Military

General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the State Department never requested "support" in Benghazi:

"Why didn't you put forces in place to be ready to respond?," Senator John McCain asked the general.

Dempsey started, "Because we never received a request to do so, number one. And number two, we --"

McCain iterrupted, "You never heard of Ambassador Stevens's repeated warnings?"

The U.S. military announced today that instead of keeping mulitple aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, only one would be kept there. The reason offered? Uncertainty surrounding budget cuts.

"The secretary of defense has delayed the deployment of the USS Harry S. Truman (CVN-75) and the USS Gettysburg (CG-64), which were scheduled to depart Norfolk, Va., later this week for the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility," says the Pentagon in a press release announcing the big move.

President Barack Obama said today in a pre-Super Bowl interview that he has no hesitation about sending women to the frontlines of combat:

The president was asked, "Do you have any hesitation as commander in chief ordering women into combat?"

Chuck Hagel, who has been nominated by President Obama to be the secretary of defense, does not understand the defense budget. Gary Schmitt explains:

Chuck Hagel, Barack Obama's nominee to head the defense department, said in his confirmation hearing Thursday that he doesn't "know much" about military programs and technology. "I've said I don't know enough about it," Hagel said, in a response to Maine senator Angus King. "There are a lot of things I don't know about. I, if confirmed, intend to know a lot more than I do. I will have to." Watch the video below:

President Barack Obama fired General James Mattis, the head of Central Command, without even calling the general to let him know he was being replaced.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Ryan Smith, a retired Marine infantryman who fought in the 2003 invasion of Iraq, urges caution about the Pentagon's new directive to allow woment to fight as combat infantry. Smith describes his experience in 2003:

It seems clear that American civil-military relations have been healthiest when there is a high level of trust between civilian and military leaders, i.e. when there is mutual respect and understanding between them that leads to the exchange of candid views and perspectives between the two parties as part of the decision-making process.

Former senator Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be the next secretary of defense, has drawn sharp criticism for championing even deeper cuts to military spending, making statements hostile or indifferent to Israel, denigrating pro-Israel groups in the United States as “the Jewish lobby,” and objecting to the potential use of military force to prevent a nuclear-armed Iran. Another issue that deserves close and careful scrutiny by senators and their staffers, however, is Hagel’s advocacy for global nuclear disarmament—and, toward that end, drastic cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

There is at least one thing to like about the tax-raising, can-kicking deal that avoided the fiscal cliff: It gave the U.S. military a 60-day reprieve from the consequences of sequestration.

The death of Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf recalls a moment in history that now seems far more distant than the actual twenty-one years.

ABC’s White House correspondent, Jake Tapper, is known in some circles as a contentious or even difficult reporter. In others, he’s hailed as perhaps the most objective journalist covering the president, more willing than most of his colleagues to push Obama and his aides with questions that are likely to make the administration uncomfortable. His new book is far from the White House, situated in a U.S. military base in a deep valley in Afghanistan close to the Pakistani border where American troops have been dispatched—or as it appears, stranded—to take on the Taliban.