Free Republic

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced another $1 billion in military aid for Ukraine on Wednesday, following the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, a group of about 50 nations supporting Ukraine in its war against Russia. “I’m especially pleased to be able to announce today that the United States will provide an additional $1 billion security assistance package for Ukraine,” Austin said at a press conference at the NATO headquarters in Brussels, where the members of the group met.

Donald Rumsfeld, who charted an impressive Washington career serving under four presidents but whose legacy largely was defined by his controversial tenure as defense secretary during the Iraq war, has died, his family announced Wednesday. He was 88. Rumsfeld, a confident adviser to power with a trenchant style that made him admirers as well as enemies, had a long and winding career in public life that spanned five decades. He had been a congressman and a White House chief of staff, and had a successful corporate career, too. But it was his second term as secretary of Defense from 2001...

All 10 former US defence secretaries still living, including two who worked for Donald Trump, have called for the president and his supporters to accept he lost the election and warned against attempts to involve the military in his increasingly desperate efforts to overturn the result. In an unprecedented joint letter published in the Washington Post, the defence secretaries addressed the worst fears of what could happen in 17 days of Trump’s administration remaining before Joe Biden’s inauguration: an attempt by Trump to foment a crises with the aim of triggering a military intervention in his last-ditch struggle to hold...

Regardless of the current dynamic inside the election challenge controversy this is a very interesting move by the White House. Kash Patel is the National Security Council Aide who was the key person assisting House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes. Patel knows all of the details and nuances within the overall ‘spygate’ saga on a very granular level.

I cringed after Donald Trump started trashing James Mattis following his resignation as Secretary of Defense. Mattis’s departure was reportedly connected to Trump’s announced withdrawal from Syria, which Mattis opposed. In response to Mattis’s departure, rather than praise him for his service and acknowledge the tremendous progress they’d made together cleaning up the mess left by Obama, Trump trashed Mattis as “the world’s most overrated general.” Mattis wasn’t the only person Trump kicked out the door with a litany of attacks. He lambasted former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson as “dumb as a rock,” and described his former chief of...

<p>Eric Chewning, the chief of staff to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, is resigning and will be leaving his post at the end of January, the Defense Department announced Monday.</p> <p>Chewning has been in his role since January 2019, after starting with the Department in October 2017 as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy. He now plans on returning to the private sector, according to Pentagon press secretary Alyssa Farah.</p>

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan on Tuesday withdrew his nomination to lead the department as a report says the FBI is investigating a domestic violence dispute from nine years ago involving him and his then-wife. “Acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan, who has done a wonderful job, has decided not to go forward with his confirmation process so that he can devote more time to his family,” President Trump wrote in a Twitter posting. “I thank Pat for his outstanding service and will be naming Secretary of the Army, Mark Esper, to be the new Acting Secretary of Defense,” he...

  05.09.19McConnell Statement on Secretary of Defense Nominee Patrick Shanahan ‘Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan is a well-regarded leader and the duties of the Secretary are too important for this position to remain unfilled. I look forward to meeting with Acting Secretary Shanahan soon and to the Senate’s prompt consideration of his nomination.’ LOUISVILLE, KY – U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) released the following statement regarding the president’s intent to nominate Patrick Shanahan for Secretary of Defense:“I am glad to learn that President Trump has made his choice for the next Secretary of Defense. Acting Secretary Patrick Shanahan is a well-regarded...

President Donald Trump plans to nominate acting Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan to formally take over the top spot at the Pentagon, the president's spokeswoman said Thursday. Shanahan, a former longtime executive at the aerospace giant Boeing, needs Senate confirmation for the post most recently held by James Mattis. "Acting Secretary Shanahan has proven over the last several months that he is beyond qualified to lead the Department of Defense, and he will continue to do an excellent job," White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders wrote on Twitter.

President Trump is expected to formally nominate Patrick M. Shanahan to be his permanent defense secretary as soon as next week, two administration officials tell Fox News. This, after an internal Pentagon investigation concluded that the acting defense secretary did not show any bias in favor of his former employer, aerospace giant Boeing. Shanahan worked at Boeing for over 30 years before coming to the Pentagon as then-Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s deputy at the start of the Trump administration. Shanahan’s nomination had been held up by the White House since the Pentagon inspector general opened an investigation into Shanahan’s conduct...

President Trump denounced former Defense Secretary James Mattis on Wednesday, saying at a cabinet meeting he "essentially" fired the former Marine Corps general from the top Pentagon post. "What's he done for me? How had he done in Afghanistan? Not too good," Trump said, according to a Bloomberg News journalist, who reported a quote relayed by a colleague in the room. "As you know, President Obama fired him, and essentially so did I," Trump said at the meeting, attended by Mattis' replacement, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan.

