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Potential 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, looking to bolster his foreign policy credentials, is on a Mideast swing that included a visit to Afghanistan on Sunday. Romney senior adviser Eric Fehrnstrom said Romney met the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts, ran for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008 only to lose to John McCain. He has shown multiple signs of planning to seek his party's nomination again for the right to oppose Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012. Romney could be among as many as a dozen Republicans seeking the...

Bob Woodward's searing critique of the Democrats' war strategy comes as key advisers are leaving and voters lose patience with Barack Obama's promise to deliver 'hope and change'. Alex Spillius reports on an increasingly isolated President. When Barack Obama took office 20 months ago – and what a long 20 months it seems – there was a lot of talk about the great "Team of Rivals" he was appointing around him. Parallels were drawn with the cabinet of substantial talents and big personalities assembled by Abraham Lincoln to rebuild the nation after the civil war. Now, in a new book,...

Last week, we wrote that the Air Force Council, the blue suiters board of directors that advises the air chief, was considering deep cuts to force structure to meet aggressive savings targets laid out by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. One option they are reportedly considering is early retirement of all 66 B-1B Lancer bombers, last delivered in the late 1980s. Yesterday, the Lancer fleet got a hearty shout-out from new installed Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus. “It is a great platform,” he told senators at his confirmation hearing. “It carries a heck of a lot of bombs… and it has...

The confirmation hearing for Gen. David Petraeus to be ISAF commander began a few minutes ago. The second day of the Elena Kagan Supreme Court nomination hearings began around 9 a.m. They're on the cable networks for the most part. FOX, CNN and MSNBC are dipping in and out of the hearings depending on who's speaking.The Kagan hearing is being shown live on C-SPAN 3 and online at C-SPAN here.The Petraeus hearing can be viewed online at the Senate Armed Services Committee Web site here.

The father of a slain local soldier has taken public a message about the war's rules of engagement. William Osborn, the father of Spc. Benjamin Osborn, who was killed in action in Afghanistan on June 15, sent a letter to Gen. David Petraeus on Sunday asking him to change rules which he said tie soldiers' hands. "Our son, SPC 4 Benjamin D. Osborn, volunteered to man the one heavy gun his unit had mounted on top of an MRAP vehicle," the e-mail states. "Finally, ordered to fire, Ben was able to get off 10 rounds before falling silent." Four minutes...

Fox News, outgoing Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s least favorite news channel (he banned it from the televisions in his HQ), reports that one of the first moves of incoming Afghan commander Gen. David Petraeus will be to loosen the controversial rules of engagement in Afghanistan to allow more artillery and air strikes. Troops in Afghanistan complain they’re fighting with one hand tied behind their back because of the various “directives” issued by McChrystal restricting the use of indirect fires in an effort to curtail civilian casualties. Not so fast, reports Leo Shane with Stars and Stripes, who asked Petraeus’...

Hours after Gen. David Petraeus' appointment as the top commander in Afghanistan, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is already declaring that he will pressure Petraeus to abandon President Obama's "arbitrary" July 2011 withdrawal date and instead base troop drawdown on the current conditions in Afghanistan. McCain, a longtime arch-foe of President Obama's withdrawal deadline, stressed the importance of tomorrow's confirmation hearing in determining how the war will go forward. "We cannot send a message that we are leaving at an arbitrary date," said McCain. Conservatives have long complained that Obama's withdrawal date has set up the U.S. for failure. Sen. Dianne...

President Obama announced Wednesday that he has accepted Gen. Stanley McChrystal's resignation as the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan following a scathing article in which he and his aides were quoted criticizing the administration for its handling of the war. In doing so, Obama nominated Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command and the former commanding general in Iraq, to replace him. The president stressed that while the decision was a difficult one, it does not represent a change in the course of the war. "This is a change in personnel, but it is not a change...

Those were the words of Pete Schoomaker, then chief of staff of the Army, to General David Petraeus, who at the time (2005) was commander of the Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. The context of Schoomaker's remarks was that the war in Iraq, which had been going on for more than two years, wasn't going well. The trajectory of events was, in fact, alarming. So Schoomaker tasked Petraeus, the leader of a group of intellectual-warriors in the Army, to rethink our counterinsurgency (COIN) strategy. The job was to determine the right overarching concepts and intellectual underpinnings of the...

U.S. General David Petraeus said on Tuesday Iranian efforts to develop a nuclear weapon appear to have been delayed "a bit" and voiced confidence it would not have a bomb this year.The comments by the head of the U.S. Central Command, which oversees wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, underscored the Obama administration's message to Israel and Gulf allies -- that there is time to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear weapons program by imposing more economic sanctions. U.S. President Barack Obama's top military advisers, including Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,...

