It took decades for Libyans to rise up and months for Gaddafi to be ousted and killed. From Reuters: (Reuters) – Muammar Gaddafi is dead, Libya’s new leaders said, killed by fighters who overran his hometown and final bastion on Thursday. His bloodied body was stripped and displayed around the world from cellphone video. Senior [...]

Let’s see…we’re still in Afghanistan…we’re still in Iraq…we were never really in Libya…and yet that country has been liberated in near record time. Lindsey Graham’s and John McCain’s opinion of the situation? NOT FAST ENOUGH!!! The end of the Qadaffi regime in Libya is a victory for the Libyan people and for the broader cause [...]

Peter Beinart makes a good point about our massive defense budget and undeclared wars… In modern times, conservative presidents like Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush have tried to reconcile their efforts to rein in federal power with their support for a large military and an interventionist foreign policy. But both times, the latter has [...]

As the saying goes…worth a thousand words. And scene.

Same song. Different singers. Reuters interviewed Republican Buck McKeon, the new chairman of the House Armed Services committee. And guess what? From McKeon: We’re spending less than at times in the past and we’re involved in two wars, as a percentage of our gross product. So I think, myself, I think you have to be [...]

All of this is very straightforward, but it bears repeating since so many on the right cried foul last week. So, basically, this new policy will deter nations from taking the path that Iran and North Korea have taken since they know we won’t strike them with nuclear weapons…thus taking away a key argument from [...]

He reminds America why we’re fighting, how we almost won in Afghanistan, how we got off course because of Iraq (without laying blame), how we plan to fix it and that this isn’t an open ended commitment. He even goes so far as to talk about when he’ll start bringing people home: July 2011. All [...]

Good evening. To the United States Corps of Cadets, to the men and women of our armed services, and to my fellow Americans: I want to speak to you tonight about our effort in Afghanistan – the nature of our commitment there, the scope of our interests, and the strategy that my Administration will pursue [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]