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An independent panel appointed by the Pentagon and Congress said Thursday that President Obama’s strategy for sizing the armed services is too weak for today’s global threats. The National Defense Panel called on the president to dump a major section of his 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) and write a broader strategy that requires the military to fight on multiple fronts at once. It also said the shrinking U.S. armed forces, which are being downsized to fit that strategy and budget cuts, is a “serious strategic misstep on the part of the United States.” The forces’ numbers spelled out in...

The official line from the White House, the State Department, and the Pentagon about the US response to the attack on our consulate in Benghazi has been that we didn’t have time to send in troops to fight the terrorists that were killing Americans. A new report from Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough undermines that argument, and once again raises the question about the lack of response. Two American commandos have received medals for fighting in Benghazi after volunteering to accompany five security contractors from Tripoli, and Scarborough wonders why the US didn’t mobilize other forces at the same time:

The Obama national security team that wants to go to war with Syria and demonizes President Bashar Assad is the same group that, as senators, urged reaching out to the dictator.As a bloc on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, President Obama, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Vice President Joseph R. Biden all opposed the George W. Bush administration’s playing tough with Mr. Assad. None grew closer to Mr. Assad and promoted him in Washington more than Mr. Kerry.“President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had,”...

Four branches of the military have begun sending training material to 2.2 million active and reserve troops as a prelude to opening the ranks to gays, with instructions on, for example, what to do if an officer sees two male Marines kissing in a shopping mall. Key themes are that sexual orientation will no longer be a bar to service, that all service members must respect each other, and that the partners of gay troops will not receive the benefits of heterosexual spouses. “We are going to make [gay ban] repeal training expeditiously,” said Maj. Joel Harper, an Air Force...

American combat troops will get sensitivity training directly on the battlefield about the military’s new policy on gays instead of waiting until they return to home base in the United States, the senior enlisted man in Afghanistan said Thursday. The Pentagon is launching an extensive force-wide program to ease the process of integrating open homosexuals into the ranks, including into close-knit fighting units. Army Command Sgt. Maj. Marvin Hill, the top enlisted man in Afghanistan where 100,000 U.S. troops are deployed, said that the sessions on respecting gays’ rights will go right down to the forward operating bases, where troops...

President Obama's pledge to lift the military's ban on openly gay service members this year seems at best headed for extremely close votes in the House and Senate, according to Congress watchers. The president's proposal needs 218 votes in the House. A bill to repeal the policy known as "don't ask, don't tell" has fewer than 190 co-sponsors. What's more, a number of Democrats representing conservative districts, led by House Armed Services Committee Chairman Ike Skelton of Missouri, are set to buck the president and vote against repeal. In the Senate, senators who support the ban could filibuster the 2011...

When a small team of Navy SEALs set out to capture one of Iraq's most-wanted terrorists in September, they never dreamed it would go so smoothly. After all, Ahmed Hashim Abed, the suspected mastermind of a 2004 atrocity against U.S. contractors in Fallujah, was holed up in a safe house in Anbar province. Intelligence reports, which identified his location, said he kept a revolver under his pillow.

The military is throwing the book at three terrorist-hunting Navy SEALs who captured one of the most wanted in Iraq. It seems one of the commandos may have punched Ahmed Hashim Abed, who intelligence reports said planned the bloody ambush of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah, Iraq, five years ago. Instead of plaudits, three SEALs face court-martial in January. And conservatives are expressing outrage to HUMAN EVENTS. Abed, whom the U.S. command designated "Objective Amber," was nabbed in darkness Sept. 3 by a platoon of commandos from SEAL Team 10, based in Norfolk. The next few hours proved...

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And three of the SEALs who captured him are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com.

Navy SEALs have secretly captured one of the most wanted terrorists in Iraq — the alleged mastermind of the murder and mutilation of four Blackwater USA security guards in Fallujah in 2004. And for their trouble, three of the SEALs, members of the Navy's elite commando unit, are now facing criminal charges, sources told FoxNews.com. The three have refused non-judicial punishment — called an admiral's mast — and requested a trial by court-martial. Ahmed Hashim Abed, whom the military code-named "Objective Amber," told investigators he was punched by his captors — and he had the bloody lip to prove it....

