Obama expected to nominate Ashton Carter to lead Pentagon

[JaneyVee]

Source: Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama is expected to nominate former Pentagon official Ashton Carter as U.S. defense secretary, CNN reported on Tuesday.

Carter, a former deputy secretary at the Department of Defense, had been considered a leading candidate for the job to replace Chuck Hagel, who is resigning.

-snip-

He also served as assistant secretary of defense for international security policy under President Bill Clinton.

Carter has bachelor's degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale, a doctorate in theoretical physics from Oxford University, where he was a Rhodes scholar, according to the Pentagon website.


Read more: http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKCN0JG1GA20141202?irpc=932

---

It seems Obama has nominated a Democrat to replace Hagel, according to other reports.

[TwilightGardener]

2. He was essentially SecDef for Panetta, because Panetta was a figurehead placeholder

who flew to California for three days of rest every week, kind of in semiretirement. Then Hagel took over, and they didn't get along. Carter undermined Hagel by scheduling trips and meetings with foreign leaders without even bothering to notify or coordinate with Hagel's office. Also, never bothered to serve in the military himself. But he'll come off better with the media, and that's what really matters.

[JDPriestly]

5. Carter clearly knows history and is brilliant.

That should be worth something. I suppose he has worked in defense so long that he might as well have served in the military.

Do you think he is a bad choice? Sounds like he wasn't much support to Hagel. Are you saying that Carter may not be a good team player? Or was Hagel just not able to control things?

Your post is intriguing. I have absolutely no contact or links to any of these people. I'm just curious about what you are saying.

[jakeXT]

7. He needed an ethics waiver for his defense industry ties

Ashton Carter, frontrunner to be the next Defense secretary, needed a special waiver to join the Pentagon back in 2009 because of his history of working for the defense contracting industry.

...

While teaching at Harvard, he earned $238,235 from Jan. 1, 2008, through March 18, 2009, when he signed a financial disclosure before joining the Pentagon. Over the same period, he received $65,000 from the Mitre Corp., which manages federally funded research and development centers and consults for the Defense Department and more than $100,000 from Global Technology Partners, a defense consulting firm founded by William J. Perry, who served as defense secretary from 1994 to 1997.

Mr. Carter also reported earning $20,000 in consulting fees from Goldman Sachs, and he received $10,000 from Raytheon for what was described on Mr. Carter’s ethics form as “meeting fee and memoranda.”

In Mr. Carter’s case, the waiver was issued just after his 2009 appointment to the Pentagon, focusing on consulting work he did for defense contractor Textron. According to the waiver, he “provided specific business advice” on a weapons system called the Sensor Fused Weapon. The last year of Defense funding for the weapon system was in fiscal 2007.

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/dec/2/ashton-carter-required-ethics-waiver-join-obama-ad/

[alp227]

12. Non Right wing source

http://www.oge.gov/Open-Government/Executive-Branch-Agency-Ethics-Pledge-Waivers/

http://www.spacepolicyonline.com/news/white-house-grants-ethics-waiver-to-dod-acquisition-chief

[TwilightGardener]

8. I don't know if he's a bad choice, because he essentially ran the Pentagon

for years, except for the last 12 months. Deputy Sec Def's run the building. It seems to be a return to...whatever the Pentagon was a year ago. So I'm not understanding how this is a different direction for Obama, or why it was necessary. I think he just wanted a better front man (one who doesn't talk like a Nebraska dirt farmer, for example), with impressive Ivy League credentials, of the sort that Tom Ricks and David Ignatius will approve of and write glowingly about. All that shit Obama said about Hagel understanding the enlisted force and what it's like to be in war was just that...condescending, knee-deep, get-the-shovel shit. None of that really mattered, Hagel was just there to work out an ugly but necessary reduced budget, and now that's over. Carter never served a day, had some dubious military ideas (about bombing North Korea that were too hawkish for even Bush/Cheney to undertake), and basically was around and in charge for years when all the long-simmering problems of the Pentagon were brewing. So, I'm sure he'll be applauded and hailed as an improvement, but I won't forgive the classless treatment of Hagel.

[FailureToCommunicate]

3. Decent choice... if it happens

[TwilightGardener]

4. By the way, this is interesting: Carter advocated bombing North Korea in 2006,

while we were also in the middle of two wars, one of which was going horribly and eating up all our resources:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/21/AR2006062101518.html

[Derek V]

6. Ashton Carter is a horrible choice

I've not watched Two-and-a-Half Men since he took over for Sheen. (Hey, you knew somebody was gonna say it!)

[louis-t]

9. D'oh!

[Enrique]

10. but he used to be married to G.I. Jane

so he has military experience.

[tclambert]

11. Ashton Kutcher? He can't even remember where he parked his car.

[DavidDvorkin]

14. Bravo!

[CJCRANE]

13. Here's an interesting take on Hagel's departure:

Does Obama still have a military policy?

Except:

"The confusion surrounding the entire US policy in the Arab world dates from mid-2012. At the time, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and CIA director David Petraeus had seized on the US presidential election campaign to promote a second war against Syria, this time via France and Qatar. After his re-election and the ejection of his two "associates", Obama nominated new cabinet members with the task of building peace in Syria. But after a few months, it became clear that Clinton-Petraeus policy continued without the knowledge of the White House and against the Pentagon.
...

Chuck Hagel’s dismissal is not a punishment for his actions, but an indication of the change undergone by President Barack Obama."

http://www.voltairenet.org/article186111.html