Warning that US military power faced new limits and constraints, he said that weaponry, tactics and enemies had overtaken the "familiar contingencies that dominated US planning after the Cold War".
"We have learned through painful experience that the wars we fight are seldom the wars that we planned," said Mr Gates, as he presented the Pentagon's Quadrennial Defence Review and the 2011 budget plan to the Senate armed services committee.
TVNL Comment: The PNAC dream of total war seems to be fading.
Word of the layoffs had first surfaced the previous Friday afternoon in the L.A. Times. Over the weekend, CBS staffers vacillated between acceptance of the situation and cautious optimism. Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as reported? After all, the company was already lean. Where would top brass find 100 or so people to let go? Perhaps there was some stash of employees hidden on the digital side, some long-forgotten deal between, say, 60 Minutes and Yahoo, that would provide some bodies to lessen the blow?
The CIA today was accused of lying to Congress and covering up its role in the deaths of two innocent Americans, a mother and her infant daughter, at the hands of the CIA and the Peruvian Air Force nine years ago.
A high-ranking officer has acknowledged for the first time that the Israeli army went beyond its previous rules of engagement on the protection of civilian lives in order to minimise military casualties during last year's Gaza war.
Defense Secretary 
A SENIOR Welsh MP said last night he knew “for certain” Tony Blair and George Bush struck a deal to invade Iraq at their notorious Crawford Ranch meeting in 2002 – a year before war was declared.
