Page 27 - Tom Ricks News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

In past times they might have been veterans themselves or sent children there, men or women, sons an daughters to fight but that is not as true today as it was then. >> right. i think the way in which the military policy does involve almost every member of congress is through contracts. for example, modern weapons smexs have contracted in almost every congressional district and state and so there is a stimulus package that they have. but when it comes to having serious debate about what kind of wars we want to engage in and who should be accountable for the frustrations in iraq and afghanistan...

Commentators like tom ricks and others have said, this is not a job to be loved by the generals. it's to remind the general who's boss and that's why i wrote that ash was going to have to fire a four-star general somewhere along in there to show them that he really is in control of that building. >> we'll definitely be watching. thank you very much, steve clemons. really appreciate it. more fallout now for bill cosby, the comedian resigned from the board of directors at temple university giving up a seat at his alma mater he's held for more than 30 years. in a statement cosby said he resigne...

House of representatives and 100 senators, all of whom have a right to represent their people, and they should do it, and the leaders cannot make a pronouncement like that and expect us to just roll over and accept it. it is simply -- must be voted on by the congress. >> do you have the sense that if any type of military action, not talking ground troops, something like air strikes, for instance, came before congress, just given the mood of the country, given the war fatigue that exists in this country, given what we saw last year when it looked for a while like there was going to be a congres...

tikrit from above. iraqi military is trying to secure the highways into and out of baghdad. they are going to be aided by a fleet of russian fighter jets. these are bought second hard reportedly for $500 million. the first batch of those jets arrived in baghdad yesterday. we want to get the very latest from the ground from nbc news chief foreign correspondent richard engel who is on the ground in baghdad. richard? >> reporter: good morning. as you said, it seems like the government is finally launching something of an effective counter offensive. there had been several attempts in th...

The bush administration. having invaded iraq with a small force, what the expert tom ricks called the worst war plan in american history, the administration needed to find local allies fast. it quickly decided to destroy iraq's sunni-ruling establishment and empower the hardline shiite religious parties that had opposed saddam hussein. this meant that a structure of sunni power that had undergirded the area, for better or worse, for centuries, quickly collapsed. these moves to disband the army, dismantle the bureaucracy, and purge sunnis, in general, might have been more consequential than the...