularly love this kicker:
At a recent Washington conference, [...]

President Obama will host this morning what’s expected to be his final meeting with his national security team on Afghanistan strategy ahead of a revision of/re-commitment to what the strategy will be and how to resource it. Attendees will include the chairmen of the military services, which means that this meeting will focus on how [...]

More on that NATO defense ministerial. Check out Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ take on the mood in Bratislava:
Gates said several allies have indicated that they will, or are leaning toward, increasing their military or civilian contributions, or both. “I find that very heartening,” he said.
He also said he received “mounting endorsements of McChrystal’s approach” during [...]

So about the meaning of those two statements on the Afghan presidential runoff from President Obama and Prime Minister Brown. I note Marc Ambinder’s curtain-raiser about the ongoing Obama strategy review for the war:
On Sunday, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel caught [Defense Secretary Robert] Gates by surprise when he emphasized that the main question Obama [...]

The Los Angeles Times reports that the Obama strategy review for Afghanistan is considering middle paths for the eight-year war — something along the lines of Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counterinsurgency strategy, but more restricted to major population areas and prioritized missions, with, accordingly, a smaller troop increase than McChrystal may prefer. And that’s to be [...]

The Washington Post reports that there’s been an unannounced deployment of 13,000 support troops to Afghanistan over the last several months in addition to the 17,000 combat troops and 4,000 Afghan-mentoring troops under the Obama administration. Why’s this news coming out now? Here’s why:
[It] underscores the growing strain on U.S. ground troops, raising practical questions [...]