With Robert Gates considering retirement, Tammy Schultz of the Washington Post points out an interesting historical phenomenon concerning the position: Since the birth of our nation, about one in three Democratic presidents has appointed a Republican secretary of defense (or war). By contrast, only one Republican president has appointed a Democrat to the post; this [...]

Discussion and comparison to today’s numbers of general officers against the numbers from WWII and Secretary of Defense Gates desire to cut the numbers of general officers.

Robert Gates, the current Defense Secretary and only member of Obama’s Cabinet present for the Dubya years, is planning to leave his post in 2011. This will pose a big issue for the Obama Administration, as public attention has shifted to the execution of our missions in Afghanistan and Iraq. This could be a make-or-break decision for this president.

The US Department of Defense brings us its summer Shakespearean festival.

Someone else’s vision of our future has been substituted for our own. It’s a grim vision which excludes the public from debate about its future, excludes concern for the welfare of our troops, excludes stand-alone debate and funding for a fundamentally American value and institution – our public education system.

There is no “emergency” requiring the House to throw another $33 billion into our increasingly bloody and pointless occupation of Afghanistan before we all go off to celebrate the anniversary of our Declaration of Independence from foreign occupation.

Watch "Don’t Let General Petraeus Move the Goalposts on Afghanistan" in HD on Facebook. Concern troll. In an argument (usually a political debate), a concern troll is someone who is on one side of the discussion, but pretends to be a supporter of the other side with "concerns". The idea behind this is that your [...]

Defense Secretary Gates wants to extricate himself and the president from the impending P.R. disaster shaping up around the flailing Kandahar operation set for this Fall. "I think it’s important to remember that Kandahar is not Afghanistan," Gates said in comments that appeared to play down a U.S.-led operation for control of the area, known [...]

Obama Endorses Massacre of Peaceful Activists; Threatens UN Veto to Support Piracy & Murder — NormanB (“Deviations from the Norm”)

Well, this was a refreshing bit of candor at the end of the New York Times’ article on the House action Thursday evening to ‘repeal’ DADT.