Tom Ricks gets an interview with Gen. David Petraeus that mostly featured Petraeus attempting to avoid making news. But this was funny:
[Ricks]: You keep on saying you are not running for president. Why do you think people seem to believe you are?
[Petraeus]: Beats me. I’ve been as
President Obama signed the 2010 defense appropriations bill into law this morning, following a brief bit of legislative theater by Republicans who wanted to hold it hostage to delay health reform. Tom Ricks goes through the bill and finds it only marginally relevant to national security:
As long as we’re talking about torture, check out this letter that Tom Ricks published from an Army National Guard lieutanant colonel to Charles Krauthammer after Krauthammer’s latest apologia for torture. The whole thing is a tonic of basic decency and strategic wisdom, but this particularly is worth More…
Now that Tom Ricks, the best military reporter in the country, has published the second volume of his politico-military history of Iraq, The Gamble, my temptation is going to be to blog nearly every word of it. My copy is still on its way from the publisher, so I’m More…
Tom Ricks, preparing for today’s Pentagon subcabinet-official hearings, muses:
It’ll be interesting to watch the Armed Services Committee hearing today on [President-elect Barack] Obama’s Pentagon picks in part to see how John McCain behaves.
As he returns to Congress, McCain is for the first time in many years
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