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To get an idea of why this White House has placed America in what Senate Armed Services Committee ranking Republican James Inhofe of Oklahoma calls "the most dangerous position we've ever been in as a nation," we turn to one of Obama's biggest mainstream media devotees. In "The Promise," the fawning book about Obama's first year in office by ex-Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter, we read of a May 2009 meeting with the presidents of Pakistan and Afghanistan on how to "Disrupt, dismantle and defeat al-Qaida." Alter writes, "Nothing much concrete was accomplished ... . The session was kicked off not...

The US has lodged a formal protest with Beijing after a Chinese fighter jet conducted a barrel roll "very, very close" over an American Navy plane this week, the Pentagon has said. Rear Admiral John Kirby said the Chinese plane exposed its undercarriage to show that it was armed to the P-8 anti-submarine warfare aircraft during Monday's incident in international airspace near Japan. He said the Chinese aircraft came within 30ft (9 metres) of the American plane, while the wing tips of the two aircraft were just 20ft apart.

Pentagon Press Secretary RADM John Kirby says Russia must remove a convoy from Ukraine immediately. VIDEO

Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer (Ret.) is a CIA-trained former senior intelligence officer and he says that the rescue operation for American journalist James Foley wasn’t successful because President Obama “dragged his feet”. "Thursday morning, Shaffer appeared on WMAL radio in Washington, D.C., to discuss the ISIS execution of American journalist James Foley earlier this week. He told me and co-host Brian Wilson that the recently revealed rescue attempt led by Special Forces earlier this summer failed because President Obama was slow to give the go-ahead: I’m hearing from my friends in the Pentagon, they are giving him every single option...

State and local police departments obtain some of their military-style equipment through a free Defense Department program created in the early 1990s. ..... detailed data from the Pentagon illustrates how ubiquitous such equipment has become. Highlighted counties have received guns, grenade launchers, vehicles, night vision or body armor through the program since 2006. (Interactive Map at the linked source)

On Saturday, President Obama said the intelligence community underestimated the threat by ISIS which is why he did not act until now: There is no doubt that their advance, their movement over the last several months has been more rapid than the intelligence estimates and I think the expectations of policymakers both in and outside of Iraq. Aside from the fact that advances by ISIS has been known to anyone who’s had access to YouTube or Twitter, the Pentagon, when asked if they were caught off guard by ISIS today, tells a completely different story. They responded that the US...

US military aircraft conduct strike on ISIL artillery. Artillery was used against Kurdish forces defending Erbil, near US personnel.

The Pentagon moved swiftly to shoot down a New York Times report Thursday afternoon that American military forces had bombed at least two places in northern Iraq targeting fighters from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS). "Press reports that US has conducted airstrikes in Iraq completely false. No such action taken," Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, wrote on Twitter. President Barack Obama is preparing to make a statement Thursday evening, the Times reported. The White House didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The Times reported, citing Kurdish officials, that U.S. military forces...

Former speaker of the House Newt Gingrich said Wednesday that he would like to “turn the Pentagon into a triangle.” “I always tell people I’m a hawk,” Gingrich said. “But I’m a cheap hawk.” Gingrich honored the 20th anniversary of his “Contract with America” by pointing conservatives back to a key point in his Republican blueprint, arguing that federal bureaucracy cannot simply be “fixed” but must be overhauled and replaced. The Pentagon, Gingrich stressed, must be included in this overhaul.

One thing that you can say for ISIS, the Middle-East terrorist army, is that it doesn’t have a recruitment problem. Young men are streaming to Syria and Iraq from all over the world to join the cause. And they come not just from the Muslim world, but also from England, France, Sweden, Australia, and the U.S.Perhaps hoping to put a dent in the appeal of ISIS, some Western newspapers have made much of the expensive stolen watch visible on the wrist of ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi during his first public appearance at the Grand Mosque in Mosul. According to...

The Pentagon recently notified members of Congress that it intends to transfer six low-level detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Uruguay soon, including a Syrian man who is legally challenging the manner in which the military force-feeds some prisoners, U.S. officials said Wednesday. The men — four Syrians, a Palestinian and a Tunisian — are among the more than 70 detainees who have long been cleared for release from the U.S. detention facility because they are not deemed an ongoing threat. The move would mark a significant step in the Obama administration’s long-stymied quest to shut down Guantanamo Bay, where...

