“Major General” on The Daily Caller

As Vice President Biden prepares to meet Tuesday with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the White House has announced the man overseeing U.S. funding for that country’s reconstruction has resigned. (more)

SWAT VALLEY, Pakistan (AP) — The painting is disturbing: raindrops shaped like bullets and branches intended to look like blood-soaked necks. The artist was a boy recruited by the Taliban to help kill Pakistani soldiers. (more)

Listening to Prime Minister Erdogan’s amped-up rhetoric against the United States and Israel makes me genuinely scared for my country. I believe that people should be able to think for themselves, and to assess a situation based on the facts, not based on someone trying to make them afraid or blame some outside “bogeyman” for what’s going wrong with their lives or their country. It’s time to see those tactics for what they are: popular demagogy is a manipulative act that requires close scrutiny as people are looking toward the future to what they could become. (more)

After Jack Murtha, another Pennsylvania all-star, made an art form out of shoving our troops under the bus for his own career, I never thought I’d live to see what Rep. Patrick Murphy has just done: a neatly bundled vote wrapped in the flag with a camouflage bow on top. And a price tag. (more)

Every day there’s a new development in the Iraqi election dispute and more frequent, fresh attacks. “I really don’t know how it will end,” said former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. He may not see the finish line but the U.S. military does. “We are on track with our responsible drawdown plan,” said Maj. Gen. Stephen Lanza, a U.S. military spokesman. (more)

BAGHDAD (AP) — A flurry of attacks blamed on al-Qaida defied claims by the U.S. and Iraq that they dealt the militants a severe blow by killing their two leaders last month. (more)

The lapdog congress, tailor to our imperial president, gave him a garment made of health care. Unfortunately, the expensive suit may come apart at the seams and he finds himself needful of new clothing material. So he decided foreign affairs are just the stuff. As a result, and because President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are leaders and statesmen in name only, American foreign policy is now in shambles on every continent. Why do the incompetents persist? (more)

Transportation Security Administration nominee Maj. Gen. Robert Harding told senators last week that he hoped to quickly transform aviation security by having screeners interact more with airline passengers and moving “closer to an Israeli model.” (more)

Today marks the 7th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War and it’s quite remarkable to see just how far this country has come. In looking at the preliminary election results it’s hard not to reflect on the 2000 presidential election in the United States. It’s close and the votes are still being tallied. At one point this week, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki trailed his closest contender, former Prime Minister Ayad Allawi. Now, with al-Maliki back in the lead, some 40,000 votes separate their coalitions out of 83 percent counted. He is fighting for his political life. (more)

As voting begins in Iraq, the Iranian government is wringing their hands with fear and nervousness that this young democracy will alter the landscape of the Middle East into something they do not welcome. “They continue to play a role in supporting surrogates inside of Iraq that continue to conduct attacks both against U.S. and Iraqi security forces,” Gen. Ray Odierno, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, said at a Pentagon press conference last week. (more)

During his first year in office, President Obama made several consequential decisions on a wide range of national security issues. Key among those were his decisions, bucking many in his party, to extend the timeline for withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and to send tens of thousands of additional troops to Afghanistan to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban. (more)