If you didn’t believe me before about Guantanamo and why it was a remarkably dumb idea, will you believe these guys?
From Politico:
“It’s up to all of us to say these arguments advanced by Cheney and his acolytes are nonsense and that really what they’re doing is undermining our national security by delaying the date at [...]

But they promise that detainees won’t be abused. More on why I think that’s nonsense later on in the post.
But first, more from NY Times:
The announcement, by President Obama’s Interrogation and Transfer Policy Task Force, seemed intended in part to offset the impact of the release on Monday of a long-withheld report by the C.I.A. [...]

Good lord…

So if you desert you should die? I understand being brought up on charges if you leave and then lie about it, which is possible what’s going on here, but the last time I heard anything about a court martial for deserting, the punishment didn’t include death.
There are few things I hate, but this [...]

Because we overreached so much during the past eight years, the practice of stop-loss was an unfortunate and common reality for many soldiers who would have otherwise left the military.
Now we’re honoring their forced service with more than a pat on the back.
From AP:
WASHINGTON -The House and Senate reached a compromise Thursday to give a [...]

From AP:
Gen. David Petraeus said the number of attacks in Afghanistan over the last week hit the highest level since the December 2001 fall of the Taliban.
“Some of this will go up because we are going to go after their sanctuaries and safe havens as we must,” Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said during [...]

Awful news out of Little Rock, Arkansas…
A man with “political and religious motives” killed a soldier just out of basic training and wounded another Monday in a targeted attack on a military recruiting center, police said. The shootings were not believed to be part of a broader scheme. [...]
William Long, 24, of Conway, died, and [...]

It appears as if evangelical Christians inside the military could be urging troops to give out bibles in Afghanistan…which is strictly forbidden by both the military’s code of conduct and Afghan law.
Here’s the report…

Now, the military denies that the bibles were ever distributed, but there’s no way to really prove if they were or weren’t. [...]

For those who’ve worried that under the command of President Obama, our military in Iraq won’t be able to adjust to realities on the ground, there’s this story out of Mosul. Conditions in the region are not good and our forces are likely postpone the scheduled withdrawal if Iraqi authorities ask us to stay.
Army Colonel [...]

Quite a nice surprise on this holiday weekend.
From ABC:
A senior US official tells me that President Barack Obama approved a recommendation by Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen to dispatch special forces to the US scene on Friday.
These special forces were authorized to take action “in extremis” against the [...]

The strategy is simple.
Quit plowing billions into the programs that aren’t working and up the funding for some programs that do.
From Wash Post:
Gates’s aides say his plan would boost spending for some programs and take large whacks at others, including some with powerful constituencies on Capitol Hill and among influential contractors, making his announcement [...]

Some good news already from G20:
After a meeting between the two men in London, on the eve of the G20 summit, President Obama also accepted an invitation to fly to Moscow in July, by which time both sides hope negotiators from both countries will have worked out an arms control deal to replace the Strategic [...]

A new type of threat requires new ways of combating it.
Thankfully our Defense Secretary is leading that charge with some needed changes to the Pentagon’s budget.
From Boston.com:
WASHINGTON – As the Bush administration was drawing to a close, Robert M. Gates, whose two years as defense secretary had been devoted to wars in Iraq and [...]

Following up on his campaign promise to have a surge-like push in Afghanistan to see if it could help the country.
From Fox News:
“This reinforcement will contribute to the security of the Afghan people and to stability in Afghanistan,” Obama said in a statement. “I recognize the extraordinary strain that this deployment places on our troops [...]

Here is the simple way to ground a country’s air force…
The Telegraph is reporting that fighter planes in the French navy were unable to take off after their computers were infected by a computer virus.
The aircraft were unable to download their flight plans after databases were infected by a Microsoft virus they had already been [...]

As promised, this is one of the first orders of business. And given that we eventually freed the majority of those we kidnapped and held indefinitely without access to legal counsel, this move is yet another signal that America is starting a new chapter.
From AP:
The U.S. moved Tuesday to halt the Guantanamo Bay war crimes [...]

Kind of an odd statement coming from a guy who accepted a paid gig to be a war correspondent, but hey…it’s not like Pajamas TV is paying Wurzelbacher to be consistent or even correct.
AP reports…

And here’s a partial transcript just in case you can’t see the video…
I’ll be honest with you. I don’t think journalists [...]

Press Secretary Robert Gibbs answers a lot of questions for the transition. Definitely try to watch them all.
However, check out the last question/answer around 4:15 of this video.

All I can say is…it’s about time.
I’ve never understood the claim that somebody disclosing their sexuality would destroy troop morale, especially when it has been well documented that [...]

The fighting is growing more intense as Israel has started their ground offensive. And if Israel doesn’t realize that they’ve overreached here and are losing sympathy around the world, then they better wake up and realize it soon. You can’t kill this many women and children and not get a ton of backlash.
From CNN:
“Every couple [...]

Looks like it’s a little bit longer than the 16 months Obama talked about during the primaries, but as long as the plan is to get out during his first term I bet he’ll allow the generals more time to execute a plan they think is realistic.
From NY Times:
The plan was proposed by the top [...]

I missed this yesterday, so here’s his introduction and Shinseki’s acceptance.

Shinseki was absolutely correct that more troops were needed back in 2003 and he was punished for speaking truth to power. So there’s certainly some poetic justice that he’s now in charge of helping those who suffered in some small part from the naive strategy [...]