By Elaine Donnelly
Extending sexual misconduct to combat units
Several conservatives who sat in on closed-door meetings at last week's Republican National Convention in Tampa, Fla., came away worried by GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney's foreign and defense policies.
GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney has assembled a cast of conservative George W. Bush-era veterans as his key national security advisers. Some of them played important roles in the war on terror and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Marine Corps Gen. James Cartwright, vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is offering qualified support for the New START arms treaty in an effort to counter critics who say the treaty will restrict one of the Pentagon's most promising new strategic weapons: Long-range missiles topped with conventional warheads that can hit targets anywhere on Earth in 60 minutes or less.
The Bush administration devised a plan to stave off the very serious possibility of Turkish military action in northern Iraq. It was potentially parlous: U.S. special forces would work with the Turkish military to locate and capture leaders of a violent Kurdish rebel group. Covert action, classified planning and the utmost secrecy were required — but so too were congressional briefings. Unimpressed Capitol Hill denizens chucked prudence to the wind as one or more of the members present presumably leaked the content of briefings, conducted by Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, to columnist Robert Novak, undermining U.S. interests and effectively scuttling the plan's chances at success.
The Bush administration devised a plan to stave off the very serious possibility of Turkish military action in northern Iraq. It was potentially parlous: U.S. special forces would work with the Turkish military to locate and capture leaders of a violent Kurdish rebel group. Covert action, classified planning and the utmost secrecy were required — but so too were congressional briefings. Unimpressed Capitol Hill denizens chucked prudence to the wind as one or more of the members present presumably leaked the content of briefings, conducted by Eric Edelman, undersecretary of defense for policy, to columnist Robert Novak, undermining U.S. interests and effectively scuttling the plan's chances at success.
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry yesterday announced a bill to force the Pentagon to begin planning how to withdraw from Iraq, fighting back after a top Defense Department official said that publicly talking about pulling out "reinforces enemy propaganda."
Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and John Kerry yesterday announced a bill to force the Pentagon to begin planning how to withdraw from Iraq, fighting back after a top Defense Department official said that publicly talking about pulling out "reinforces enemy propaganda."
Eric Edelman, the undersecretary of defense for policy, has written a harsh critique of a recently declassified Pentagon inspector general report. The rebuttal is contained in the appendix of the IG report that criticized the alternative, pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment done by a Pentagon policy group on ties between Iraq and al Qaeda as "inappropriate." Mr. Edelman stated that the policy group's work on the issue was not only appropriate and legal, but directed by both former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. "Apart from the numerous factual inaccuracies, omissions and mischaracterizations identified throughout these comments, the [IG] report suffers from a basic analytical flaw in attempting to paint the work under review as 'inappropriate' even though no laws were broken, no DoD directives were violated and no applicable policies were disregarded," Mr. Edelman wrote in his counter to the February IG report made public April 5.
Mr. Edelman also said the Defense Department has a policy of not releasing operational plans.
'OK, it's time to leave.'
