Defense and the National Interest – Martin van Creveld’s latest proposal for the Middle East.
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Monthly Archives: February 2007
Russian Navy – Russia Plans New ICBMs, Nuclear Subs
Associated Press – Russia’s defense minister on Wednesday laid out an ambitious plan for building new intercontinental ballistic missiles, nuclear submarines and possibly aircraft carriers, and set the goal of exceeding the Soviet army in combat readiness.
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US Marines – Problems Stall Pentagon's New Fighting Vehicle
Washington Post – After 10 years and $1.7 billion, this is what the Marines Corps got for its investment in a new amphibious vehicle: A craft that breaks down about an average of once every 4 1/2 hours, leaks and sometimes veers off course???And for that, the contractor, General Dynamics of Falls Church, received $80 million in bonuses.
Geopolitics / Russia – Kremlin, Inc.
New Yorker – Why are Vladimir Putinís opponents dying? An insightful look into the state of politics and government in Russia today.
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Iraq – Officers With PhDs Advising War Effort
Washington Post – Gen. David H. Petraeus, the new U.S. commander in Iraq, is assembling a small band of warrior-intellectuals — including a quirky Australian anthropologist, a Princeton economist who is the son of a former U.S. attorney general and a military expert on the Vietnam War sharply critical of its top commanders — in an eleventh-hour effort to reverse the downward trend in the Iraq war.
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Iraq – US Army report got Iraq right
UPI – A month before the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, a team of military and Middle East experts at the Army War College published a 60-page booklet that laid out in detail the problems the U.S. military would likely encounter and how to mitigate them.
Here is the report: Reconstructing Iraq: Insights, Challenges, and Missions for Military Forces in a Post-Conflict Scenario.
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US Marines – Tom Ricks' InBox
Washington Post – How Marines Feel About Their Gear.
US Navy – New riverine squadron is established at Little Creek
Virginian Pilot – The Navy established its second riverine warfare squadron at a ceremony Friday morning at Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
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Geopolitics / Health – The Challenge of Global Health
Foreign Affairs – Thanks to a recent extraordinary rise in public and private giving, today more money is being directed toward the world’s poor and sick than ever before. But unless these efforts start tackling public health in general instead of narrow, disease-specific problems — and unless the brain drain from the developing world can be stopped — poor countries could be pushed even further into trouble, in yet another tale of well-intended foreign meddling gone awry.
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US Navy – US Navy seeks new owner for retired research submarine
Associated Press – Free to a good home: vintage submarine, recently restored. One prior owner.
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US Navy – Carrier Eisenhower returns to Gulf after mission off Africa
Associated Press – The U.S. Navy has scaled back its presence off Somalia’s coast, withdrawing the Norfolk-based Eisenhower aircraft carrier after a three-week mission there.
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Iraq – General Decries Surge in Troops
The Chronicle – In a speech highly critical of the war in Iraq, retired Marine General Anthony Zinni told a packed house at the Sanford Institute of Public Policy that they must decisively choose a course of action in that conflict.
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US Coast Guard – America's ship-tracking challenge
Christian Science Monitor – The federally mandated national system is estimated to cost $200 million, but some mariners have already set one up from Maine to New York ñ for $50,000.
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