PRINCETON, N.J. -- The U.S. commander overseeing troops in Iraq and Afghanistan said Saturday that the military is on pace in its plans to shift away from a combat mission in Iraq, but he warned that casualties will worsen in Afghanistan. Army Gen. David Petraeus said in a speech at Princeton University that after more than eight years of fighting in Afghanistan, the U.S. finally is getting enough troops, diplomats and organizational structure to be able to keep extremist groups from taking over again there. "We've gotten the inputs right, now we are embarking on what's going to be the...

President Barack Obama’s administration plans to rebrand its military operation in Iraq “Operation New Dawn,” beginning September 1, a Pentagon memorandum shows. The memo, signed by US Defense Secretary Robert Gates, shows the Pentagon approving a request to switch the name of the US military effort in Iraq from its current designation — “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” “The request... is approved to take effect 1 September 2010, coinciding with the change of mission for US forces in Iraq. “Aligning the name change with the change of mission sends a strong signal that Operation Iraqi Freedom has ended and our forces are...

Here is video of Chris Matthews last night where it sure sounds like he called U.S. General David Petraeus, "General Betray Us" as he led into a segment. Whether he did so intentionally is not clear, but it sure sounds like he said "Betray Us." You may remember that back in 2007 - when the Left was working overtime to undermine the war effort in Iraq - a national ad was taken out by MoveOn.org in the New York Times which slimed Petraeus as "General Betray us." Here is video in case you forgot . . . . . They...

One of America's top military leaders says Yemen-based terrorists helped plan the Christmas Day, December 25, plot to blow up a U.S. bound airplane. General David Petraeus told reporters in Baghdad Friday that the U.S. and Yemen have been sharing information about al-Qaida in the country, including activity that "resulted in the failed attack on the airliner." The head of the U.S. Central Command said Yemen has carried out "very significant" operations against al-Qaida, some of which prevented a series of suicide bombings. General Petraeus said the United States is helping Yemen, but that its neighbors have also provided significant...

The British hostage Peter Moore was dramatically set free yesterday after the United States handed over an Iraqi insurgent suspected of planning the deaths of five American servicemen. Mr Moore, an IT consultant, was freed by League of the Righteous, or Asaib al-Haq (AAH) — an extremist Shia group allied to Iran — after 31 months and spent his first night of freedom at the British Embassy in Baghdad. He is expected to fly home today.

The commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East made an observation that the Gulf Arab nations wished he hadn't. General David Petraeus noted that the United Arab Emirates (UAE) Air Force, and it's 80 F-16E fighters could probably quickly destroy the entire Iranian Air Force. The Gulf Arabs would prefer the Iranians to believe their own propaganda, that the Iranian military is much more powerful than it actually is. The Iranian Air Force is mainly a mighty force only in terms of Iranian propaganda. The Gulf Arabs don't want the Iranians to make a strong effort to upgrade their...

Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus tells Bahrain conference calls in Mideast countries to join forces in order to curb Tehran's nuclear ambitions WASHINGTON - The United Arab Emirates, a key US ally in the Persian Gulf, has the capability to overpower Iran's Air Force, US Centcom commander Gen. David Petraeus said last week.

U.S. President Barack Obama has scaled back the scope of the Afghan war, now about to enter its ninth year, to a limited military objective: deny al-Qaida a safe haven. And since we are now told there are fewer than 100 al-Qaida terrorists in Afghanistan — the rest are in Pakistan's tribal areas — a three-way deal between the Karzai government, powerful warlords and Taliban chief Mullah Mohammad Omar would seem to be the better part of valor. After Iraq, we cannot afford another trillion-dollar war. It took the United States 233 years (1776-2009) to amass a national debt of...

What did the U.S. military offensive against Shiite militias in Sadr City in April 2008 and the Israeli offensive against Hamas in Gaza last December have in common? A lot, apparently, and both operations are being held up by their respective militaries as models for a new way of battling irregular fighters in urban strongholds. Central Command chief Gen. David Petraeus likes to put up a PowerPoint slide in public briefings detailing the forces, intelligence and surveillance assets involved in the Sadr city battles as representative of a new way of fighting. “This is the answer,” Petraeus said at a...

Politics: Democrats say Rush Limbaugh is running the Republican Party. Better Rush than George Soros, who is running the Democrats. At least Rush believes in freedom, capitalism and letting you keep what you earn. The cover of the March 7 issue of Newsweek shows a picture of conservative icon Limbaugh with a piece of tape covering his mouth and the word "Enough!" So much for disagreeing with what you say but defending to the death your right to say it. Voltaire could never be a contributor to Newsweek