Notwithstanding the beefing up of U.S. forces there, the United States in the person of Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has signaled an openness towards accepting the sort of deal for the Afghans that the Pakistanis have now acquiesced to in the Swat Valley.
Mr. LARRY WILKERSON: What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made.
Mr. DONALD RUMSFELD (Secretary of Defense, United States): Those reports have been flying around since about four months I assumed my post in 2001.
The United States Senate is poised to confirm as the next Secretary of Defense a man who, back during Angleton's days, would have been considered a security threat.
CENTERFORSECURITYPOLICY: Determined disinterest in our own destruction
In July 2011, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta said the United States was "within reach of strategically defeating al Qaeda, " and that he believed of all al Qaeda affiliates, AQAP posed the greatest threat to the U.S. homeland.
Tomorrow, the United States Senate will decide whether Chuck Hagel should be the next Secretary of Defense.
Baker, Hamilton and - until recently - Robert Gates, the man President Bush nominated last week to replace Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, believe that the United States can and should negotiate with terrorists, like the Iranian and Syrian regimes, over the future of Iraq.
Defense Secretary William Perry said the United States would be part of a powerful force that "would bring a large hammer down" on anyone who attacked it.
The former defense secretary strongly believed that the United States should remove virtually all of its combat brigades by the first quarter of 2008.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has repeatedly indicated that he believes the United States must focus its shrinking defense resources on fighting counter-insurgency operations like today's conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq. (The latter, of course, continues, even though Mr. Obama has unilaterally declared an "end to combat operations" there - the triumph of a campaign promise over conditions-on-the-ground-based considerations or national interests).
At this High Level Meeting (HLM), senior representatives of the United States government Under Secretary of Commerce Dennis Kloske, Under Secretary of State Reginald Bartholomew and Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz will be buffeted by intense allied pressure to weaken, if not effectively to dismantle, the existing multilateral arrangements for denying Warsaw Pact nations militarily relevant technologies.
In a recent speech to the Center for Security Policy, former Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger argued that such Western assistance to Moscow center put the United States and its allies squarely on the wrong side in the Soviet Union.
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