Pentagon
DADT Repeal Picks Up Steam at Pentagon, Support from John McCain
ABC's Luis Martinez reports: The process of implementing the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell policy at the Pentagon appears to be picking up steam. Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said we’ll likely hear in two weeks from top DOD officials that the process for changing current regulations and coming up with a training schedule has [...]
President Obama Signs Pentagon Spending Bill, Issues “Signing Statement” Opposing Provisions Banning Gitmo Detainee Transfer to US
President Obama today signed the Pentagon Authorization into law today – and issued a “signing statement” about the provision in the bill prohibiting him from transferring detainees from Gitmo to the US through the fiscal year that ends in September,… Political Punch
The Pentagon to Cut $78B and 70,000 Soldiers and Marines… but no civilians
“do you notice any other government agencies proposing personnel cuts, or cuts in their budgets at all? …Yet there are 69,000 trigger pullers we won’t need five years from now? ” - SFC (ret) Jonn Lilyea, This Ain’t Hell All over the news today has been story after story about the DoD cutting the budget [...]
Pentagon Loosens Conflict-of-Interest Rules For Lucrative Defense Contracts
As 2010 drew to a close, the Pentagon quietly changed a conflict-of-interest rule, loosening restrictions for defense companies working under lucrative government contracts. Under the old rule, Pentagon officials who oversaw contracts could investigate potential conflicts of interest and break up deals because of them. Under the new rule, such reviews only apply to major [...]
Wikileaks, The Pentagon Papers, And The First Amendment
Veteran First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who argued the Pentagon Papers case before the Supreme Court in 1971, had an interesting column this week in The Wall Street Journal arguing that the ongoing Wikileaks story is not at all like the case he was involved in 40 years ago: In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg decided to [...]
Hollywood & Pentagon: “Power Of Celluloid Dreams”
Click here to view the embedded video. I have been a great admirer of Hollywood’s great war classics. Who can forget “All Quiet On The Western Front (1930)”, “The Longest Day’, “The Bridge on The River Kwai”, “Lawrence of Arabia”, and so on. But in the present times some see an unholy nexus between the [...]
Pentagon Money To Go For….Ted Kennedy Shrine?
The following comes from the Traditional Values Coalition: “Traditional Values Coalition Executive Director Andrea Lafferty issued the following statement regarding the Omnibus Spending Bill’s $ 8 million earmark for a shrine to the late Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA). ‘Just when Americans started to hope that the liberal leadership in the Senate had learned its lesson last [...]
Health care is eating a hole in Pentagon budget
New York (CNNMoney.com) - The cost of health care is blowing the top off the Pentagon’s budget. Mirroring the private sector trend, expenses have skyrocketed within the military’s health system. The military spent $ 19 billion on health care in 2001 - and $ 49 billion in 2010. The Department of Defense forecasts a continued [...]
Pentagon Not Properly Protecting Whistleblowers, Says DOJ
Insufficient resources, lack of training for investigators and a variety of other problems have plagued the Defense Department system intended to investigate allegations of retaliation against military whistleblowers, according to a recently disclosed government report. At the same time, the number of military whistleblower retaliation allegations has “more than doubled” from fewer than 300 in [...]
Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks but chose not to
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Well, that’s certainly good news, but then the question remains…why didn’t you? SeDef Gates’ spokeshole doesn’t really answer the question directly except to say that a decision was made (obviously by the Obama Administration and likely directly by the president) not to pursue that option of shutting down Wikileaks [...]
Cuts, Slashes, and Savings at the Pentagon
By Christopher Preble Although the Bowles-Simpson deficit reduction commission has come up short of the 14 votes among its members that it needs to force Congress to vote up-or-down vote on implementing its recommendations, the debate over ways to cut spending will certainly continue. Of particular note is the emerging consensus that military spending cannot [...]
Pentagon: We Could Have Taken WikiLeaks Down
Pentagon spokesman Gregg Morrell says that US Cyber Command had the means to shut down WikiLeaks but that policy makers thought it “not appropriate” because this threat is not “of high consequence.” Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com AllahPundit hopes this is right, “Because if our cyberwar unit is so weak that they can’t hit [...]
Pentagon: We could have shut down Wikileaks but chose not to
Plus: Amazon dumps Wikileaks. I hope he’s telling the truth. Because if our cyberwar unit is so weak that they can’t hit a few servers in Sweden, then I, for one, welcome our new Chinese overlords. The key question: Was this decision driven chiefly by military or political concerns? Could be that the Pentagon suspects [...]
Eyes On The Clock For DADT Repeal Advocates After Pentagon Report
The release of the Pentagon’s Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell review yesterday brought a collective sigh of relief from the gay advocacy and progressive organizations lobbying for the policy’s repeal. Now, they say, they can zero in on the senators who told them this summer that they couldn’t vote for repeal until the review was done. [...]
King: Blame the Pentagon
(WASHINGTON) CNN - New York Republican Rep. Peter King is blasting the Pentagon for the release of confidential State Department documents by the controversial whistle-blowing website Wikileaks. During an interview with CNN Lead Political Anchor Wolf Blitzer in the Situation Room Tuesday, the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee blamed the Defense Department [...]