Word: pentagonal
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Last week, President Obama nominated Ashton B. Carter, the Ford Foundation Professor of Science and International Affairs at the Kennedy School of Government, to become the new director of weapons procurement at the Pentagon. Carter, who has been an outspoken critic of wasteful and excessive defense spending, brings an already-impressive resume to the position, having served as assistant secretary of defense for international security during the Clinton administration. We applaud Obama’s wise selection and hope that Carter’s nomination signals a major change in the Defense Department’s procurement policy. The selection...
Harvard Kennedy School Professor Ashton B. Carter was named the U.S. military’s chief weapons buyer by President Barack Obama on Monday. Carter—who is co-director of the Preventive Defense Project—has been a vocal critic of the Pentagon for purchasing what he deems to be unnecessary weapons and has called for greater alignment between military strategy and spending. Carter was originally scheduled to teach the class “American National Security Policy” at the Kennedy School this spring, but he joins the growing list of Harvard professors who have...
...Obama told McCain that he and Gates share the Senator's view that sometimes pushing for too much in a new piece of equipment makes little sense. Gates "recognizes that simply adding more and more does not necessarily mean better and better," Obama said. But for a Pentagon accustomed to having its way with the White House - and it nervously awaits Obama's imprint on its 2010 budget - those are fighting words...
...Late in the summer of 2006, the top Marine intelligence officer in Iraq cabled his superiors at the Pentagon that the war was essentially lost in Anbar; his dire assessment soon surfaced on the front page of the Washington Post. "The prospects for securing that country's western Anbar province are dim," the newspaper said, summarizing the report. "There is almost nothing the U.S. military can do to improve the political and social situation there." One anonymous official who read the report flatly told the paper "the United States has lost in Anbar." (See pictures of the Anbar Awakening movement...
...Kelly's view echoes the consensus within the U.S. military as the Pentagon ponders how to implement Obama's order to withdraw most combat troops - about half of the 142,000 U.S. soldiers now in Iraq - by August 2010. In the tug-of-war between on-ground commanders who would like to go slower and their superiors in Washington who need more troops for Afghanistan, the President's timetable splits the difference. In fact, the Pentagon provided Obama with three options: the 16-month timetable he embraced during the campaign; the 19-month option he is expected to announce this...