en-us 1200 A daily (duty days) concise compilation of the most current published news articles and commentary concerning the most significant defense and defense-related national security issues. Available by 0530 hrs. http://ebird.osd.mil/ SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Wall Street Journal) Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday urged Congress to pass legislation to allocate more funding for the war in Afghanistan by the beginning of July. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759059.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (NYTimes.com) Gates added, however, that all options, including a military strike, were still on the table in dealing with Tehran on the nuclear issue. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759080.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (FOX) Defense Secretary Robert Gates discusses the war in Afghanistan, the oil spill, Iran, the defense bill and don't ask, don't tell. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759089.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Reuters.com) U.S.-led forces are making progress against insurgents in Afghanistan despite significant casualties and concerns about the quality of Afghan troops, U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Sunday. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759082.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Boston Globe) Defense Secretary Robert Gates said yesterday that President Obama could end up vetoing legislation that would lift the ban on gays serving openly in the military — if the bill also contains money for defense projects he says are wasteful. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759095.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Boston Globe) Gates asked for time and patience to demonstrate that the new strategy is working. He lamented that Americans are too quick to write off the war when Obama’s revamped strategy has only just begun to take hold. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759099.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (ABC) In an excerpt from ABC's "This Week" interview, Rahm Emanuel talks about Afghanistan and the 2011 troop withdrawal. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759109.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Los Angeles Times) Top Obama administration officials Sunday continued their campaign to paint a more positive picture of progress in the Afghanistan conflict, even as they declined to predict how many American troops might begin to leave Afghanistan next year. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759165.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Politico Live (Politico.com)) Defense Secretary Robert Gates on Sunday contradicted Vice President Joe Biden’s pledge that in July 2011 “a whole lot” of U.S. forces will be leaving Afghanistan. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759022.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Bloomberg.com) Sanctions and other policies “have a reasonable chance of getting the Iranian regime finally to come to their senses and realize their security is probably more endangered by going forward than stopping” the nuclear program, Gates said. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759184.html SUNDAY TALK SHOWS (Washington Times) Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Sunday that Iran's government is becoming a military dictatorship, with religious leaders being sidelined and, as a result, new sanctions could pressure Tehran into curbing its illegal nuclear program. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759150.html AFGHANISTAN (New York Times) The bomb appeared to have been intended for Afghan soldiers who go regularly to Kabul Bank to collect their pay. Seventeen civilians were wounded in the attack. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759077.html AFGHANISTAN (Reuters.com) Afghan President Hamid Karzai earns $525 a month, has less than $20,000 in the bank and owns no land or property, according to a declaration of his assets on Sunday by an anti-graft body. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759183.html AFGHANISTAN (Washington Post) The revolt of the Gizab Good Guys began with a clandestine 2 a.m. meeting. By sunrise, 15 angry villagers had set up checkpoints on the main road and captured their first prisoners. In the following hours, their ranks swelled with dozens of rifle-toting neighbors eager to join. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759037.html AFGHANISTAN (Philadelphia Inquirer) A panel formed by the Afghan government to process the release of imprisoned Taliban suspects in a controversial effort to entice the insurgents into peace talks has set free 14 detainees already, primarily from U.S. custody, and more than two dozen more releases are imminent, Afghan officials said Sunday. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759148.html AFGHANISTAN (Washington Times) Within the U.S. military's rank and file, there are growing doubts about winning in Afghanistan, a mood that contradicts upbeat war reports delivered to Congress last week by the top commander and officials. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759149.html AFGHANISTAN (Yahoo.com) A military helicopter crashed during an early morning operation in southern Afghanistan on Monday, killing three Australian commandoes and an American service member, officials said. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759190.html DEFENSE DEPARTMENT (Capital Business) The Pentagon has hired 3,400 people since the fall of 2009 and replaced about 1,400 contractors with government workers as part of an aggressive effort to strengthen its oversight of acquisitions. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759193.html DEFENSE DEPARTMENT (Declassified (blog.newsweek.com)) The Pentagon’s main spy outfit, the Defense Intelligence Agency, is building a new database which will consolidate in one system “human intelligence” information on groups and individuals—potentially including Americans—collected by DIA operatives in United States and abroad. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759156.html MARINE CORPS (San Diego Union-Tribune) Exercises prepare Marines to teach police and army units. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759170.html MARINE CORPS (Los Angeles Times) During an amphibious assault exercise at Camp Pendleton, Marines appear rusty. They haven't made such a landing since the Korean War — and some leaders wonder whether they will ever do it again. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759158.html NAVY (New York Times) The smoking lamp is going out all across the Navy’s submarine fleet, where the mission to “run silent, run deep” now will be carried out by sailors ordered to run undersea operations without cigarettes, cigars or pipes. