As promised, the Company has reached out and touched someone:
A drone strike last week in Pakistan apparently killed a top al Qaeda trainer who helped supervise December’s suicide bombing at a Central Intelligence Agency post in Afghanistan, U.S. officials said. The strike on a suspected bomb-making facility in Miram Shah killed as many as 15 people, including Sadam Hussein Al Hussami, also known as Ghazwan Al-Yemeni, according to people familiar with the strike.
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates announced today that the President has made the following nomination:
Navy Vice Adm. David J. Venlet has been nominated for reappointment to the rank of vice admiral and assignment as director, Joint Strike Fighter program, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Arlington, Va. Venlet is currently serving as commander, Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Md.
The program had been led by a Marine 2-star, at least until a Nunn-McCurdy breach became not just possible but likely:
The program is to get new leadership and Lockheed Martin is to forgo hundreds of millions of dollars in award fees, but U.S. defense secretary Robert Gates is “not sure” whether the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter can avoid breaching Nunn-McCurdy limits on cost growth.
The F-35 program is being restructured in a bid to stabilize its cost and schedule, after Lockheed fell behind in delivering aircraft for flight testing. The nearly $11 billion requested for fiscal 2011 reflects the Pentagon’s decision to increase funding for development and reduce procurement in an effort to get the program back on track.
Venlet has been for the last few years the Commander of NAVAIR, a three-star position responsible for all aircraft procurement programs and in-service engineering support. Moving him to run the Joint Program Office is, I believe, unprecedented.
In Washington, a gaffe is defined as one of those instances where a politician – typically under pressure – blurts out the truth:
Attorney General Eric Holder told a congressional panel Tuesday that the question of reading Osama bin Laden his Miranda rights is absurd — because he won’t be brought in alive.
“Let’s deal with reality,” Holder said. “You’re talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom. That’s the reality. … He will be killed by us, or he will be killed by his own people so he’s not captured by us. We know that.
I’m not saying that – for once – I don’t like where the AG’s head is at. I just wish that he’d pay more attention to where his mouth is at.
On account of all that rejecting of the “false the choice between our safety and our ideals”.
Kill a man dead where you find him, but for heaven’s sake don’t place him in any stress positions.
Appalling Interesting news from Haiti, where US forces got there firstest with the mostest after a devastating earthquake:
The many nations helping Haiti recover from the devastating earthquake that struck there have set up their own military compounds and fly their flags at the entrances.
France’s tricolor, Britain’s Union Jack and even Croatia’s coat of arms flap in the breeze.
But the country whose contributions dwarf the rest of the world’s — the United States — has no flag at its main installation near the Port-au-Prince airport…
The Obama administration says flying the flag could give Haiti the wrong idea.
I am – uncharacteristically – speechless.
Update: Maybe I’m being ungenerous. Perhaps the Haitians – and the Obama administration – don’t understand what that flag stands for. Timestamp 5:44 shows what it means to those of us of the service.
Everybody relax, says Jeffrey Goldberg. The US government is not trying to cause a breach in the relationship with out best ally in the Middle East. He’s just trying to change the democratically elected government of a sovereign ally:
Obama is not trying to destroy America’s relations with Israel; he’s trying to organize Tzipi Livni’s campaign for prime minister, or at least for her inclusion in a broad-based centrist government. I’m not actually suggesting that the White House is directly meddling in internal Israeli politics (ed: actually, you are), but it’s clear to everyone — at the White House, at the State Department, at Goldblog — that no progress will be made on any front if Avigdor Lieberman’s far-right party, Yisrael Beiteinu, and Eli Yishai’s fundamentalist Shas Party, remain in Netanyahu’s surpassingly fragile coalition.
So what is the goal? The goal is force a rupture in the governing coalition that will make it necessary for Netanyahu to take into his government Livni’s centrist Kadima Party (he has already tried to do this, but too much on his terms) and form a broad, 68-seat majority in Knesset that does not have to rely on gangsters, messianists and medievalists for votes.
The Speaker of the House’s preferred strategy on passing the Senate’s health care reform bill seems to be declining to vote on it:
Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers “deem” the health-care bill to be passed.
The tactic — known as a “self-executing rule” or a “deem and pass” — has been commonly used, although never to pass legislation as momentous as the $875 billion health-care bill. It is one of three options that Pelosi said she is considering for a late-week House vote, but she added that she prefers it because it would politically protect lawmakers who are reluctant to publicly support the measure.
I don’t know what’s more surprising, the news that General Stanley McChrystal is set to take operational control of special forces in Afghanistan, or the fact that he didn’t already have it:
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the top American commander in Afghanistan, has brought most American Special Operations forces under his direct control for the first time, out of concern over continued civilian casualties and disorganization among units in the field.
“What happens is, sometimes at cross-purposes, you got one hand doing one thing and one hand doing the other, both trying to do the right thing but working without a good outcome,” General McChrystal said in an interview.
I know I’ve read something before about “unity of command.”
The UK Telegraph has picked up on the fate of Cowpens‘ most recent CO emeritus. About which quite enough has been said here. But there was one bit of trivia I was not aware of, and it had to do with the skipper’s prior at-sea command, the USS Winston Churchill:
The vessel isone of the most prestigious in the US Navy and the only one to fly the flag of a foreign navy alongside the Stars and Stripes – the White Ensign of the Royal Navy.
So I went and Googled it, and sure enough, there it is.
I don’t recognize the topmast flag on the starboard side, but I take it to be gold lion passant on a red field as displayed in Churchill’s patch. The other signal flags on the port side are November Sierra Whiskey and Charlie, which I take to be alphabetic for the Naval Surface Warfare Center.
Ironic, that:
She had been due to take up a high-level job in the Navy Staff at the Pentagon but has now been re-assigned to the Naval Surface Warfare Centre, a weapons research unit in Virginia.
Update: Oops, I’m out – NWSC is Churchill’s naval callsign, I am reminded in comments.
"Sign on, young man, and sail with me. The stature of our homeland is no more than the measure of ourselves. Our job is to keep her free. Our will is to keep the torch of freedom burning for all. To this solemn purpose we call on the young, the brave, the strong, and the free. Heed my call, Come to the sea. Come Sail with me." -- John Paul Jones
"Pardon him, Theodotus; he is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature" --George Bernard Shaw, "Caesar and Cleopatra"
"And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music."--Friedrich Nietzsche
"A kind Providence has placed in our breasts a hatred of the unjust and cruel, in order that we may preserve ourselves from cruelty and injustice. They who bear cruelty, are accomplices in it. The pretended gentleness which excludes that charitable rancour, produces an indifference which is half an approbation. They never will love where they ought to love, who do not hate where they ought to hate."--Edmund Burke
"Μολὼν λαβέ" -- Leonidas
"Blogito Ergo Sum" -- Neptunus Lex
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