Outside the Beltway

Not only is the US outspending all our allies and competitors combined in real dollars on defense, we’re doing so in terms of GDP as well.

President Obama’s job approval numbers are even worse when you just look at the economy.

DARPA has a revolving door that doesn’t revolve.

Rick Perry declared, “One of the reasons that I’m running for president is I want to make sure that every young man and woman who puts on the uniform of the United States respects highly the president of the United States.”

Iraq has become so dependent on Iran for its survival that it is endorsing the brutal tactics of Bashar Assad.

Honoring the fallen by ensuring that the didn’t die in vain is a recipe for getting more good men killed.

The defense spending lobby is already engaging in fear-mongering over very modest defense cuts.

A disastrous day for American troops in Afghanistan.

The general made famous by his leadership of the Katrina effort has some harsh words for our political leadership.

The cuts to Pentagon spending in the new debt deal are further revealing a split in the GOP over foreign policy and military spending.

The Air Force has suspended a course that teaches nuclear officers that Christian ethics permit them to do their job.

Vice President Biden has called Congressional Republicans and their Tea Party backers “terrorists.”

It is always useful to go inside the numbers.

News that Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik was a fan of anti-Islamist sites, including Robert Spencer’s Jihad Watch and Pamela Geller’s Atlas Shrugs has opened a big can of schadenfreude.

A legendary American soldier, General John Shalikashvili, has died.

The death toll in Norway’s deadliest day of terrorism is up to 91. The man behind it, 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik, is a frequent poster of anti-Muslim screeds on Christian fundamentalist websites.

A bomb blast in Oslo’s government center has killed at least two people and a presumably related shooting spree at a nearby children’s camp are being investigated as terrorist related.

The ban on gays openly serving in the military will end in September, nine months after President Obama signed the repeal into law.

The Army is fielding tiny blast sensors to gauge the effects of explosions on individual soldiers.

I must confess to having only paid peripheral attention at first, but it is clear that there is a major story here that requires attention.

Thomas Ricks makes the case that JFK was the worst President of his century but his argument misses the mark.

A Federal Appeals Court says the full body image scanners showing up in airports are Constitutional.

Howard Wiarda’s book on the National War College is based on his experiences from 1991 to 1996.

So the CIA organized a fake vaccination drive in Pakistan in an attempt to get bin Laden family DNA. What could possibly go wrong?

While it’s true that the South and the Heartland disproportionately contribute to our all-volunteer force, the notion that our forces are mostly Nebraska farmboys is false.

Leon Panetta has been brought in to oversee significant cuts to the U.S. Defense budget. Meanwhile, we’re in six wars.

The US handing Libya over to NATO is “like Beyonce saying she’s ceding control to Sasha Fierce!” – Jon Stewart

Danger Room’s Spencer Ackerman reports on an alleged secret CIA interrogation facility somewhere in the former Soviet Union.