""""Trump’s First Military Attack Backs CIA & DIA; Agents Said Obama Ignored Intel, Refused to Strike Critical ISIS Targets For Over a Year"""" President Barack Obama refused to strike high-ranking ISIS assets in Iraq and Syria for more than a year despite regular pleading from the CIA and DIA personnel to act on definitive intelligence, officials confirmed to True Pundit. Newly minted President Donald Trump, to the delight of defense analysts, gave new Defense Secretary James Mattis the green light to wage more than 30 attacks on these same ISIS targets on Saturday, according to intelligence insiders. What Obama had...

President-elect Trump is set to meet with retired Marine Gen. Jim Mattis Saturday amid speculation that Trump could tap him to serve as secretary of defense. According to a pool report from the Trump transition team, Mattis is among eight people slated to meet with Trump on Saturday, including 2012 GOP nominee Mitt Romney, who is being discussed as a potential nominee for secretary of state. Bloomberg reported Friday that Mattis and retired Gen. Jack Keane are in the running for secretary of defense.

Brett LoGiuratoSeptember 17, 2014 ï‚™ Former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on Wednesday said US ground troops will have to be part of the equation if there's "any hope of success" in President Barack Obama's strategy to "degrade and destroy" the extremist group ISIS (also known as ISIL or the Islamic State). "The reality is they're not going be able to be successful against ISIS strictly from the air, or strictly depending on the Iraqi forces, or the Peshmerga, or the Sunni tribes acting on their own," Gates said in an interview on "CBS This Morning" on Wednesday. "So there...

Several months ago, the Pentagon's network and e-mail system fell victim to computer hacking. After an internal investigation, Pentagon officials declared that the hack was perpetrated by the Chinese military. In particular, officials said the attack "was by China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) and that it led to the shutdown of a computer system serving the office of Defense Secretary Robert Gates." Now, a Chinese company with ties to the country's military, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, and the Taliban will gain access to U.S. defense-network technology under a proposed merger.According to a story in the Washington Times, Huawei Technologies...

Panetta: Iranian Threat Spreads By JULIAN E. BARNES and ADAM ENTOUS In an exclusive interview with the Wall Street Journal Thursday, outgoing Defense Secretary Leon Panetta sited illicit arms trafficking by Iran for what he called a "dangerous escalation" of tensions. WSJ's Julian Barnes shares his take-aways from the exit interview. WASHINGTON—Defense Secretary Leon Panetta accused Iran's paramilitary force of an intensified campaign to destabilize the Middle East by smuggling antiaircraft weapons to its militant allies. Iran's export of so-called manpads—antiaircraft missiles that can be carried by a single person—represent what Mr. Panetta called a dangerous escalation. "There is no...

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told Congress on Wednesday that he envisioned keeping five combat brigades in Iraq as a 'long-term presence.' Mr. Gates told the Senate Appropriations Committee, "When I speak of a long-term presence, I'm thinking of a very modest U.S. presence with no permanent bases, where we can continue to go after Al Qaeda in Iraq and help the Iraqi forces." He added that “in my head” he envisioned a force as a quarter of the current combat brigades. There are now 20 combat brigades in the country, a number that is scheduled to drop to 15...

PRESIDENTIAL NEWS OF THE DAY: President Bush is spending the weekend at Camp David. He will travel to Morganstown, West Virginia, on Monday to participate in 4th of July celebrations there. The First Lady has been away from Washington recently. However, she will be traveling with the President to Europe this coming week. Our beloved Dubya will mark his 59th birthday on July 6. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MR. PRESIDENT! And a rousing HAPPY 229TH BIRTHDAY to our great nation. Laura Bush to visit Tanzania 2005-07-01 07:09:58 By Guardian Reporter US First Lady Laura Bush will visit Tanzania later this month. She...

WASHINGTON — At the darkest moment of his Pentagon tenure, when the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal was gathering steam and many in Washington were betting on his swift exit, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld boarded a C-17 cargo plane last year and made an emergency trip to Baghdad. There, Rumsfeld told a throng of U.S. troops that he had no intention of going down without a fight. "It's a fact," Rumsfeld said. "I'm a survivor." Back home, Rumsfeld's trip became fodder for late-night television. "Yeah, a survivor about to be voted off the island," Jay Leno cracked on "The...

Some Americans are surprised to see that Donald Rumsfeld has kept his job in the face of mounting U.S. casualties in Iraq. Some have gone so far as to demand his resignation. The latest critic to publicly call for the defense secretary's departure is William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard. Given his repeated faulty prognostications about Iraq, one wonders why anyone should take these urgings seriously. The Iraq debacle that Kristol championed made what should have been an easy victory this November into a bruising electoral battle. Despite the fact that advocates of military action against Iraq have been...