Rumors about a possible Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear facilities forced US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to comment on the reports, but not in the most reassuring way, saying that Israel has not yet made their decision on an attack. “I don’t believe they’ve made a decision as to whether or not they will go [...]

While Kevin’s at the Bradley Manning trial, I’ll pick up on something on his beat. The American Civil Liberties Union and the Center on Constitutional Rights have sued the Obama Administration over the deaths of three US citizens as part of the still-classified Predator drone program. Anwar al-Awlaki, Samir Khan and al-Awlkai’s son Abdulrahman were [...]

I noted this morning that some defense establishmentarians have reached the “bargaining stage” on the trigger cuts, trying to get out of the situation with minimal albeit tangible damage to the military budget. Not everyone is there yet. Witness Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, today suggesting that trigger cuts will start [...]

A widely noticed article yesterday suggested that some Republicans would be willing to look at revenue-raising closures of tax loopholes to avoid the automatic cuts to defense programs, the so-called “trigger.” All of this caterwaul over returning military spending to 2007 levels, especially when ending no-bid contracts could pretty simply counteract the procurement cuts completely, [...]

The ACLU has been attempting to get information from the government on its drone program, filing FOIA requests that have so far been denied. This is the subject of two lawsuits in Washington and New York. The government filed its brief in the case before the DC Circuit Court of Appeals today, and it includes [...]

Lost in yesterday’s House vote to replace the defense trigger cuts is that the public actually wants to cut the defense budget by even more than what’s contemplated in those cuts. Ask your average American whether the defense budget should go up or down in 2013, and by how much, and they’ll tell you to [...]

It occurs to me that we cannot even really have a Pentagon Papers event in this country anymore. Sure, Wikileaks releases gained a decent amount of attention, but the real evidence for this comes in the past week. Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis wrote an 84-page report detailing his experiences in Afghanistan, which are at odds [...]

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey, Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had to go before Congress today and defend the $614 billion proposed budget for the military in the coming fiscal year. Not because that’s a staggering amount, especially with spending caps all over the government. Because it’s too small for [...]

The ACLU filed suit in federal court yesterday seeking to force the White House to turn over records related to the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki, the US citizen assassinated in a drone attack in Yemen last year. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, charged the Justice [...]

It’s a sad commentary on our media that the President had to answer questions yesterday about drones for the first time, and the questions didn’t come at a White House press briefing or major print interview, but in a virtual YouTube town hall with members of the public. FDL’s Kevin Gosztola covered this at The [...]

The President made some brief remarks at the Pentagon during the introduction of the new “austerity” defense budget. He stressed that the US will still have the most powerful fighting force in the world, that even after the cuts the defense budget would grow over the next five years, and that the overall budget will [...]