Robert Gates: “The plan gives commanders the flexibility to pause the redeployment of combat brigades temporarily for the period…”

Such an attack would make a nuclear-armed Iran inevitable.

He would be candid and honest, willing to tell the President straight from the shoulder what he needs to hear.

I think the president is — based on what I read — is getting the sense that, as he put it, that Putin is 'tapping' him along.

This is a Department that principally plans for war. It is not organized to wage war, and that is what I am trying to fix.