Why was I neglecting this blog today? Because I was reporting this piece for the Washington Independent about what the QDR will contain: In its master planning document for the medium-term defense outlook, known as the Quadrennial Defense Review, the Pentagon will announce cuts to some Navy and Air Force programs. The Pentagon will not [...]

The ambush at Wanat in Afghanistan is an amazing military endeavor: a handful of soldiers repelled a massive Taliban assault at a remote location. There are indications that a suspicion of the local population by the soldiers contributed to the attack. But rather than me trying to summarize, Tom Ricks owns this story, so read [...]

Nathan Hodge at Danger Room reads the leaked QDR draft and notices that it heralds the Rise of the Drones: According to that draft, the Department of Defense is “is on track” to field and sustain 50 drone orbits by Fiscal Year 2013. What’s more, the Pentagon “will continue to expand the force to at [...]

Let me start off by saying I don’t hold any particular brief for Scott Horton, although I was impressed with his recent Harper’s report into some dubious 2006 suicides at Guantanamo Bay. But Jack Shafer’s attempt at refuting Horton is unpersuasive. This, for  instance: [I]f you were going to torture prisoners to the point of [...]

Ali and his father were inseparable. Ali’s older brothers called him “Daddy’s favorite,” and the family affectionately called him by his kid nickname, Allawi. “He was the closest of my sons to me. He was my youngest and was always indulged,” recalls Mohammed. “He would sleep on my arm. He’s 9 and half years old [...]

Adam Serwer: As Michael Jacobson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy pointsout in his recent report, a key part of “deterring and dissuading” potential terrorists is developing an effective counter-narrative to those propagated by extremist groups. Jacobson notes that in 2008, speaking at a WINEP event, then-undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis [...]

This is a QDR recommendation for the Pentagon: Centralize command of cyber operations. In an effort to organize and standardize cyber practices and operations more effectively, the Department is standing up U.S. Cyber Command, a sub-unified command under U.S. Strategic Command, to lead, integrate and better coordinate the day-to-day defense, protection, and operation of DoD [...]

This post will cut directly against my interests, but I feel like writing it anyway. This morning I was on al-Jazeera to talk about the State of the Union. I presumed I was on so I could tell al-Jazeera’s international audience what Obama’s nine minutes of foreign-policy discussion meant for America’s geopolitical ambitions over the [...]

I puked in my mouth a little last night when Chris Matthews, watching the State of the Union, said that “I forgot [Obama] was black tonight, for an hour.” Tweeted it, got nearly 100 new followers because of it and even saw my friend Michael Calderone bizarrely try to explain that “Matthews’s line about Obama’s [...]

Consider this post a sequel to this one. This is going to be wonky as shit, so be warned. If you don’t care about the Quadrennial Defense Review, you’re not going to like this post. If you’re on the fence but need some background for the importance of this massive Pentagon planning document, I suggest [...]