By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

When a lone gunman, U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire on a group of soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, the victims were in the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, a facility on the base where troops are prepared for deployment and where they take care of certain processing tasks such as completing insurance paperwork and receiving medical examinations and vaccinations.

Even though the targets of Hasan's attack were soldiers, they represented a very soft target in this environment. Most soldiers on bases inside the United States are normally not armed and are only provided weapons for training. The only personnel who regularly carry weapons are the military police and the base civilian police officers. In addition to being unarmed, the soldiers at the center were closely packed together in the facility as they waited to proceed from station to station. The unarmed, densely packed mass of people allowed Hasan to kill 13 (12 soldiers and one civilian employee of the center) and wound 42 others when he opened fire.

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

On June 23, 2009, Director of Central Intelligence Leon Panetta learned of a highly compartmentalized program to assassinate al Qaeda operatives that was launched by the CIA in the wake of the 9/11 attacks. When Panetta found out that the covert program had not been disclosed to Congress, he canceled it and then called an emergency meeting June 24 to brief congressional oversight committees on the program. Over the past week, many details of the program have been leaked to the press and the issue has received extensive media coverage.

By George Friedman

In 1979, when we were still young and starry-eyed, a revolution took place in Iran. When I asked experts what would happen, they divided into two camps.

The first group of Iran experts argued that the Shah of Iran would certainly survive, that the unrest was simply a cyclical event readily manageable by his security, and that the Iranian people were united behind the Iranian monarch's modernization program. These experts developed this view by talking to the same Iranian officials and businessmen they had been talking to for years - Iranians who had grown wealthy and powerful under the shah and who spoke English, since Iran experts frequently didn't speak Farsi all that well.

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

At approximately 10:30 a.m. on June 1, as two young U.S. soldiers stood in front of the Army Navy Career Center in west Little Rock, Ark., a black pickup pulled in front of the office and the driver opened fire on the two, killing one and critically wounding the other.

Eyewitnesses to the shooting immediately reported it to police, and authorities quickly located and arrested the suspect as he fled the scene. According to police, the suspect told the arresting officers that he had a bomb in his vehicle, but after an inspection by the police bomb squad, the only weapons police recovered from the vehicle were an SKS rifle and two pistols.

By Scott Stewart and Fred Burton

On June 1, 2009, the land and sea portion of the Western Hemisphere Travel Initiative (WHTI) will go into effect. The WHTI is a program launched as a result of the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004 and intended to standardize the documents required to enter the United States. The stated goal of WHTI is to facilitate entry for U.S. citizens and legitimate foreign visitors while reducing the possibility of people entering the country using fraudulent documents.

Despite the successful result of this recent incident (the Maersk Alabama), the problem of piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Somalia remains. The international effort, particularly Combined Task Force 151, has succeeded in thwarting a number of these attacks; however the overall number of successful hijackings has continued to rise. We have learned from past and present examples that the only way to deal with these criminals is to seek them out in the oastal safe havens where they are operating. Whether you look at the days of the Barbary pirates where the pirates were eventually defeated ashore in Algiers or the recent example in the Straits of Malacca where the combined forces of Malaysia, Indonesia, and Singapore worked ogether to secure their waters. In both of these examples, the victory over the pirates came when they were denied safe havens ashore.

The proposed Department of Defense budget authority for fiscal year (FY) 2010 is $534 billion--$686 billion after factoring in the costs for redeploying units from Iraq and increasing troop levels in Afghanistan. Further, the budget blueprint drastically reduces defense spending to just 3 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in 2019, far below the current spending levels of approximately 4 percent.

What is essentially a flat budget topline for the military in 2010, however, is really a declining defense budget: The costs of doing everything in the military--from paying people to buying new equipment--greatly outpaces inflation every year.

By Rep Ike Skelton, Chairman, US Congress House Armed Services Committe

On 2nd April the House Armed Services Committee meets in open session to receive testimony on the New Strategy for Afghanistan and Pakistan and Developments in U.S. Central Command and Special Operations Command. The witnesses : the Honorable Michèle Flournoy, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; General David Petraeus, commander of United States Central Command; and Admiral Eric Olson, commander of United States Special Operations Command.

As we begin to consider the new Afghanistan-Pakistan strategy, let me just say, it's about time. In 2001, United States forces, in cooperation with the British and Afghan forces, forced the Taliban out of power. As near as I can tell, that was the last time we had a strategy for Afghanistan.

Written by George Friedman

U.S. President Barack Obama released a video offering Iran congratulations on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year, on Friday. Israeli President Shimon Peres also offered his best wishes, referring to "the noble Iranian people." The joint initiative was received coldly in Tehran, however. Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the video did not show that the United States had shifted its hostile attitude toward Iran.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates recently testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee saying, "nothing is off the table" regarding defense spending cuts to the Pentagon's Future Combat Systems (FCS) programs. Five programs within the FCS, which is the army's principle modernization procedure, account for "half the total cost growth in weapons spending," according to Gates.

These words indicate a clear policy shift chosen by the Obama administration, which may seek to end, or at the very least reduce, Bush-era defense spending. The Pentagon has already proposed a budget of $580.3 billion, prior to the election of the new President. Obama, who has expressed his desire to overhaul the federal budget, is largely expected to target defense spending.