WASHINGTON: The White House has dropped plans for a 14 percent cut to the Coast Guard, instead promising a budget that “sustains current funding levels.” The bad news is that “current funding levels” are already too low. The Coast Guard has to give almost 600 drug shipments a pass each year because they don’t have the ships or planes to catch… Keep reading →

WASHINGTON: The Navy League of the United States just issued a withering denunciation of President Trump‘s proposed $1.3 billion cut to the Coast Guard. Trump’s 2018 budget plan has already come under fire from both sides. Democrats reject it for cutting domestic spending too much. Pro-military Republicans reject it for raising defense too little. The Republican… Keep reading →

Who are Trump’s generals? This week, James Kitfield has already told us about James Mattis and Michael Flynn, both men shaped by the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now we come to John Kelly, whose time in Latin America, ironically, led him to similar conclusions about America’s enemies. As chief of US Southern Command, General… Keep reading →

US-backed Afghan drug court convicts everyone – HuffPo: http://huff.to/KqEWaU. DoD cites same court as success story @ http://aol.it/N4dy8T SydneyFreedberg

WASHINGTON: As terrorist groups increasingly work with drug gangs and other international criminals, they pose new threats to the United States – but they also create new vulnerabilities that savvy Americans can use to attack them, said the Pentagon’s top drug war expert, William Wechsler. The US needs to go beyond thinking of terrorist groups… Keep reading →

NATIONAL HARBOR, MD: The Coast Guard is shrinking and may have to cut back on traditional missions like fisheries protection and drug interdiction to free up resources for new issues like cybersecurity and the thawing of the Arctic, warned the service’s commandant, Admiral Robert J. Papp, this morning at the Navy League’s annual Sea-Air-Space convention.… Keep reading →

The Air Force’s MC-12 Liberty surveillance plane, in heavy use in Afghanistan, is one of the scarce assets Southern Command chief Gen. Doug Fraser hopes to see freed up for drug interdiction as the war winds down. The U.S. military command covering South America intercepts only about a third of the drug shipments and other… Keep reading →