The U.S. Air Force mistakenly sent Taiwan electrical fuses involved with triggering nuclear warheads on intercontinental ballistic missles, the Pentagon just announced.

Seven months ago, the Air Force accidentally flew nuclear-armed cruise missiles across the United States.

As Britney Spears would put it: Oops, they did it again.

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Critics of Republican presidential nominee John McCain often point to his inconsistent stance on military intervention as a sign that he is not the straight-talking maverick he presents himself to be. An examination of McCain's stances on intervention, however, reveals not mixed signals but a steady transformation of worldview. The young Vietnam vet who once vocally opposed military overreach has become the elder statesman who passionately advocates the need for military action. Here's a look at the stances McCain has taken on some of the major U.S. military operations of the past few decades.

Lebanon

Stance: As a freshman congressman, John McCain broke with President Ronald Reagan and most of his party to oppose invoking the War Powers Act to extend the deployment of U.S. peacekeepers in Lebanon.

Statement: "The longer we stay in Lebanon, the harder it will be for us to leave. We will be trapped by the case we make for having our troops there in the first place." Sept. 29, 1983

Iraq (Operation Desert Storm)

Stance: McCain worried about the prospect of an extended deployment of U.S. troops in Iraq and hoped to limit the U.S. action to a bombing campaign.

Statement: "If you get involved in a major ground war in the Saudi desert, I think support will erode significantly. Nor should it be supported. We cannot even contemplate, in my view, trading American blood for Iraqi blood.'' Aug. 19, 1990

Somalia

Stance: After a failed operation that led to the death of 19 U.S. soldiers, McCain proposed cutting off funding to the U.S. mission in Somalia in order to force the Clinton administration to bring the troops home. He later wrote that he regretted this stance.

Statement: "I'll tell you what can erode our prestige Mr. President. I'll tell you what can erode our viability as a world superpower, and that is if we emesh ourselves in a drawn-out situation, which entails the loss of American lives, more debacles like the one we saw with the failed mission to captured Adid's lieutenants using American forces and that then will be what hurts our prestige." Oct. 14, 1993

Haiti

Stance: Like most congressional leaders at the time, McCain opposed sending U.S. troops to Haiti in 1994 to assist the return of exiled president Jean-Bertrand Aristide back in power.

Statement: "I don't think our vital national security interests are at stake... In Haiti, there is a military government we don't like. But there are other governments around the world that aren't democratic that we don't like. Are we supposed to invade those countries, too?" July 10, 1994

Bosnia

Stance: McCain initially strongly opposed intervention in Bosnia, but after the signing of the Dayton accords in 1995, he changed his stance and cosponsored a resolution supporting the U.S. peacekeeping mission.

Statements: "If we find ourselves involved in a conflict in which American casualties mount, in which there is no end in sight, in which we take sides in a foreign civil war, in which American fighting men and women have great difficulty distinguishing between friend and foe, then I suggest that American support for military involvement would rapidly evaporate." April 23, 1993

"Our troops are going to Bosnia. Congress should do everything in our power to insure that our mission is truly clear, limited and achievable, that it has the greatest chance for success with the least risk to the lives of our young men and women. The resolution that the majority leader and I have offered does not ask senators to support the decision to deploy. It asks that you support the deployment after the decision had been made. It asks you further to condition your support on some important commitments by the President." Dec. 13, 1995

Kosovo

Stance: McCain not only favored the use of force to stop ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, but pressed the Clinton administration to send ground troops into Serbia.

Statement: "If we lose this war, the entire country and the world will suffer the consequences. Yes, the President would leave office with yet another mark against him. But he will not suffer that indignity alone. We will all be less secure. We will all be dishonored.'' May 9, 1999

Afghanistan

Stance: McCain strongly supported the U.S. operation to defeat the Taliban and attempt to capture Osama bin Laden.

