And this particular banker finances the Pentagon s entire budget.

Dire warnings from Pentagon over potential defense cuts

Before joining the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld was a key player as well.

The US government and many observers believe that if the US can just get basic services established in Baghdad, and perhaps catch Saddam Hussein, then the situation will quiet down.

The goal seems to be to install a regime led by friends of the Pentagon, such as Ahmed Chalabi.

Likewise, only by adopting such a strategy can the US start to compress the Pentagon s inflated budget and begin to address its many domestic woes.

It is deeply troubling that the US has allocated 185 billion to augment its nuclear stockpile over the next decade, on top of the ordinary annual nuclear weapons budget of more than 50 billion. Just as unsettling is the Pentagon s push for the development of nuclear armed drones H bombs deliverable by remote control.

Just as unsettling is the Pentagon s push for the development of nuclear armed drones H bombs deliverable by remote control.

Perhaps Bush did not personally recognize this, but Vice President Dick Cheney and a group of extremists concentrated in and around the Pentagon did.

It was given to me, in the bowels of the Pentagon, by a man with a white dust jacket and a pointer who looked uncannily like Woody Allen.

Last August, The New York Times reported the existence of the Pentagon inspector general investigation, opened after complaints by Centcom analysts.

This comes after a first term in which public diplomacy was a neglected stepchild, and a Pentagon advisory panel summed up the situation as a crisis.

Whether the Panetta letter and the fresh warnings from Senators will increase pressure for a budget compromise or step up calls to exempt the Pentagon from cuts remains to be seen.

Long simmering disagreements between Turkey and the US came to a boil with the emergence of the Kurds of northern Iraq as the Pentagon's main allies in the Iraq War.

A 2010 Pentagon report cites Chinese military preemption in 1950, 1962, 1969, and 1979 in the name of strategic defense.

None of this makes Julian Assange a Daniel Ellsberg (who 40 years ago leaked the Pentagon Papers, exposing US government thinking on Vietnam).

Mere weeks after the planes hit, Pentagon planners negotiated a return of American troops to Mindanao for the first time since the colonial era.

Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Evans, a Pentagon spokesman, said in a statement that the Defense Department would not comment on the congressional report while the inspector general's investigation continued.

But the Iraq war s domestic impact the Pentagon s ever mushrooming budget and its long term influence on the US economy may turn out to be its most lasting consequence.

As Brig. General Robert Caslen, the Pentagon s deputy director for the war on terrorism, put it, We are not killing them faster than they are being created.

A recent Pentagon report is unsparing The history of modern Chinese warfare provides numerous case studies in which China s leaders have claimed military preemption as a strategically defensive act.

Soon, however, the Pentagon's language lost its sharp edge the problem did not really exist as the captives would be released soon anyway, and were treated well anyway.

The Pentagon s East Asia Strategy Review, which has guided American policy since 1995, offered China integration into the international system through trade and exchange programs.

Gates pointed out that military spending totals nearly a half trillion dollars annually, compared to the State Department s budget of 36 billion. He acknowledged that for the head of the Pentagon to plead for more resources for the State Department was odd, but these are not normal times.

I doubt that any 50 billion in the Pentagon s budget could do more to make the world safer than doubling aid to the world s poorest people.

When I was supervising the Pentagon s East Asia Strategy Review in 1994, we rejected the idea of containment of China for two reasons.

He acknowledged that for the head of the Pentagon to plead for more resources for the State Department was odd, but these are not normal times.

True, the American military has impressive operational capacity, but turning to the Pentagon because it can get things done creates an image of an over militarized foreign policy.

There is a clear parallel between the recent Afghanistan leaks and Daniel Ellsberg s release in 1971 of the Pentagon Papers, which helped the American public understand how the war in Vietnam was really being conducted.

But assaults are notoriously underreported, and by the Pentagon's own estimate, that figure accounts for approximately 13.5 percent of the estimated 19,000 incidents that occurred that year.

The Pentagon's budget is not simply big it accounts for more than one half of all US government spending on research and development in France, defense spending is only around a quarter of the total.

Even the Pentagon s Defense Science Board admits this, reporting that America s strategic communication lacks Presidential direction, effective interagency coordination, optimal private sector partnerships, and adequate resources.

According to the New York Times , Pentagon officials have said, thousands of military specialists in civil affairs familiar with the linguistic and cultural differences within Iraq would probably be deployed throughout the country .

Relations between the United States and Iran have been officially non existent since a group of radical students stormed the US embassy in Teheran 25 years ago this week taking sixty six Americans hostage for 444 days. Sixty years ago, Arak was a humble village known to US troops for its grapes today Pentagon officials hone in on it as an industrial city that is integral to Iran s worrisome nuclear program.

Sixty years ago, Arak was a humble village known to US troops for its grapes today Pentagon officials hone in on it as an industrial city that is integral to Iran s worrisome nuclear program.

With news of the US suspecting Russia of hacking into the Pentagon e mail system still buzzing, it seems almost ironic that Russia's own Defense Ministry would fall prey to a similar information security issue.

In 1998, when America complained about seven Moscow Internet addresses involved in the theft of Pentagon and NASA secrets, the Russian government replied that phone numbers from which the attacks originated were inoperative.

I had the honor of attending the premiere of The Most Dangerous Man in America , the new documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his daring release of the Pentagon Papers against the will of the US government to The New York Times back in 1971.

Panetta has been increasingly outspoken about the possible cuts, although he came to the top Pentagon job with years of budget expertise himself in Congress and the White House and knowing that he was facing tough choices.

Fifteen years later, in 1982, when Neil Sheehan was researching his book about the war, A Bright and Shining Lie, he came across documents concerning my Pentagon assisted manuscript.

I had the honor of attending the premiere of The Most Dangerous Man in America , the new documentary about Daniel Ellsberg and his daring release of the Pentagon Papers against the will of the US government to The New York Times back in 1971.

Yet, despite public promises by Kerry to supply the Syrian opposition with weapons and even after Obama declared that Assad must go Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, announced that the Pentagon had no such plans.