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759078.html NATIONAL GUARD/RESERVE (San Antonio Express-News) Military plane flown by S.A.-trained pilots tracks the BP spill. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759171.html IRAQ (New York Times) Also on Sunday, the Iraqi authorities said they had found the decomposing bodies of seven people inside a house in central Baghdad. All had been shot in the head and were believed to have been dead for at least a week. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759073.html IRAQ (Washington Post) Two car bombs exploded near a government-owned bank in central Baghdad on Sunday, killing at least 26 people and injuring more than 53, police said. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759057.html IRAQ (Los Angeles Times) Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi, who is vying to once again lead his nation, on Sunday accused unnamed figures in the current government of being involved in a plot to kill him. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759153.html PAKISTAN (Washington Post) The United States has warned Pakistan that a recently signed gas pipeline deal with Iran could run afoul of new sanctions being finalized in Congress, the U.S. special representative to Pakistan and Afghanistan said Sunday. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759088.html PAKISTAN (Atlanta Journal-Constitution) Pakistan hasn't quit its habit of courting insurgents, and extremist networks with current or former ties to the government pose a significant risk to the United States and Pakistan's elected government itself, a new study concludes. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759086.html PAKISTAN (London Times) China is expected to formally announce the plans to build the 650-megawatt reactors in Punjab province at a meeting in New Zealand of the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG) — the 46 countries that dominate and try to control the world’s atomic trade. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759027.html PAKISTAN (Newsweek.com) Under intense U.S. pressure to drive deeper into the jihadist havens of North and South Waziristan, Pakistan is trying to clear the area its own way. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759146.html MIDEAST (Financial Times) Celso Amorim, Brazil’s foreign minister, told the Financial Times the country would no longer seek to settle the nuclear dispute after the US rejected a Turkish-Brazilian deal with Iran to exchange half Tehran’s stockpile of enriched uranium for nuclear fuel for a research reactor. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759032.html MIDEAST (Arizona Daily Star (Tucson)) A state media report says Iran has banned two U.N. nuclear inspectors from entering the country. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759139.html ASIA/PACIFIC (Honolulu Star-Advertiser) Every two years, a unique tide surges into Hawaii. This week, it arrives again, in the form of 14 nations, 34 ships, five submarines and more than 100 aircraft and 20,000 military personnel. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759010.html ASIA/PACIFIC (South China Morning Post) People’s Liberation Army naval officials have told their international peers they must wait for “political approval” to mount a historic expansion of China’s role in the fight against piracy off the Horn of Africa by leading co-ordination efforts. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759119.html LEGAL AFFAIRS (TheDailyBeast.com) A spokeswoman for the group says that Assange arrived Sunday evening in Brussels by air and will appear Monday at an anticensorship conference, where he is expected to reveal his timeline for releasing a classified Pentagon video depicting an American airstrike in Afghanistan that left as many as 140 civilians dead. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759024.html TERRORISM (Philadelphia Inquirer) In a newly released message, al-Qaeda's U.S.-born spokesman warned President Obama that the group would launch new attacks that would kill more Americans than previous ones. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759147.html POLITICS (Wall Street Journal) This was once a town that fed at the trough of pork-barrel politics. Now it's contemplating life on a diet. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759058.html OBITUARY (Boston Globe) A man from Washington state who became the Army’s first black helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War has died. William H. Holloman, a Tuskegee airman in World War II who also served in Vietnam, was 85. Mon, 21 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759094.html OPINION (New York Daily News) Things are grim in Afghanistan, but victory remains in sight. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759012.html OPINION (Wall Street Journal) A dramatic hostage rescue reflects the military's increasing professionalism. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759064.html OPINION (Financial Times) The plan now should be to avoid doing anything that makes it more difficult to absorb the insurgency within a political process, and isolate the hardliners by talking to more moderate Taliban. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759036.html OPINION (Winter Haven (FL) News Chief) While President Barack Obama is deploying very muscular military rhetoric to compare BP's oil-pollution catastrophe to war, Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been diligently dealing with our vexing, very real wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Too bad this is not getting many headlines. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759194.html OPINION (Washington Post) The Post's recent editorial on U.S. funding for Iraq's defense ministry ["Poor transition," June 18] accused the Senate Armed Services Committee of ignoring "a few facts" in trimming $1 billion from the administration's request of $2 billion for Iraq security funding. That's funny, because The Post ignored plenty of facts in its editorial. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759053.html OPINION (Washington Post) The June 17 editorial "The Afghan roller coaster" took a select portion of my statement to the Senate Armed Services Committee out of context and turned on its head the centerpiece of the testimony Gen. David H. Petraeus and I gave to Congress. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759054.html OPINION (Washington Post) In 36 of those cases -- more than 70 percent of the time -- the courts found no such basis and ordered the detainees released. Yet 13 of those men, cleared by the courts of any involvement in wrongdoing, remain imprisoned. Sun, 20 Jun 2010 04:00:00 GMT http://ebird.osd.mil/ebfiles/e20100621759055.html