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The Pentagon will review over 1,100 medals issued since the 9/11 terror attacks for possible upgrade to the Medal of Honor, the country's highest award for valor in combat. The review,revealed in documents obtained by USA Today, stems from a study of military decorations and awards ordered in March by then-Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel "to ensure that after 13 years of combat the awards system appropriately recognized the service, sacrifices and action of our service members." The massive review, ordered by Defense Secretary Ashton Carter, marks one of the biggest steps in decades to honor troops who have gone...

An email recently obtained by Judicial Watch shows that the Pentagon was demanding Hillary allow them to send help to Benghazi during the 2012 attack. This would completely contradict the claim from Hillary and Leon Panetta that no forces were available and within reach to provide help to the compound that was under siege. From Fox News: As the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi was unfolding, a high-ranking Pentagon official urgently messaged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s top deputies to offer military help, according to an email obtained by Judicial Watch. The revelation appears to contradict testimony Defense...

It's come to this: The Obama administration - and in particular the CIA - knowingly armed Islamic State terrorists in Syria. Okay, take it with a grain of salt. It came from Seymour Hersh. Barack Obama’s repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office – and that there are ‘moderate’ rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him – has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon’s Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration’s fixation on Assad’s primary ally, Vladimir...

Army Colonel Steve Warren told the media in a press briefing today that coalition forces have killed as many as ten ISIS leaders this month, including one who may have been a ring-leader in the Paris attacks.Charaffe al Mouadan, one of the highlighted targets of the air-campaign, had a direct link to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the man who was responsible for the attacks in Paris and who was later killed during a police raid on November 18.  According to the Department of Defense, Mouadan was killed on December 24 by an airstrike in Syria. Al Mouadan was actively planning attacks against the west....

In September, U.S. State Department officials invited a foreign delegation to the Guantanamo Bay detention center to persuade the group to take detainee Tariq Ba Odah to their country. If they succeeded, the transfer would mark a small step toward realizing President Barack Obama's goal of closing the prison before he leaves office. The foreign officials told the administration they would first need to review Ba Odah's medical records, according to U.S. officials with knowledge of the episode. The Yemeni has been on a hunger strike for seven years, dropping to 74 pounds from 148, and the foreign officials wanted...

Iraqi forces have crossed the Euphrates River from the West and are moving into downtown Ramadi, which has been under the control of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant since May, according to Col. Steven Warren, a U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad. "The fall of Ramadi is inevitable," Warren told reporters this morning in his latest update on operations against ISIS. He said there were about 250 to 350 ISIS fighters left in the city and that Iraqi forces are working now to drive them from the dense, urban terrain. He also noted that the Iraqi government had...

Barack Obamas repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office and that there are moderate rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagons Joint Staff. Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administrations fixation on Assads primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasnt adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washingtons anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and...

On November 13, President Obama claimed that ISIS was "contained." One day later, ISIS painted bloody red lines on Paris streets. The credibility of American foreign policy took another big hit. Then came Saturday's Wall Street Journal report that last week, "an American B-52 bomber on a routine mission over the South China Sea unintentionally flew within two nautical miles of an artificial island [Cuarteron] built by China." This seemed like good news, suggesting that Obama was challenging -- under cover of an "unintentional" foray -- China's imperial project in the East China and South China Seas. That would be...

U.S. adversaries are already working on something America is reluctant to: Enhanced Human Operations (EHO). EHOs entail modifying the body and the brain itself, creating what some have called "super soldiers." At a press conference laying the Defense Department's future research and development strategy on Monday, Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work warned that America would soon lose its military competitive advantage if it does not pursue technologies such employing artificial intelligence. "Now our adversaries, quite frankly, are pursuing enhanced human operations, and it scares the crap out of us," Work said. Altering human beings from the inside to more effectively...

In an unusually scathing memo to Secretary of the Navy Ray Maybus, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter has demanded severe changes to the troubled Littoral Combat Ship program. It includes instructions to cut the number of Littoral Combat Ships to be built, and as well as focusing on building one variant, from one shipyard and general contractor. arter has specifically directed Maybus to cut the number of hulls for the LCS program from 52 to 40, and to select a single LCS design-shipbuilder team, instead of the current plan for two completely separate designs and shipbuilders, according to the letter...

