(JTA) — Ashton Carter has championed the sale to Israel of state-of-the-art combat aircraft, has aligned himself with Iran hawks and was observed becoming misty-eyed when serenaded by Israeli soldiers. Carter, 60, President Obama’s secretary of defense nominee, has been depicted in the media as the un-Chuck Hagel. He’s assertive and a bureaucratic in-fighter where…
The Obama administration will not leverage arms transfers to Israel to bring about a cease-fire, the top Pentagon spokesman said. The arms and ammunition provided to Israel is “through a longstanding foreign military sales program,” Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told reporters on Saturday. “Israel is a staunch ally in that part…
Migrants fleeing African drought turned back by police as they try to rush the gate to Spanish North African coastal enclave of Melilla, March 22, 2014. / Getty Images In case you missed it: The U.S. House of Representatives voted last Thursday to bar the Pentagon from spending any money to study or prepare for…
James Schlesinger, who served three U.S. presidents, Republican and Democrat alike, in the top posts at the Central Intelligence Agency, Pentagon and Energy Department in the 1970s, died on Thursday at age 85. A serious thinker on national security and an executive determined to get things done, Schlesinger headed the CIA and the Defense Department…
The Pentagon took steps on Wednesday to give individual troops greater latitude to wear turbans, head scarfs, yarmulkes and other religious clothing with their uniforms, but advocacy groups said the new policy fell short of what they were seeking. “The military departments will accommodate individual expressions of sincerely held beliefs (conscience, moral principles, or religious…
We’re in a season of anniversaries and memories, many of them exceedingly melancholy: the Lehman Brothers bankruptcy that ignited the global financial crisis, September 15, 2008 (5 years ago); the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, September 11, 2001 (12 years ago); the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, 10 Tishri 1973 (40 years ago…
This past week, the true extent of the problem of rape and sexual assault in the military came to light, and the numbers were stark and ugly. A new Pentagon report found that nearly 26,000 members of the military were sexually assaulted last year — a 35% increase from 2010. The numbers sent shock waves…
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s April 23 visit to Israel has yielded some interesting fallout. Not least is the apparent puncturing of the image his opponents tried to paint of a sworn enemy of Israel. Haaretz’s Chemi Shalev does a pretty nifty job of skewering the anti-Hagel crowd, suggesting satirically that the secretary’s effusive embrace of…
דאָס בוך איז גרונטיק געפֿאָרשט, לעבעדיק אָנגעשריבן — אָבער אידעאָלאָגיש באַפֿאַרבט
