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September 16, 2013  

Decrying sequestration | Strategic myopia | Obama/DoD reset

Writing in Defense News, Christine Fox, a former director of the Pentagon’s Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation office, defends the SCMR review, says real savings lie in BRAC rounds and compensation reform, and most of all: “Pretending that the ongoing political stalemate that perpetuates that the sequester is not harmful is the most harmful thing we can do.”

In the National Interest, Gian Gentile says the military’s “hyper-focus” on learning and adapting has prevented it “from stepping back and objectively assessing the overall strategic and political worth of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.”

The Boston Globe interviews Thomas “Cyber War Will Not Take Place” Rid.

At DefenseOne, Marine Corps Commandant calls for a 174,000-strong Corps.

Vanity Fair’s long-expected piece about the F-35 is long.

And in the latest part of a debate on the civilian-military relationship, retired 3-star David Barno takes issue with MGEN Scales’ op/ed.

In related news, the New York Times says Obama feels burned by the military advice he received about troop escalation in Afghanistan.

Warlord’s Quote of the Day

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who…if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” — President Teddy Roosevelt

Contributed by Col. (ret.) Mike Furlong, an information and intelligence specialist. From a list compiled by the Warlord Loop, a private email forum for national security experts.

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