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Hagel Stumped By Soldiers Question…

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

Defense secretary Chuck Hagel was stumped by an Army staff sergeant who asked him for an assurance that the security situation in Afghanistan wouldn’t deteriorate after the withdrawal of American forces the way broad areas of Iraq succumbed to the Islamic State.

“In the end each country must take the responsibility for their own futures and for their own fate and for governing themselves,” Hagel replied.

The outgoing Pentagon chief insisted that Iraq and Afghanistan are “more different” than they are alike, although he noted some troubling similarities.

“But yes, some similar threats: terrorism,” he said. “Some of the same factors, some of the same organizations that wanted to do everything they can to destroy the United States as well as Western values and Western civilization. So there are common interests. There are common challenges. But how we work and cooperate with other countries is always — is always a little different. And I think that in this case that’s the case.”

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Hagel: ‘Climate Change Presents Security Issues for Us’ (+video)

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Photo Credit: AP / Manuel Balce CenetaDefense Secretary Chuck Hagel expressed hope Wednesday that next week’s midterm election would deliver an outcome that enables Congress to “work together,” in order to deal with critical security issues, including “global warming.”

Hagel, speaking at the the Washington Ideas Forum, argued that climate change presents significant security challenges.

“From my perspective, within the portfolio that I have responsibility for – security of this country – climate change presents security issues for us.”

He cited as an example melting glaciers in the Arctic, saying that was having an effect on exploration for oil, natural gas and minerals.

“As the oceans increase it’ll affect our [military] bases, it’ll affect islands, it’ll affect security across the world,” he said. “So, just from my narrow perspective, what I have responsibility for, that’s happening now, and we have to be prepared for that.”

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Hagel: Military Should Review Transgender Ban

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Photo Credit: Fox News

Photo Credit: Fox News

The prohibition on transgender individuals serving in the U.S. military “continually should be reviewed,” Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said on Sunday.

Hagel did not indicate whether he believes the policy should be overturned. However, he said “every qualified American who wants to serve our country should have an opportunity if they fit the qualifications and can do it.”

A transgender individual is someone who has acquired the physical characteristics of the opposite sex or presents themselves in a way that does not correspond with their sex at birth.

A panel convened by a think tank at San Francisco State University recently estimated that about 15,450 transgender personnel serve in the military and in the National Guard and Reserve.

In 2010, Congress passed legislation allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly. Hagel said the issue of transgender serving in the military is more complicated. He said “these issues require medical attention” that at times cannot be provided in austere locations.

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Hagel Sends US Troops Into Philippines to Help with Post-Typhoon Humanitarian Efforts

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Photo Credit: REUTERSSecretary of Defense Chuck Hagel on Sunday directed the U.S. Pacific Command to support American humanitarian relief efforts in the Philippines in the wake of Typhoon Haiyan.

Col. Brad Bartelt, a Marine Corps spokesman, said the U.S. military was called in at the request of the Philippines government.

Haiyan struck the island nation Friday, impacted more than 4.2 million people across 36 provinces in the Philippines, according to the Philippine government’s National Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

The death toll has reached 1,000 but the number is projected to climb to 10,000.

Philippine officials say they will have a better idea about fatalities and damage in the coming days as transportation and communications systems are repaired.

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Obama, Biden, Kerry, Hagel, Clinton Backed ‘Reformer’ Assad During Bush Administration

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Photo Credit: AFP

Photo Credit: AFP

Kerry’s cozy dinner with Syria’s ‘Hitler’: Secretary of State and the man he likened to German dictator are pictured dining with their wives at Damascus restaurant before civil war broke out

By Anthony Bond and David Martosko.

An astonishing photograph of John Kerry having a cozy and intimate dinner with Bashar al-Assad has emerged at the moment the U.S Secretary of State is making the case to bomb the Syrian dictator’s country and remove him from power.

Kerry, who compared Assad to Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein yesterday, is pictured around a small table with his wife Teresa Heinz and the Assads in 2009.

Assad and Kerry, then a Massachusetts senator, lean in towards each other and appear deep in conversation as their spouses look on.

A waiter is pictured at their side with a tray of green drinks, believed to be lemon and crushed mint.

The picture was likely taken in February 2009 in the Naranj restaurant in Damascus, when Kerry led a delegation to Syria to discuss finding a way forward for peace in the region.

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Photo Credit: EPA

Photo Credit: EPA

Excerpted from Washington Times: The Obama national security team that wants to go to war with Syria and demonizes President Bashar Assad is the same group that, as senators, urged reaching out to the dictator.

As a bloc on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, President Obama, Secretary of State John F. Kerry, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and Vice President Joseph R. Biden all opposed the George W. Bush administration’s playing tough with Mr. Assad.

None grew closer to Mr. Assad and promoted him in Washington more than Mr. Kerry.

“President Assad has been very generous with me in terms of the discussions we have had,” Mr. Kerry, as a senator from Massachusetts, told an audience at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in March 2011. He predicted that Mr. Assad would change for the better.

But that same month, pro-democracy demonstrations erupted in Syria that would lead to a civil war, unmasking Mr. Assad’s brutal tactics, including the Aug. 21 unleashing of nerve gas that killed more than 1,400 civilians.

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Hagel Announces New Measures to Try to Stamp out Sex Assaults in the Military

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Photo Credit: Pete MarovichThe Pentagon has unveiled a range of initiatives to curb sexual assault in the ranks and tackle what military leaders have described as a “crisis” of confidence which prevents victims coming forward.

The new initiatives, to be implemented immediately, include greater protections of victims, including the expansion of an air force initiative to provide victims with a legal advocacy programme. Other changes include ensuring that pretrial investigations are conducted by judge advocate generals and improved tracking and follow-up of sexual assault cases.

