Obama Talks to Gates About Staying at Pentagon

He wants to shift focus from ground troops to 'irregular warfare'

(NEWSER) - President Obama officially unveiled his plan for a slimmed-down military with a speech at the Pentagon today, promising that budget cuts and a reduction in conventional ground forces wouldn't harm the nation's security. "Our military will be leaner, but the world must know—the United States is going to maintain our military superiority with Armed Forces that are agile, flexible, and ready for the full range of contingencies," Obama said, according to NPR . More»

Today is outgoing defense secretary's last day

(AP) - President Obama today honored outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates' four decades of service, including the past 4 1/2 years in charge of the Pentagon, by surprising him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest US honor a president can give a civilian. "I can think of no better way to express the gratitude of the nation to Bob Gates than with a very special recognition," Obama said as he asked Gates to step forward to receive the award at an outdoor ceremony at the Pentagon marking his retirement. More»

A look back at the retiring defense secretary's career

(NEWSER) - With Robert Gates, who has served eight presidents over four decades, about to retire, the Washington Post looks back at how Gates operated in the Pentagon. He’s been “careful, conservative, and consensus-oriented,” writes Greg Jaffe, and he’s “earned a reputation as the most ruthlessly efficient defense secretary in decades.” So what can we learn from his tenure?

• Buy time. Defense Department reviews following troop surges in Iraq and Afghanistan gave Presidents Bush and Obama a sense of the military’s trajectory—and they bought time against critics calling for quick drawdowns.

Praises intel, SEALs, says hit was years in the making

(NEWSER) - Add Donald Rumsfeld to the list of Republicans heaping praise for Osama bin Laden's killing on anyone but the Obama administration: "The capabilities to do it were developed over time by previous administrations, and they benefit the country, and the intelligence had been gathered over a long period of time," Rumsfeld tells the AP in an interview yesterday. "And it came to fruition in the Obama administration, to the credit of the intelligence community." More»

He also faults president for having an unclear mission

(NEWSER) - Glass houses, alert: Donald Rumsfeld thinks the US intervention in Libya—or at least the way President Obama is going about it—is misguided. The former defense chief tells Politico that President Obama has presented a muddled set of goals, resulting in an unclear mission. The problem involves the international coalition, he said. "You decide what it is you want to do and then you get other countries to assist you in doing that. And, in this case, it looks like just the opposite was done, that the coalition is trying to determine the mission and it’s confused." More»