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A trio of retired generals is urging Defense Secretary James Mattis not to delay accepting transgender recruits into the military after reports that the Pentagon chief was considering such a move. “Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has stated that he will make personnel decisions based on evidence about what best promotes force readiness,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Claudia Kennedy, retired Army Major Gen. Gale Pollock and retired Army Brig. Gen. Clara Adams-Ender wrote in a statement provided to The Hill.

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The White House is giving the Pentagon greater flexibility to determine the number of U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria, in another move by President Trump to shift greater power to his military leaders. The decision will give Defense Secretary Jim Mattis the authority to send more forces into Syria, to assist U.S.-backed local troops as they move to retake Raqqa from the Islamic State group, which has used the city as a de facto capital. It will also let him adjust the force numbers in Iraq, in the ongoing fight to oust ISIS from Mosul and stabilize it as...

Secretary of Defense James Mattis has asserted that climate change is real, and a threat to American interests abroad and the Pentagon’s assets everywhere, a position that appears at odds with the views of the president who appointed him and many in the administration in which he serves. In unpublished written testimony provided to the Senate Armed Services Committee after his confirmation hearing in January, Mattis said it was incumbent on the U.S. military to consider how changes like open-water routes in the thawing Arctic and drought in global trouble spots can pose challenges for troops and defense planners. He...

In a clash with President Trump's environmental team, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis has declared that climate change is a threat to national security and one military planners must consider in drawing up strategies. According to a report from ProPublica, Mattis told Democratic senators that climate change is real and "can be a driver of instability." His position, at odds with President Trump and his Environmental Protection Agency chief, came in answers to questions from senators following his confirmation hearing. They were released to ProPublica which reached out to the White House and Pentagon for comment without success. _____________________________________________ Andy Revkin...

Haven't been able to find this information anywhere, so I'll ask the greatest group of detectives I know: the members of FreeRepublic. Does anyone know the identity of the lovely young lady who held the Bible for Mattis during his swearing-in ceremony?

Retired Marine Gen. James Mattis was approved on Wednesday by the Senate Committee on Armed Services to serve as secretary of defense in Donald Trump’s administration. Mattis sailed through the committee, which voted 26-1 for him to lead the Pentagon. Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (N.Y.) was the only member of the Senate panel to vote against the retired four-star general, who enjoys bipartisan support to head the Defense Department under President-elect Trump. Gillibrand has previously said she would oppose confirming Mattis because he only retired from the Marine Corps in 2013, while federal law requires a seven-year break between military...

America knows Gen. James Mattis as a character, Mad Dog Mattis, the font of funny quotes and Chuck Norris-caliber memes. Those of us who served with him know that he is a caring, erudite, warfighting general. We also know that there is a reason he uses the call-sign Chaos: he is a lifelong student of his profession, a devotee of maneuver warfare and Sun Tzu, the sort of guy who wants to win without fighting—to cause chaos among those he would oppose.

A couple of months ago, when I told General Krulak, the former Commandant of the Marine Corps, now the chair of the Naval Academy Board of Visitors, that we were having General Mattis speak this evening, he said, “Let me tell you a Jim Mattis story.” General Krulak said, when he was Commandant of the Marine Corps, every year, starting about a week before Christmas, he and his wife would bake hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of Christmas cookies. They would package them in small bundles. Then on Christmas day, he would load his vehicle. At about 4 a.m., General...

President-elect Donald Trump has chosen retired Marine Gen. James N. Mattis to be secretary of defense, nominating a former senior military officer who led operations across the Middle East to run the Pentagon less than four years after he hung up his uniform, according to people familiar with the decision.

Among those in the Marine Corps I taught and deployed with, Gen. (ret.) Jim Mattis is a legend. The quotes, the foxholes, the knife hands. Everyone has their favorite story. I once handed Mattis a Diet Coke out of a cooler at Quantico. A mundane act? Yes. But I’ve remembered it fondly for 12 years. He is Chaos, Mad Dog, and the warrior monk. But we should not add secretary of defense to that list. I have long thought of Mattis as a “break glass in case of emergency” type of leader. He was uniquely suited to his roles in...

