2008-06-12T15:43:24Z tag:blog.washingtonpost.com,2008:/earlywarning//75 Copyright (c) 2008, WashingtonPost.Newsweek Interactive 2008-06-12T15:43:24Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-06-12:/earlywarning/2008/06/welcome_to_planet_war.html

Today William M. Arkin and Peter Feaver start a new discussion group, Planet War. Planet War is the place to discuss and argue about national security, war and peace, guns and butter, stars and stripes, you get it, all aspects of military affairs and intelligence. Three to five times a week, Bill and Peter will pose questions and hazard some answers from their differing perspectives. They welcome your posts -- with the objective of developing...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

Editor 2008-05-28T10:15:18Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-28:/earlywarning/2008/05/a_new_era_for_early_warning.html

This week Early Warning begins its transition from a daily blog to a column and discussion group. The new Early Warning will continue to address the issues nearest and dearest to me: government secrecy and its manifestations in intelligence, special operations and information warfare; air power; and civil-military relations, specifically the role of the military in American society. The discussion group will address a variety of topics on national security and will, I hope, provoke...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-06-12T00:20:49Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-22:/earlywarning/2008/05/in_this_case_rumsfeld_was_righ.html

If there were a musical about the Pentagon today, the opening number and reprise would be "If Rumsfeld Was for It, We're Against It." Witness the portrayal of the reversal of a "controversial" plan by the former secretary of Defense, first reported in the New York Times last week, to use special operations forces as the lead element in the war against terror. There is a lot wrong with the way the United States has...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-06-12T00:20:49Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-21:/earlywarning/2008/05/a_sordid_sea_tale.html

A rising Navy officer serving as a military aide to President George H.W. Bush has an adulterous affair, lying to his wife that his various absences are mission-related and to his mistress that he is a widower. When he gets caught, he gets booted out of the White House -- but over the next 18 years in the Navy, he gets promoted repeatedly. When he is finally "reprimanded" and forced to retire, just last month,...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-06-12T00:20:49Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-20:/earlywarning/2008/05/tying_obamas_hands.html

On Jan. 20, 2009, a small and little-known group will go through the motions of the most sensitive part of presidential transition, transferring the nuclear "go" codes from President Bush to his successor. It is a process so secret that even the name of the operation is highly classified and compartmented. For the next four years, the president will be accompanied by a military officer 24/7 who carries the "football," a suitcase containing what is...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-06-12T00:20:49Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-19:/earlywarning/2008/05/to_the_national_security_profe.html

I attended a Washington conference last week on "Civil-Military Relations in a Post-9/11 World," sponsored by the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard and the U.S. Army War College's Center for Strategic Leadership. Like many conferences I've attended over the years, it was as interesting for who was there as for who was not, as much for what wasn't said as for what was. Though the title of the conference suggests that some...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-14:/earlywarning/2008/05/gates_the_substitute_teacher.html

Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates is at it again. In a speech in Colorado Springs yesterday, he implored the armed forces to cure themselves of what he calls "Next-War-Itis" and focus on current needs. Conventional wisdom has it that the anti-Rumsfeld is doing God's work by trying to convince the generals to buy more gear for the troops today and less for war with China tomorrow, by prodding the bureaucracy to supply more of...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-12:/earlywarning/2008/05/pakistan_shifts_the_war_on_ter.html

What's going on in the counter-terror war in Pakistan? Last week we learned that the U.S. military's chief liaison, Maj. Gen. Jay W. Hood, has been pulled from the country, ostensibly because of his previous assignment as commander of the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. Hood was called "notorious" in the Pakistani media and was roundly denounced by Pakistani politicians, symbolizing in many minds the mistreatment of Muslims that are perceived in this part of...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-08:/earlywarning/2008/05/a_secret_afghanistan_mission_p.html

Those predicting war with Iran or some Bush-Cheney October surprise attack on Tehran are constantly looking for signs of military preparations: a B-52 bomber that mistakenly takes off from North Dakota with nuclear-armed cruise missiles; a second or third aircraft carrier entering the Persian Gulf; a B-1 crashing in Qatar. Since the most likely path to war with Iran is not Marines storming the beach but a strike on nuclear facilities and "regime" targets, signs...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-07:/earlywarning/2008/05/the_iran_consensus_grows_more.html

As I've noted, the three candidates share a consensus, backed by the national security community, that Iran is the new strategic threat. It is radical, anti-American, anti-Israel, terrorist-supporting, nuclear-armed and provocative. But just because this is the consensus view does not mean it is right. The danger, regardless of who is the next president, is that officials have already begun military preparations, and shaping public opinion, to build momentum for the inevitable....Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-05:/earlywarning/2008/05/another_general_cashing_in.html

Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, the Iraq commander from June 2003 to June 2004, is the latest soldier to head into the media spotlight in retirement. Coming tomorrow to a bookstore near you is "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story." So we are supposed to listen to the guy who presided over Iraq's implosion and Abu Ghraib?...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-02:/earlywarning/2008/05/asking_the_wrong_questions_at.html

It was a big day for apologies to the troops yesterday. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates apologized once again for the sub-standard treatment the war wounded receive, security rules are being modified to avoid the stigma that mental health treatment disqualifies one for a clearance, and the Secretary labeled the barracks conditions of soldiers in North Carolina "appalling." Though it is true that a Secretary of the Army and a few generals and other officers...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-05-01:/earlywarning/2008/05/war_with_iran_that_will_be_for_1.html

There was a moment in April 1990, when Saddam Hussein was appearing on the covers of all of the news magazines, threatening to "burn" half of Israel and brandishing new chemical and biological weapons, when we should have known that the United States would eventually go to war with Iraq. It was almost four months before Iraq's invasion of Kuwait and most people hadn't thought much about the country, but war gamers and planners in...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-30T19:15:23Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-30:/earlywarning/2008/04/unmanned_and_dangerous_the_fut.html

The controversy over the availability of unmanned reconnaissance and strike drones in Iraq and Afghanistan has become one of those quintessential Washington dramas that plays while Rome burns. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates is pushing for more drones to support the troops, while the self-interested Air Force is resisting. The false solution, as I have written, is as simple as more equipment and more money. Oh, and Rome? We're still going nowhere in Iraq...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin 2008-05-14T00:25:48Z tag:washingtonpost.com,2008-04-28:/earlywarning/2008/04/in_the_war_against_terrorism_i.html

Finding a "needle in a needle stack": That's how the head of Army intelligence training described the new challenge of spying in the war on terrorism. Searching for a "needle in a haystack" would be much easier, he says, because at least "there's a visible difference." In a place like Iraq, the needles are terrorists and their support infrastructure, such as small-scale works where improvised explosive devices are manufactured. Very little is behind the walls...Please click on the title to continue reading this entry.

William M. Arkin