Statement: "[W]hat we need to understand is that we may have to put large numbers of troops into Afghanistan for a period of time, not a long period of time, but for a period of time, in order to effectively wipe out these terrorists' nests and track down Mr. bin Laden. In other words, it's going to take a very big effort, and probably casualties will be involved, and it won't be accomplished through air power alone." Dec. 28, 2001

Iraq (Operation Iraqi Freedom)

Stance: McCain has been among the most vocal supporters of the initial invasion of Iraq and last year's troop surge. His stance on these issues has largely defined his presidential run.

Statement: "Only an obdurate refusal to face unpleasant facts -- in this case, that a tyrant who survives only by the constant use of violence is not going to be coerced into good behavior by nonviolent means -- could allow one to believe that we have rushed to war... Our armed forces will fight for peace in Iraq -- a peace built on more secure foundations than are found today in the Middle East. Even more important, they will fight for the two human conditions of even greater value than peace: liberty and justice. Some of our soldiers will perish in this just cause. May God bless them and may humanity honor their sacrifice." March 12, 2003

PAUL J. RICHARDS/AFP/Getty Images

The LA Times has the latest on the Pentagon debate over troops levels in Iraq:

In the short run, supporters of [Gen. David] Petraeus would like to see about 140,000 troops, including 15 combat brigades, remain in Iraq through the end of the Bush administration.

Members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and their advisors favor a faster drawdown. Some are pushing for a reduction to 12 brigades or fewer by January 2009, which would amount to approximately 120,000 troops, depending on the configuration of forces.

That's the big debate that supposedly got Admiral Fallon fired? Twenty thousand troops? As of now, there are about 158,000 U.S. soldiers and Marines in Iraq, and that number is slated to come down to 140,000 in July. So, Petraeus is essentially asking for no further troop withdrawals before the next president takes office.

The troop-levels debate raises some of the same questions posed by Newsweek's Fareed Zakaria in his latest column: Has the surge succeeded in creating lasting, sustainable security or not? Are Iraq's sectarian groups reaching a self-stabilizing balance of power or not? So far, the answer would appear to be no, but I think Petraeus would say the political conversation in Washington was always unrealistic on this scrore. Winning a counterinsurgency war takes years, not months. The more basic question, though, is one that is above Petraeus's pay grade: Is it worth it? To put it another way, does it make strategic sense for the United States to stay in Iraq for another five to 10 years, looking at the expected payoff vs. the expected costs? I strongly doubt it.

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Nine people were killed in small village in Chechnya last night in an hourlong gunfight between separatist rebels and the police.

The violence is something of an anomaly in the troubled region, which has been relatively stable in recent years under the authoritarian rule of ex-rebel Ramzan Kadyrov (shown at right with Russian President-elect Dmitry Medvedev), though the number of rebel attacks in neighboring Russian provinces has increased.

Does last night's violence indicate that Chechnya's fragile stability, one of the Putin administration's main accomplishments, is coming undone just in time for his successor to inherit the mess? I asked Jonas Bernstein, senior research associate at the Jamestown Foundation and Russian defense expert, if the attacks could be in any way connected to the transfer of power in Moscow:

This does seem to be a deliberate uptick on the part of the rebels. My guess is that the rebels may be trying to send a message to the new administration that, 'We're still here.'

Russia has maintained order in Chechnya largely by arming Kadyrov and his fellow ex-rebels, an approach not unlike the U.S.'s "Anbar awakening" strategy in Iraq. According to Reuters, Russian military analysts now worry that they may have created a force they can't control if Kadyrov's loyalties shift. Kadyrov is a staunch Putinist (he even delivered a dubious 99.5 percent voter turnout for the ruling party in parliamentary elections), but could he turn against his bosses in Moscow with Medvedev in power? Bernstein doesn't see this as likely. In fact, Kadyrov is probably quite satisfied with Putin's choice:

If anything, the victory of the Medvedev faction within the Kremlin is actually to the benefit of Kadyrov. It's the harder-line, so-called siloviki, who have always been suspicious of Kadyrov... because he's a former rebel from the first war. So in that sense, depending on how things play out in Moscow, it may actually be to his benefit.

