Center for a New American Security

This may seem a little incongruous today given the terrible news out of Texas. But as our hearts go out to the families of the victims there, maybe this can serve as an antidote to the tragedy for the rest of us. Because this little girl is about to give a report to her fourth-grade class on her father, who she thinks is still serving in Iraq. And I'm not going to lie, gang, you'll want to keep a box of tissues handy for this one... (h/t AS)

Secretary Gates continues to surprise. (Though his fights with the boys in blue have been well chronicled here.) This is about as close to relief for cause as we're gonna get:

Sec. Gates really slapped down the U.S. Air Force today:

Abu Muqawama finally got around to reading Bob Worth's article in today's New York Times on Mudher al-Kharbit.

In a sense, his predicament can be traced to the night of April 11, 2003, when he arrived back at his family’s palatial compound west of Baghdad to find the main house a heap of burning rubble. The American military had bombed it, having heard that Mr. Hussein was hiding there.

All we're saying is that if the U.S. Air Force and its military-industrial complex proxies can wine and dine crooked congressmen with booze and hookers and goodness knows what else (sheep? teenage page boys?), active-duty officer John Nagl should be allowed to write an op-ed in the New York Times asking for an adviser corps.

From Danger Room:

So John McCain scuttled an Air Force scheme to lease tankers from Boeing in a sweetheart deal. And then he pressured the Air Force to open a competitive bid on its new tanker contract.

So far, so fair.

Boeing, the heavy favorite to win the contract, having built earlier tankers, promised a new boom but did not build a prototype. One analyst who followed the contest said that Boeing, based in Chicago, seemed arrogant and offered a plan that Air Force officials thought would deliver only 19 tankers by 2013 compared with 49 by the Airbus team.

It doesn't happen very often, but the New York Times has a defense-related staff editorial today with which Abu Muqawama heartily agrees (comments below):

The Air Force, in a stunning upset against the Boeing Company, awarded a $40 billion contract for aerial refueling tankers on Friday to a partnership between Northrop Grumman and the European parent of U.S. Air Force