Free Republic

Pentagon Makes Fighting Extremism Top Priority Seven years after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Pentagon on Thursday officially named "the long war" against global extremism as its top priority and pledged to avert any conventional military threat from China or Russia through dialogue. The Defense Department, in a new national defense strategy, also emphasized the need to subordinate military operations to "soft power" initiatives to undermine Islamist militancy by promoting economic, political and social development in vulnerable corners of the world. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said he hoped the change would help establish permanent institutional support for counterinsurgency skills...

A New York man was sentenced today to 18 months in federal prison after a jury convicted him of stealing submarine parts from the Navy and selling them for scrap.Frank E. Spaulding, 37, also known as Khalif Immanuel Bey, confessed to stealing submarine acoustic domes in December 2006 after the parts had been removed from the Hampton, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.Spaulding sold the parts, worth $21,000, to a local scrap yard for about $2,000, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.