Word: pentagonals
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...veterans, thousands of whom have suffered crippling wounds, or the interest payments on the money borrowed by the Federal Government to fund the war. The bottom lines of the three assessments vary: the CSBA study says $904 billion has been spent so far, while the GAO says the Pentagon alone has spent $808 billion through last September. The CRS study says the wars have cost $864 billion, but CRS didn't factor inflation into its calculations...
Then there's also the fact that, like most military officers, Blair is a believer in tactical intelligence. Let me explain why that's problematic: During the last Gulf war, the Pentagon badgered the CIA for things like sand samples and stress limits of Iraq bridges, the terrain its Abrams tanks would roll across. Yes, that information was nice to have, but such requests diverted CIA resources from strategic intelligence. Rather than answering the question of whether Saddam had kept his weapons of mass destruction, the CIA sent its clandestine sources into Iraq with baggies and little plastic shovels...
Whatever Blair's personal biases and inclinations are, as long as the U.S. remains in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting two wars that have neither been won nor lost, he will have no choice but defer to the Pentagon. You can't fight over money and people in the middle of hot wars. If the Pentagon says it needs sand samples, that's what the intelligence community...
Leaving Robert Gates at the Pentagon and appointing Blair as DNI is a pretty clear sign that Obama intends to live with the national security status quo. Obama knows all too well that intelligence reform is the third rail of American politics, one he does not intend to touch as long the country teeters on the edge of depression...
...people whom he had met at Yale College and who also worked for Nixon and hounded them about their relationship with Woodward. One of those sources told us to look at Woodward's military service. Examining those records we found that he had been a courier from the Pentagon who regularly took documents to the National Security Council offices in the White House. We also learned from Woodward's first wife that she and Bob were occasionally given seats in the President's box at the Kennedy Center. This pointed us toward Alexander Haig, who before becoming Nixon's last...