Tag: U.S. Pentagon

With clean sweep, Biden’s Pentagon chief clears out Trump picks

New Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin has made a clean sweep of the Pentagon’s Trumpified advisory boards.

The final weeks of Donald Trump’s term were quite busy, and not just because the Republican spent an inordinate amount of time plotting against his own country’s democracy. He also made more than a few personnel moves at the Pentagon.

Indeed, in his first big decision after Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election, the outgoing president fired then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper. As regular readers may recall, in the weeks that followed, Trump proceeded to oust a series of Pentagon officials while appointing unqualified loyalists to series of Defense boards and panels.

It was widely assumed that President Joe Biden’s team would show the Trump acolytes the door. Yesterday, new Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin did exactly that, making a clean sweep of the Pentagon’s Trumpified advisory boards. Continue reading.

In Abrupt Reversal of Iran Strategy, Pentagon Orders Aircraft Carrier Home

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After weeks of escalation and threatening language, the Defense Department is sending mixed messages as the anniversary of the death of an Iranian general nears.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon has abruptly sent the aircraft carrier Nimitz home from the Middle East and Africa over the objections of top military advisers, marking a reversal of a weekslong muscle-flexing strategy aimed at deterring Iran from attacking American troops and diplomats in the Persian Gulf.

Officials said on Friday that the acting defense secretary, Christopher C. Miller, had ordered the redeployment of the ship in part as a “de-escalatory” signal to Tehran to avoid stumbling into a crisis in President Trump’s waning days in office. American intelligence reports indicate that Iran and its proxies may be preparing a strike as early as this weekend to avenge the death of Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

Senior Pentagon officials said that Mr. Miller assessed that dispatching the Nimitz now, before the first anniversary this Sunday of General Suleimani’s death in an American drone strike in Iraq, could remove what Iranian hard-liners see as a provocation that justifies their threats against American military targets. Some analysts said the return of the Nimitz to its home port of Bremerton, Wash., was a welcome reduction in tensions between the two countries. Continue reading.

The Pentagon leaks an explosive story of Trump’s dereliction of duty — widening the rift between the military and the White House

AlterNet logoThe news late yesterday was chilling: Russians have been paying Taliban militants to kill Americans in Afghanistan even as peace talks with the Taliban were under way, intelligence sources told The New York Times. 

And Donald Trump has known about this intelligence since the beginning of March and has done nothing about it.

Actually, the more you roll this disclosure over in your mind, the worse it gets.Actually, the more you roll this disclosure over in your mind, the worse it gets. Continue reading.

Pentagon juggles transparency, obfuscation in COVID-19 age

The Pentagon maintains it is being as transparent as possible about the outbreak

As the coronavirus spreads through the ranks of the Defense Department, one major challenge that has emerged for the Pentagon is how much information to divulge about the health of the troops.

The Pentagon maintains it is being as transparent as possible about the outbreak, and provides daily updates on total cases across the department. It draws the line, however, at providing specific figures at the unit, installation or even the large combatant command level, citing the need for “operational security” — Pentagon speak for not letting the enemy know your plans or weak points.

But operational security is invoked so often by defense officials that it has become nearly impossible for the public to judge its validity. Continue reading.