The White House is becoming increasingly irked at its most important general -- Stanley McChrystal, the four-star running President Obama's war in Afghanistan. Obama dispatched McChrystal to Afghanistan in June to defeat the Taliban under a White House strategy adopted in March and with 21,000 extra troops.

The CIA's harsh interrogation techniques saved countless American lives by forcing al Qaeda chieftains to disclose a string of sophisticated terror plots to infiltrate the United States with cold-blooded killers. That fact is established in two documents released Monday by the Justice Department, hours after they released the CIA Inspector General report which Attorney General Holder has used as a basis to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the CIA interrogators. The successes produced by the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” are disclosed in two declassified CIA reports -- the same ones demanded to be released by former Vice President Dick...

Taliban terrorists know where some of Pakistan's nuclear weapons are stored based on information from allies inside the country's national security forces. A military source tells HUMAN EVENTS the Taliban and al Qaeda operatives in Pakistan's western frontier have ties to elements of the Pakistan army and Inter-Services Intelligence. The ISI helped put the Taliban in power in Afghanistan in 1996s. Its agents have helped it carry out attacks, including the bombing of the Indian embassy in Kabul. It is through these contacts that the Taliban and its extremist allies know the locations of some nuclear warheads. Pakistan is believed...

The United States has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists. American intelligence sources say the operation would be conducted by Joint Special Operations Command, the super-secret commando unit headquartered at Fort Bragg, N.C. JSOC is the military's chief terrorists hunting squad and has units now operating in Afghanistan on Pakistan's western border. But a secondary mission is to secure foreign nuclear arsenals -- a role for which JSOC operatives have trained...

Liberals have created a powerhouse propaganda machine that helped Moveon.org smear a four-star general, promotes endless environmental scares and brags it can place its left wing themes in the nation's leading newspapers. Fenton Communications pitches for trial lawyers, collectively the largest contributors to the Democrat Party, as well as for the hard line environmental group Greenpeace; Venezuela's socialist leader Hugo Chavez; anti-war demonstrator Cindy Sheehan; and gay and abortion advocates. Its account executives arrive from such left wing outposts as the office of ultra liberal Rep. Dennis Kucinich, abortion provider Planned Parenthood, the anti-Bush ACLU, Greenpeace and the news media....

The number of ex-Guantanamo detainees who have gone back to terrorism is much larger than the government is letting on. A senior intelligence official, who has access to some of the country's top secrets, tells HUMAN EVENTS that some Pentagon analysts actually believe 102 former enemy combatants have returned to terror -- not 61 as publicly reported by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). That would mean that of 520 terrorists released from the Guantanamo Bay prison, nearly 20 percent returned to the practice of killing to achieve their radical view of Islam. The number is gaining importance in light of...

The 2008 Democratic Party platform calls for ushering in a new era of government intervention in nearly all corners of American life, but its words on national defense read more like a Republican document than leftist manifesto. The platform's pro-defense bent at times belies specific statements from Sen. Barrack Obama, the party's presidential nominee. He has singled out major weapons programs for budget cuts and has pledged to talk to any world leader, including the president of Iran, without preconditions. The platform's national security blueprint does contain two overtures to the Left: a pledge to end the ban on gays...

Iran's bad behavior blamed on Bush March 15, 2008 By Rowan Scarborough - Sen. Barack Obama's most senior military adviser says President Bush is to blame for Iran's bad behavior. The assessment from an interview with retired Air Force Gen. Merrill McPeak provides a glimpse into how an Obama administration would deal with Iran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called repeatedly for the destruction of Israel, is pursuing nuclear weapons in the opinion of some national security experts, and his Revolutionary Guard is training Iraqis to kill American military personnel in Iraq. Earlier this month, Mr. Ahmadinejad said of Israel,...

Members of Washington's military and defense establishment are expressing trepidation about Sen. Barack Obama, as the Illinois senator comes closer to winning the Democratic presidential nomination and leads in national polls to become commander in chief. ~snip~ We're very concerned about his apparent lack of understanding on the threat of radical Islam to the United States," said retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney, who is pro-Iraq war and a Fox News analyst. "A lot of retired senior officers feel the same way."

Former Washington Times reporter Rowan Scarborough on Sabotage: American's Enemies within the CIA.