Pentagon officials won’t concede it, but privately defense officials say the spate of “green-on-blue” killings by Afghans of their purported U.S. allies over the past two weeks could lead to major changes in U.S. strategy. If they continue, the U.S. will face a brutal choice: pull out, or double down.
President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta unveiled a new military strategy Thursday: the Pentagon of the future, they made clear, will be doing less with more. “Over the next 10 years, the growth in the defense budget will slow, but the fact of the matter is this: It will still grow, because we have [...]
President Obama spent weeks in 2009 developing an Afghan battle plan that could win consensus from his senior generals. The centerpiece was a pledge to begin drawing down troops in July 2011. But it was never clear that Obama would be able to keep the consensus as that date approached. From the beginning, many in [...]
It was never going to be easy for Obama to watch Robert Gates walk out of the Pentagon and back into private life. Over two and a half years, Gates has provided impenetrable political air cover for a series of extremely difficult national security decisions, from the surge in Afghanistan to repeal of Don’t Ask, [...]
Swamplanders may have noticed a post from a new name this afternoon, TIME’s National Security correspondent extraordinaire Mark Thompson. Mark is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1985 Fort Worth Star-Telegram five-part story about a design flaw in Bell helicopters that went uncorrected for a decade and claimed 250 lives during that time. He’s written [...]
Just days after taking office a little over a year ago, Obama checked off an item that had long been on the pro-choice community’s to-do list when he repealed the so-called Mexico City policy prohibiting foreign family planning groups from receiving U.S. funds if they provided abortions or even referred patients for abortions. On Thursday, [...]
Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon has terminated its contract with the outside firm that was putting together files of journalists seeking to cover the war in Afghanistan and vetting their stories as positive, negative or neutral. However, Jason Motlagh happened to see his own “profile,” and has this account in TIME.com: I recently [...]
Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military’s independent newspaper, has a zinger of a scoop today: WASHINGTON — Contrary to the insistence of Pentagon officials this week that they are not rating the work of reporters covering U.S. forces in Afghanistan, Stars and Stripes has obtained documents that prove that reporters’ coverage is being graded as [...]
