National Security

House of Representatives lawmakers are set to debate an annual bill that authorizes military programs later this week, and a handful of Democrats have set their sights on killing provisions that would support efforts to build missile defenses by 2015 to protect America’s East Coast from future missile threats from countries like Iran.

It is easy to see why double agents are the source of inspiration for many spy novels and movies. The intrigue involved, including a potentially violent end to their spy games, gives writers low-hanging fruit to pluck. But art frequently mirrors real life when it comes to double agents. Especially infamous examples were found out during the Cold War – on both sides of the fight.

Jose Rodriguez, a former National Clandestine Service chief at the CIA, recently made the case that the search for Osama bin Laden was long, hard, and full of twists and turns.

A new poll conducted by the New York Times/CBS finds that "a majority of Americans say they would favor using U.S. military action against Iran to prevent the country from acquiring nuclear weapons," CBS reports.

In “Politician-in-Chief,” Steve Hayes writes about President Obama’s frustration with, as Hayes puts it, Republican “criticism of the difficult decisions he is facing as president on matters of war and peace.”

Ten years ago this week, the U.S. government opened the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba detention facility. And three years ago this month, shortly after his inauguration, President Barack Obama ordered Guantanamo shuttered within one year. For a variety of reasons, Gitmo remains open, with approximately 171 detainees still detained there. And so, human rights organizations, detainee lawyers, and former detainees are doing their best to shame the U.S. government into closing the facility.

Former CIA director R. James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, national security adviser to President Reagan, have joined Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign as members of his national security advisory team.

There is a certain irony, as well as much truth, in Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s drumbeat of warnings about the consequences of further cuts to U.S. military budgets of the sort threatened under the current deficit reduction law.

House Budget chair Paul Ryan, along with House Committee on Armed Services chair Buck McKeon and Bill Young, chairman of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, have written a letter to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and OMB director Jack Lew, urging the Obama administration officials not to take a math-based approach to determining our national security strategy.

Now that the Great Debt Ceiling Deal has become the law of the land, it’s time to consider what just happened to America, and in particular to America’s armed forces. On the one hand, it’s complicated. On the other hand, it’s ugly.

Here’s the situation with respect to defense spending, which Speaker Boehner fought for yesterday, with some (very limited) success: