Outside the Beltway

The Congressman and Green Beret colonel will head Trump’s national security team.

The appetite for more resources approaches infinity.

Expert opinion on the standoff differs sharply.

A blast from the past.

He was both the youngest and oldest man to run the Pentagon.

The answer seems simple but it isn’t.

On the op/ed page of WaPo, the 10 living former U.S. secretaries of defense say things that shouldn’t have to be said.

The President didn’t want to hear about bad behavior from Moscow, so he wasn’t told.

In a move sure to ruffle feathers, the President is bypassing all of the Navy’s four-star admirals for the next service chief.

A convergence of OTB discussions.

With the Trump Administration continuing to stonewall investigations, the House of Representatives is seeking to ramp up the pressure.

In the latest example of the White House’s ongoing effort to block Congress from exercising its duty to investigate the Executive Branch, the White House is blocking the former White House Counsel from testifying before Congress.

The legendary figure was in charge of strategic forecasting at the Pentagon for decades.

A new report indicates that President Trump wanted to use the Justice Department to target political enemies. The last time that happened, it led to Articles of Impeachment.

Seemingly out of nowhere yesterday, the Commander-in-Chief ordered the Pentagon to create a fifth service.

Elliot Cohen laments the lack of steel in the spine of the statesmen, diplomats, soldiers, and thinkers of the current generation.

Whether it’s the abuse angle or the more serious issue of security clearances, the White House still can’t get the story straight on the Rob Porter case.

The Rob Porter story, which is quickly becoming the Rob Porter scandal, tells us a lot about the Trump White House, and none of it is good.

And the evidence for obstruction of justice continues to mount.

Republicans haven’t really moved beyond the legacy of George W. Bush’s failed Administration as much as they’d like to think, but it doesn’t seem to be hurting them very much.

In a new book, former President George H.W. Bush is highly critical of two of his son’s closest advisers in the White House.

To lose something one has to have it in the first place. (It is pretty basic logic).

One freshman Senator seems to think that war with Iran would be easy, just like Republicans used to think that war against Iraq would be easy.

Good intentions and good results aside, the President’s disrespect for the Rule Of Law should concern everyone.

Our tax system is so complicated that whether we’re filing our returns correctly is a known unknown.

Former SecDef Robert Gates is among those who believes that the Iraq War unduly diverted attention from fighting the War On Terror.

Newly disclosed details about the US role in Colombia.

The Pentagon is considering doing away with two combatant commands—and no longer calling them combatant commands.

The military’s finance and accounting system has been dysfunctional for decades and is getting worse.

The Iraq War did significant damage to the legacy of the Republican Party.

General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, commander during Operation Desert Storm, has died at the age of 78.

The official portrait of George W. Bush, the 43rd president, was unveiled at the White House yesterday. The ceremony was a rare display of political humor and grace.

My first piece for The New Republic, “Why the Obama Administration’s Drone War May Soon Reach a Tipping Point,” is up.

Despite their rhetoric, there would be few differences between a Romney Administration and an Obama Administration when it comes to foreign policy.

Philip Hammond addressed the Atlantic Council this morning in advance of a meeting with Leon Panetta.

After 3,193 days and more than 4,000 lives, the American war in Iraq is officially at an end.

Despite one headline to the contrary, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger did not endorse Jon Huntsman as our next president today.

Don’t confuse moderation in tone with moderation in beliefs.

Elias Isquith proclaims my Atlantic essay “How Perpetual War Became U.S. Ideology” to be “a total disaster.”

Sunday’s announcement of the death of Osama bin Laden was the latest example of how Twitter has become the go-to source for “Breaking News.”

The debate over “enhanced interrogations” has been renewed by the bin Laden mission, but whether it “worked” or not isn’t the question.

Keith Urbahn, chief of staff of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, broke the news.