Of course, the Chechen conflict never really went away. For the most part, it simply seeped over into neighboring provinces. It would be a tragic irony if the same conflict that helped Putin consolidate his power at the beginning of his presidency re-emerged just at its end.

SHAH MARAI/AFP/Getty Images

In recent weeks, the Taliban have threatened to burn down cellular towers throughout Afghanistan unless the main wireless companies shut down service between 5 p.m. and 3 a.m. each night. Why? Taliban commanders are convinced that coalition forces are using the cell networks to track their fighters. (They don't seem to understand that while coalition forces might use the Afghan mobile networks for some intel, they certainly aren't dependent on them. Thank you, spy satellites.)

And now they've made good on their threat. In a country that is nearly wholly reliant on wireless communications (for lack of any land-line infrastructure), the main mobile networks (all privately run) have begun switching off service at night after attacks on 10 cell towers, the latest on Tuesday night. Score this round for the Taliban.

I can only hope that the frustration of not being able to make calls past dusk will inspire public condemnation of the men who forced the blackout. But then again, the government vowed to help the private sector stand up to Taliban pressure. And that unsuccessful stand hardly inspires confidence.

AFP/Getty Images

Boy, would I like to learn more about why CENTCOM commander Adm. William J. Fallon just tendered his resignation:

Fallon claimed ongoing misperceptions about differences between his ideas and U.S. policy are making it too difficult for him to operate, Gates said, agreeing. He added that the differences are not extreme, but the misperception had become too great.

"I don't know whether he was misinterpreted or whether people attributed views to him that were not his views, but clearly there was a concern," Gates said.

The misperceptions relate to an article published last week in Esquire magazine that portrayed Fallon as opposed to President Bush's Iran policy. It described Fallon as a lone voice against taking military action to stop the Iranian nuclear program.

"I think this is a cumulative kind of thing," Gates countered. "It isn't the result of any one article or any one issue."

Yesterday, the author of the article in question, popular defense analyst Thomas P.M. Barnett, explained on his blog why he chose to profile Fallon:

[I]n my mind, Fallon represents the last CENTCOM boss likely to enjoy a serious freedom of action, given the unique set of circumstances (Rice focused on Israel-PA, Petraeus running the show in Iraq, and so Fallon is the man on the rest of the region just as the Bush admin winds down and just as Russia, India and China are ramping up their interests/presence).

In short, Fallon has an opportunity to navigate his own course (with support this time from SECDEF Gates) in a way that no future CENTCOM boss may enjoy.

I guess that statement is no longer operative.

UPDATE: Barnett comments:

I reported the story as I found it, because I thought it was crucial for readers to understand this officer and his thinking within the context of his incredibly important and high-profile position.

As readers of my blog know, I have expressed a lot of admiration for the admiral over the years. In my 18 years of working for and with military commands, I have met few with the same capacity for strategic vision. I wish him well on whatever he chooses to do next.

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Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton's chief spokesman, tried to connect some dots this morning that have been bugging me since last week. If, as Clinton likes to suggest, Barack Obama has not met the "national security threshold," why is her campaign hinting that he would make such a good vice president -- someone who might someday have to step in as commander in chief?

In a call with reporters today, Wolfson said that while Obama has not yet met the "threshold," it may be possible for him to do so by August:

Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold. But we have a long way to go until Denver, and [choosing Obama is] not something she's prepared to rule out at this point."

Come again? Wolfson must think it's possible to accumulate foreign-policy know-how in dog years. Politically speaking, I suppose a lot can happen between now and August 25. But this formulation will be lost on anyone who thinks seriously about international affairs. How exactly are Obama's qualifications to be commander in chief going to change radically over the next 24 weeks? By campaigning in Puerto Rico?

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Hugo Chávez's former defense minister, Raúl Baduel, had harsh words this week for his old boss, who sent Venezuelan troops to the Colombian border over the weekend in response to Colombia's military incursion in Ecuador:

This is a desperate attempt by President Chávez to use the military for political and personal ends, making them participants in an action whose consequences could be disastrous."

