Pentagon

Absent from the discussion about whether former Senator Chuck Hagel would make a good secretary of defense is any focus on lessons learned from personal factors like combat in war, as well as loyalty to the president. As I was grousing about this, my eye caught a name on a rubbing I made from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall: "Edward S. Krukowski. " Many years ago, Ed and I studied Russian and were in the ROTC together. Capt. Edward Krukowski, USAF, was flying a C-123 on a resupply mission in Vietnam when shot down on Oct. 24, 1964, six days short of his 26th birthday, leaving a wife and three small children.

It was refreshing to read Thomas F. Schaller's commentary about the burden of America's superpower status ("America should give up its role as lone superpower," July 25). Mr. Schaller was a bit too reserved in his criticism, however. While he points out that our military budget dwarfs all others, he falls into that trap of attributing it to "defense spending. " The Defense Department, which used to be called the Department of War, is actually involved in offensive operations. The invasions of Grenada, Panama and Iraq were classic examples of warmongering that had nothing to do with defending the country.

The suspect in the Colorado movie theater shootings is not and has never been a member of the armed forces, the Pentagon said Friday. Authorities say shooting suspect James Holmes carried an assault rifle, a shotgun and a handgun and wore full body armor during the attack that left 12 dead and dozens injured at the theater in Aurora, Colo. Police say his apartment was rigged with explosives. The Pentagon said two airmen and one sailor were injured in the attack. Another sailor who was known to have been at the theater was unaccounted for. Aurora is home to Buckley Air Force Base, and an hour's drive from the Air Force Academy at Colorado Springs.

The big story in The Sun this past week was the unforeseen storm. In the editorial, "Feeling powerless" (July 3), the question asked was this a "freak occurrence?" Your answer makes sense: "Climate science suggests that global warming will make unusual and severe weather much more common. " However, I have a suggestion. Instead of global warming, use climate chaos. What I witnessed in Baltimore on the Friday night of the storm was climate chaos. Only a head-in-the-sand politician would deny that human activity is causing climate chaos.

There's a tendency among some to shorthand the ongoing federal budget debate as between Republicans who want to reduce government spending and Democrats who don't. This isn't really the case, as recent actions in the House have demonstrated. On Wednesday, the House Armed Services Committee took a close look at President Barack Obama's proposed $525.4 billion defense spending plan and decided that simply wasn't enough. The GOP-controlled committee voted to authorize nearly $4 billion more than what the Pentagon had requested for 2013.

Before self-proclaimed 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was brought into court Saturday, Carole Reuben of Potomac said his arraignment would mark "the beginning of the end of the process. " Her son, Todd Hayes Reuben, was a passenger on American Airlines Flight 77, the airliner that was hijacked by five al-Qaida operatives and flown into the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001. The Potomac man was 40. But any hope that the arraignments of Mohammed and four alleged co-conspirators might bring some healing to family members, a decade after they lost loved ones in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, was stymied Saturday by a halting proceeding in which the defendants refused to participate.

The Pentagon is creating a new intelligence service aimed at gathering information on terrorist networks, weapons of mass destruction and other emerging concerns, a senior defense official said Monday. The new Defense Clandestine Service will draw several hundred officers from the existing Defense Intelligence Agency, according to the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly about the classified program. The officers - some military, some civilian - will work alongside CIA counterparts in places such as Africa, whereal-Qaida has grown more active, and Asia, where Chinese military expansion and North Korean and Iranian weapons ambitions are drawing increasing U.S. concern.

There was no enemy involvement in the air crash that killed an airman from Upper Marlboro in Africa over the weekend, the Pentagon said Tuesday. Senior Airman Julian S. Scholten, 26, was one of four special operations airmen killed Saturday when their single-engine U-28 turboprop crashed six miles from Djibouti-Ambouli International Airport, according to the U.S. Africa Command. "This is obviously a tragic incident," Pentagon Press Secretary George Little said Tuesday, according to the American Forces Press Service.

As President Barack Obama proposed a new round of military base closures and reorganization, Maryland's political and business forces already are working to protect installations here and position the state to benefit from any future moves. Maryland still is growing from the last round of the base realignment process known as BRAC, which brought new commands, new missions and tens of thousands of new jobs to Fort Meade, Aberdeen Proving Ground and other military installations around the state.

In announcing the administration's new Defense "guidance," President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta have - to their credit - avoided the historically oft-repeated pitfall of assuming that the conflicts of today portend the nature of the conflicts of the future. However, the vision they outline fails to realistically and specifically define just how the United States will, would, and could defeat a threat such as we have faced in Afghanistan and Iraq with the transformed, leaner force prescribed.