'Your papers, please' must never be heard in America
Independent voices from the TWT Communities
The Pentagon's lifting its ban on women in combat does not necessarily mean that female troops will ever fill the front-line roles held by men, according to analysts, advocates and veterans.
The twist in the long military career of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf is that a 35-year Army soldier is remembered more for what he did in the air than on land.
Passing annual spending bills was once a routine part of business on Capitol Hill, but the House only highlighted Congress' ongoing dysfunction when it passed a defense plan on Thursday that is certain to be blocked by Senate Democrats and ignores deep cuts to the Pentagon slated for next year.
In his recent Op-Ed, Michael O'Hanlon confidently predicts the United States "can attain the minimal acceptable requirements: preventing a Taliban return to power and a major al Qaeda presence on Afghan soil." ("Rays of hope in Afghanistan," Commentary, Monday) What country did he visit?
The Obama administration has ramped up its secret war on terror groups with a new military targeting center to oversee the growing use of special-operations strikes against suspected militants in hot spots around the world, according to current and former U.S. officials.
At last weekend's grand Lisbon summon- ing of coalition commanders in Afghanistan, "progress" was the magic word. Is there enough progress to keep progressing? You see, sir, if you look at the metrics of progress. ...
Pakistan's worst floods in 80 years are increasing worries in Washington that the disaster will undermine the South Asian nation's political stability and jeopardize U.S. gains across the border in Afghanistan.
The inappropriate comments by Army Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal and his staff about civilian leaders reflected a widespread frustration with White House infighting over the general's one-year-old war plan.
Keep transit on track
According to major media, America's "surge in Iraq" is suddenly working.
For the first time during 110th Congress, the Blue Dog Coalition — a 47-member grouping of self-described moderate and conservative Democrats — defied House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership on a critical national security issue: Saturday night's vote on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), where 41 dissident Democrats, nearly all of them Blue Dogs, provided the margin of victory for President Bush on the issue of terrorist surveillance. Thanks to the Blue Dogs, the administration's commonsense proposal to clarify that FISA permits U.S. intelligence agencies to monitor telephone calls made by foreign terrorist suspects outside the United States without first obtaining a warrant was approved by a 227-183 margin.
It's not often that an opinion article shakes up Washington and changes the way a major issue is viewed. But that happened last week, when the New York Times printed an opinion article by Brookings Institution analysts Michael O'Hanlon and Ken Pollack on the progress of the surge strategy in Iraq.
Most Democrats seem so invested in defeat in Iraq that they apparently have no "Plan B," which would be success.
Ronald Reagan used to tell the story of a boy so optimistic that when he woke up on Christmas morning and was confronted with a huge mound of manure, he gleefully began shoveling. "There's a pony in here someplace," he exclaimed.
The partition of Iraq is far from an original idea. The notion has been floated around Washington and Baghdad numerous times since the start of the war in 2003. Pundits, journalists and politicians have in the past proposed the partition of Iraq in various forms despite strong opposition from Iraqi leaders, the Bush administration and the Iraqi Study Group headed by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton.
He noted that the first two female volunteers at the Marine Corps' all-male Infantry Officer Course at Quantico, Va., both dropped within the first four weeks of the three-month program.
defense analyst Michael O'Hanlon said that physical strength is a key component of combat that must not be taken lightly.