Jim Webb is, at least in a nominal sense, a Democrat. Last year, he briefly pursued the Democratic nomination for president, a run best remembered for his joke about killing the Vietnamese soldier who threw a grenade at him. Now Webb is singing Donald Trump’s praises, and may have his eye on a cabinet job. “I would like to salute Donald Trump for his tenacity and for the uniqueness of his campaign,” Webb during a speech to a hundred or so attendees at a foreign policy symposium in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. To hear Webb tell it, in fact, he...

Outgoing Sen. Kelly Ayotte, R-N.H., is at the top of President-elect Trump's list for secretary of defense, according to a Washington Post report published Friday evening. Other candidates up for the Pentagon chief slot are retired Army Lt. Gen. Joseph "Keith" Kellogg, former Defense Intelligence Agency director Gen. Mike Flynn and Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions. snip.... Sources said Ayotte's neoconservative background would help her serve as a liaison between the GOP establishment in Congress and Trump administration. She would also be the first woman to oversee the Defense Department.

From:john.podesta@gmail.com To: r_m_gates@att.net Date: 2008-11-16 18:51 Subject: Re: Contact Information Thx. ------Original Message------ From: Bob Gates To: John.Podesta@gmail.com Sent: Nov 16, 2008 3:42 PM Subject: Contact Information John, If you or anyone needs to contact me or talk with me privately during business hours, you can reach me through my personal e-mail at r_m_gates@att.net (there is an underscore -- r_m_ -- after the r and m in place of a period. I offer that because you indicated you had tried unsuccessfully to reach me by e-mail: the underscores in the address may not have come through in my initial e-mail...

Commenting on anti-Christian attacks in America and the radical LGBT agenda that says transgender men can use women’s bathrooms, Lt. Gen. (ret.) William “Jerry” Boykin, former chief of U.S. Army Special Operations Command and a top member of Delta Force, said Christians need to fight this “evil,” and added that the first transgender man that walks into his daughter’s bathroom won’t have to worry about sex-change surgery. “I’ve already said, and somebody will be recording this and this’ll be on YouTube before it’s all over with,” said Boykin at The Awakening 2016 conference. “But I will tell you what: the...

Congressional Republicans are sending an early warning to the Defense Department that its plan to close Guantánamo Bay would break the law. "No matter how hard the President wishes it wasn't the case, transferring dozens of dangerous terrorists to any domestic location is illegal," Republican Sens. Cory Gardner (Colo.), Pat Roberts (Kan.) and Tim Scott (S.C.) said Friday. "Moving the detainees to South Carolina, Kansas or Colorado will not lead to even the smallest change in the beliefs or propaganda of radical Islamic terrorists." They added that the President Obama's push to create a "Gitmo North" location within the United...

The Pentagon acknowledged Wednesday that Defense Secretary Ash Carter used a personal email account to do some of his government business during his first months on the job. Carter's press secretary, Peter Cook, declined to say whether it was a violation of Pentagon email policies. He said work-related messages Carter received on his personal account were "copied or forwarded to his official account so [they] can be preserved as a federal record as appropriate."

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Marine Corps is expected to ask that women not be allowed to compete for several front-line combat jobs, inflaming tensions between Navy and Marine leaders, U.S. officials say. The tentative decision has ignited a debate over whether Navy Secretary Ray Mabus can veto any Marine Corps proposal to prohibit women from serving in certain infantry and reconnaissance positions. And it puts Gen. Joseph Dunford, the Marine Corps commandant who takes over soon as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, at odds with the other three military services, who are expected to open all of their...

While President Obama works to deliver on his longtime promise to close the U.S. military prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba his Defense Secretary offers a jolt of reality; around half of the detainees—the world’s most dangerous terrorists—need to be locked up “indefinitely.” So what are the commander-in-chief’s plans for the radical Islamic jihadists currently incarcerated in the top-security compound at the U.S. Naval base in southeast Cuba? The all-star terrorist roster includes 9/11 masterminds Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), Ramzi Binalshibh, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Mustafa Ahmed Adam al Hawsawi as well as Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, the Al-Qaeda terrorist charged...

There is renewed energy on Capitol Hill to lift the Defense Department's ban on transgender troops. Lawmakers view recent steps by the Pentagon and some of the armed services to expand protections for gay and lesbian troops as an opportunity to do away with the decades-old prohibition on allowing transgender troops to serve openly. They are also taking note of other societal changes in calling for the ban on service by transgender trips to be lifted. “In politics, I think it’s always appropriate to take advantage of timing. Whether it’s taking down the Confederate flag or creating equality in the...