In a memo to staff, Chuck Hagel, the defence secretary, described sexual assault as “a stain on the honor of our men and women who honorably serve our country, as well as a threat to the discipline and the cohesion of our force.”

He said the measures would “improve victim support, strengthen pretrial investigations, enhance oversight, and make prevention and response efforts more consistent across the military services”.

But the moves fell short of the overhaul in the system victims advocates and some lawmakers say is needed. Military critics say that to address the breakdown of trust in its handling of such cases, the responsibility for prosecuting sexual assault has to be removed from the chain of command.

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Hagel: Budget Cuts Could Force Navy to Sideline 3 Aircraft Carriers

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By Associated Press. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel warned Wednesday that the Pentagon may have to mothball up to three Navy aircraft carriers and order additional sharp reductions in the size of the Army and Marine Corps if Congress doesn’t act to avoid massive budget cuts beginning in 2014.

Speaking to Pentagon reporters, and indirectly to Congress, Hagel said that the full result of the sweeping budget cuts over the next 10 years could leave the nation with an ill-prepared, under-equipped military doomed to face more technologically advanced enemies.

In his starkest terms to date, Hagel laid out a worst-case scenario for the U.S. military if the Pentagon is forced to slash more than $50 billion from the 2014 budget and $500 billion over the next 10 years as a result of Congressionally-mandated automatic spending cuts.

The Pentagon has been ratcheting up a persistent drumbeat about the dire effects of the budget cuts on national defense, and as Congress continues to wrangle over spending bills on Capitol Hill. Read more from this story HERE.

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Photo Credit: APHagel: Smaller budget means smaller military

By Kristina Wong. A smaller Army and Marine Corps, consolidated combatant commands and a “decade-long modernization holiday” will befall the U.S. military if defense cuts known as sequestration remain in place, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Wednesday.

Mr. Hagel unveiled Wednesday the results of a department-wide fiscal review that identified budget items that would be cut to accommodate $500 billion in reduced defense spending over the next decade.

If Congress does not reverse the cuts, the Army could shrink to 380,000 troops from its target strength of 490,000. Similarly, the Army Reserves, which has been mostly saved from sequestration, would face reductions.

In addition, the Navy’s aircraft carriers could be reduced from 11 to eight or nine, the Corps could field as low as 150,000 Marines instead of 182,000, and combatant commands — headquarters dedicated to a region or specific function — could be merged.

“This strategic choice would result in a force that would be technologically dominant but would be much smaller and able to go fewer places and do fewer things, especially if crisis occurred at the same time in different regions of the world,” Mr. Hagel said. Read more from this story HERE.

Defense Secretary Hagel to DoD: Furloughs to Last Through At Least Next Year, Will Likely Get Worse

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Photo Credit: APThe audience gasped in surprise and gave a few low whistles as Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel delivered the news that furloughs, which have forced a 20 percent pay cut on most of the military’s civilian workforce, probably will continue next year, and it might get worse.

“Those are the facts of life,” Hagel told about 300 Defense Department employees, most of them middle-aged civilians, last week at an Air Force reception hall on a military base in Charleston.

Future layoffs also are possible for the department’s civilian workforce of more than 800,000 employees, Hagel said, if Congress fails to stem the cuts in the next budget year, which starts Oct. 1.

On the heels of the department’s first furlough day, and in three days of visits with members of the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps, Hagel played the unenviable role of messenger to a frustrated and fearful workforce coping with the inevitability of a spending squeeze at the end of more than a decade of constant and costly war.

The fiscal crunch also lays bare the politically unpopular, if perhaps necessary, need to bring runaway military costs in line with most of the rest of the American public that has struggled economically for years.

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Military Promotes Gay Pride Month; Directives Sent to Commands

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Photo Credit: AP

Photo Credit: AP

The U.S. military is embracing a celebration of homosexuals in the ranks this month by sending out a gay pride poster and a directive to commands, while planning a Pentagon symposium that will be attended by Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel.

In the aftermath of ending the ban on open gays in the military, the Pentagon last June recognized Gay Pride Month for the first time in a subdued recognition of uniformed and civilian gays. As defense secretary at the time, Leon E. Panetta gave a public statement, and a Pentagon event featured an active-duty gay Marine, a gay Air Force civilian lawyer and a lesbian who had served in the Army.

Pride month is low-key again this year. The Pentagon has handed off planning for the event to DOD Pride, an organization of gay military and civilian employees. Directives that have been issued do not say commands must hold similar celebrations.

“Secretary Hagel looks forward to participating in this year’s DOD Pride event at the Pentagon on Tuesday, June 25 to celebrate LGBT Pride Month,” Pentagon spokesman George Little said.

“Secretary Hagel is also looking forward to welcoming [senior White House adviser] Valerie Jarrett to the Pentagon, who will represent President Obama in delivering the keynote address at the event,” Mr. Little said.

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CIA to Arm, Train Syrian Rebels; Hagel Says US Jets, Missiles Brought to Jordan Will Stay (+video)

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photo credit: secretary of defense

As the United States prepares to supply Syrian rebels with small arms through a CIA-run program, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said Saturday that U.S. troops temporarily in neighboring Jordan will leave behind fighter jets and a cache of Patriot missiles.

So far the White House has committed only to supplying rebel forces with small arms and ammunition, following confirmation that the regime of Syria President Bashar al-Assad’s has been using chemical weapons in the 2-year-long civil war in which at least 90,000 people have been killed.

Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain and other Capitol Hill military hawks have called for much heavier arms including the Patriot defense missiles and for the United States to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria.

Read more from this story HERE.