In a callous and unreasonable act of complete disregard for our military, Obama’s Defense Department has sent pink slips to military officers serving on the battlefield in Afghanistan. This reminds one of the treatment of victims of Nadal Hassan in Ft. Hood, but it gets even more intriguing. While this is going on, the Pentagon and the military are looking to keep and employ more Muslims. According to a report by the World Tribune, officials said the ‘Defense Department has been keeping records and tracking Muslims so they can encourage their presence and continued advancement in the military.’

On Monday, the White House memo used to justify drone attacks on U.S. citizens was released, and it appears to confirm the worst suspicions of its libertarian critics. The Obama administration had sought to keep the memo secret, and now we know why: Because there are no checks and balances; there are no classified courts. Indeed, the memo reveals that the president of the United States ordered the targeting killing of U.S. citizens overseas — in violation of their constitutional right to due process — sans any type of oversight outside of the executive.

The Department of Defense has disbursed some funds to universities so that scientists might study the dynamics of civil unrest — and how the U.S. military might best respond. It’s called the “Minerva Research Initiative,” and it’s a program that was kicked off in 2008 to “improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the U.S.,” The Guardian reported. ~snip~ Those individuals targeted for questioning include political activists and members of non-governmental organizations — something that The Guardian pointed to as potential for concern. ~end snip~

"Last year, the DoD's Minerva Initiative funded a project to determine 'Who Does Not Become a Terrorist, and Why?' which, however, conflates peaceful activists with "supporters of political violence" who are different from terrorists only in that they do not embark on "armed militancy" themselves."

Tom Slear, who retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel in 2001, is a freelance writer in Annapolis. A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a receptionist in a physical therapist’s office that I was covered by Tricare, the military’s health-care program for service members, retirees and their families. (It has nothing to do with the troubled Veterans Affairs hospital system.) “Good deal,” I said. “You deserve it,” she responded. Really? If she only knew. Though I spent more than five years on active duty during the 1970s as an Army infantry officer and an additional 23 years in...

While many focus their disgust for the federal government towards the occupants housed in the IRS, DoJ, VA, and 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, this latest deserter-for-Taliban trade puts the spotlight on another particular building. ... It was the late Army Colonel David Hackworth who bestowed the title of “perfumed princes” on senior military leaders who stood not for the men and women in uniform but rather for their own career advancement. As we live through the decimation of our armed forces it’s difficult to say Vaughn doesn’t have a point. Vaughn believes “There is no way that the White House could...

That lukewarm reception Barack Obama received at West Point last week was indicative of the widely held view among the troops that the man is a truly incompetent commander in chief, or as the language-mangling Al Sharpton might say, “the Commander of the Chiefs.” Notice that I said the troops, not their senior leadership. If our Pentagon weren’t currently occupied by the perfumed princes of political correctness, we might be seeing some courageous generals and admirals falling on their swords and exposing this failure of leadership instead of enabling it. Those ambitious cowards should ponder the reality that neither “I...

To pull off the prisoner swap of five Taliban leaders for Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, the White House overrode an existing interagency process charged with debating the transfer of Guantanamo Bay prisoners and dismissed long-standing Pentagon and intelligence community concerns based on Top Secret intelligence about the dangers of releasing the five men, sources familiar with the debate tell TIME. National Security Council officials at the White House decline to describe the work of the ad hoc process they established to trade the prisoners, or to detail the measures they have taken to limit the threat the Taliban officials may pose....

A White House veto threat — reiterated just hours before the vote — had little impact in an election year as lawmakers embraced the popular measure that includes a 1.8 percent pay raise for the troops and adds up to hundreds of thousands of jobs back home. The vote was 325-98 for the legislation, with 216 Republicans and 109 Democrats backing the bill. The National Defense Authorization Act calls for the addition of $175 million in funding for the Iron Dome system, which currently gets $176 million annually from the Pentagon. Much of the funding would be tied to a...