April 26, 2008

PAKISTAN. Reports coming out of the Pentagon suggest that at least part of the reason we can’t find Osama bin Laden has been due to internal squabbling in the U.S. military. This week AP’s Robert Burns reported that even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been trying to persuade the Air Force to free up more of its camera-equipped Predator drones to swoop and snoop over possible al-Qaeda hideouts in Pakistan, the Air Force has been resistant. On Monday Gates groused that getting the Air Force to dispatch additional unmanned Predators has been “like pulling teeth . . . My concern is that our services are still not moving aggressively in wartime to provide resources needed now on the battlefield.”

According to Burns, the fleet of pilot-less surveillance aircraft has “grown 25-fold since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to a total of 5000. Gates has been trying for months to get the Air Force to send more [but the request has been stalled, says Gates] ‘because people were stuck in old ways of doing businesss.’”

IRAN. And just when you thought the Bush administration was ducking into lame-duck hibernation, there are real indications that we are creeping toward a military confrontation with Iran. Yesterday, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Michael Mullen turned up the war-rhetoric volume when he bluntly stated that the Pentagon is planning for “potential military courses of action” against the regime in Tehran. Iran, he said, “is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons. . . . The military option must be kept on the table.”

Sound familiar, kids?

Thank our lucky stars that only Congress has the Consitutional authority to declare war. Last I checked...