Jet-lagged from a long overseas trip, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had just sat down with his wife for a quiet dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in northern Virginia when his phone rang. It was the White House on the line. President Barack Obama wanted to speak with him. It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad that his regime would face consequences if it crossed a “red line” by employing chemical weapons against its own people. Assad did it anyway, and Hagel had spent the day...

In an exclusive interview, Chuck Hagel said the Obama administration micromanaged the Pentagon, stabbed him in the back on the way out -- and still has no strategy for fixing Syria. Jet-lagged from a long overseas trip, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel had just sat down with his wife for a quiet dinner at an upscale Italian restaurant in northern Virginia when his phone rang. It was the White House on the line. President Barack Obama wanted to speak with him. It was Aug. 30, 2013, and the U.S. military was poised for war. Obama had publicly warned Syrian strongman...

The plans of the next president are personal to the officers of the Pentagon, who are threatening to quit if The Donald becomes commander-in-chief. Republican presidential candidate and business mogul Donald Trump has repeatedly vowed to build up the U.S. military if elected president. But it is not clear he will have the experienced commanders within the ranks to do it. In the halls of the Pentagon, there is a different plan afoot for the Trump presidency. Here, officers are privately contemplating what they would do should Trump become their commander-in-chief. And more often than not, they proclaim they will...

Newly released emails show that a senior Defense Department official offered the State Department "forces that could move to Benghazi” immediately during the deadly 2012 attack there on the American consulate. Jeremy Bash, the former Pentagon chief of staff, offered to provide forces at 7:19 p.m. on the evening of the attack, "only hours after they had begun " according to Judicial Watch, which disclosed the email on Tuesday. "We have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak" Bash wrote. Portions of the email remain redacted by the Obama administration. "The Obama...

Newly released emails show that a senior Defense Department official offered the State Department “forces that could move to Benghazi” immediately during the deadly 2012 attack there on the American consulate. Jeremy Bash, the former Pentagon chief of staff, offered to provide forces at 7:19 p.m. on the evening of the attack, "only hours after they had begun," according to Judicial Watch, which disclosed the email on Tuesday. "We have identified the forces that could move to Benghazi. They are spinning up as we speak," Bash wrote. Portions of the email remain redacted by the Obama administration. "The Obama administration...

Seventy-four years ago, naval air forces of Japan attacked the US Navy at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The Japanese attack was swift and deadly and their armed forces surprised the world with their ferocity and professionalism. The following day, President Roosevelt addressed Congress and after referring to December 7, 1941, as “a day which will live in infamy,” asked for a declaration of war against the Empire of Japan. Last week, December 3, 2015, was America’s New Day of Infamy. In the wake of the San Bernardino terrorist attacks, actually in less than 24 hours, President Obama rolled out Ash Carter...

Maj. Christian “Kit” Martin is an Army Ranger and master Army aviator with some 1,000 hours of combat flying time, including 500 while using night-vision gear. Though he’s been to war and back three times, fighting both on the ground and in the air, nothing prepared the 47-year-old for the battle he’s fighting now, trying to avoid becoming another victim of the Pentagon’s sexual assault witch hunt that could send him to prison for 58 years* for something he did not do.

Defense Secretary Ash Carter is expected to announce Thursday that women in the U.S. military – including the Army and Marines – can now serve in combat posts. It's the most emphatic step taken in a process to open combat jobs to women that began in January of 2013. Carter is making an announcement at noon Thursday; we'll update this post with news from the event. Women are being cleared to play a greater role in combat — and vie for thousands of jobs — after the military conducted an internal review of how they might perform in artillery, armor,...

The current situation in the world can only be described as precarious. ISIS and radical jihadis are wreaking havoc across the globe. Old allies are frustrated with a complete lack of US leadership and old enemies like Russia are on the move. We’ve gone from the days in 1989, where Ronald Reagan was told, “the world is quiet” during his last days in office, to “the world is on fire.” Coupled with this, is the state of the US military, which is reeling from readiness, budget and social issues. Added to the military’s problems is what I call, “the demise...

The U.S. military on Tuesday labeled as an "incursion" the Russian fighter jet that was shot down by Turkish aircraft over the Syria-Turkey border. Army Col. Steve Warren, the top military spokesman in Baghdad, confirmed the Turk's version of events in saying they repeatedly warned the two Russian SU-24 pilots to back off. Col. Warren used the word "incursion" to describe the Russian flight, but also said the command was studying radars and other data, such as radio chatter, to make a definite conclusion. The incident happened at the border," Col. Warren said. "These things are not as clean as...