In other words, Baduel is accusing Chávez of fomenting an international crisis in order to distract from his domestic political problems. It's a significant move, coming from someone whose personal and professional relationship with the Venezuelan president spans 35 years, culminating with Baduel's resignation from the defense ministry in 2007. Baduel is a legendary revolutionary figure in Venezuela, best known for defending Hugo Chávez during the April 2002 coup attempt, and for his fierce loyalty to the Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement that Chávez founded in the 1980s. But as Chávez tried to push through constitutional reforms late last year, Baduel began distancing himself from the president, citing his moral and ethical obligation to point out the harm Chávez would do to Venezuela if he succeeded in centralizing executive power and socializing the economy.

It's good that somebody is calling Chávez to account, because most in the region seem distracted by the accusations being hurled back and forth between Colombia and Ecuador. Colombia claims to have found evidence linking Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa to the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), whose leader Raul Reyes was killed in this weekend's raid. Colombian President Álvaro Uribe says that Venezuela has been funding FARC and has pledged to take Chávez to international court for funding genocide. And although Peru's president, Alan García, suggested that Chavez should butt out of the diplomatic row between Ecuador and Colombia, he is also urging Uribe to apologize and avoid setting a bad precedent for sovereignty. As Passport reader joeljournal noted on Monday, though, some would say that propping up a terrorist group in your neighbor's country isn't such a great precedent to set either.

I'm a pretty reliable critic of the Bush administration's policies in the Middle East, but I can usually see the logic behind them. I have to admit, though, that the decision to send the U.S.S. Cole to the Lebanese coast has stumped me. U.S. officials say their intent is to bolster the embattled Lebanese government, force a long-delayed decision on a new president, and show Syria that America means business. But what is a missile destroyer supposed to actually do in this situation? Shoot at Hezbollah? The only things this boneheaded move will accomplish are to remind the Lebanese of 1983, when U.S. warships ineffectually shelled the Chouf mountains, and embarrass Prime Minister Fouad Seniora's government. The Syrians know this well, and they will use this incident to their advantage.

It's the starkest example I've yet seen of trying to use the U.S. military to solve a political problem. The good news is that Lebanon doesn't matter as much as many people seem to think it does, so any damage done here will be limited.

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Over the weekend, both Ecuador and Venezuela sent troops to their borders with Colombia after Colombian President Álvaro Uribe ordered raids on suspected terrorist targets across the Ecudorian border, killing a rebel leader. The standoff between the three nations also featured some pretty harsh rhetoric from Venezuelan leader Hugo Chávez, who dubbed U.S.-backed Colombia, "the Israel of Latin America" and said Uribe is "a criminal, not only a liar, he is a mafioso, a paramilitary leading a terrorist state." Chávez has long been a supporter of Ecudorian President Rafael Correa and his government's left-leaning approach. 

Over the past few months, Chávez has increasingly inserted himself into Colombia's ongoing problem with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the leftist guerilla group that has been trying to overthrow the Colombian government for decades. In February, hundreds of thousands if not millions marched against FARC in protests worldwide. Yet Chávez insists there is international pressure on the Colombian government to negotiate with FARC, and that he is just the man to broker the peace. He has had some success in recent months in negotiating the release of a handful of FARC hostages, but the number released pales in comparison to the estimated thousands held by the rebel group.

Such incursions are becoming increasingly common in a post-9/11 era of asymmetric warfare, wherein a guerilla enemy can take advantage of its small size and knowledge of terrain to slip across sovereign boundaries. Turkey recently ventured into northern Iraq in pursuit of the militant group Kurdistan Workers' Party, and the United States has carried out missile strikes in Pakistan and today in Somalia for similar reasons. And although Chávez may have been understandably unnerved by this practice occurring in his backyard, he may want to think twice about bringing his region to the brink of war over a quick and limited military incursion.

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Turkey has withdrawn its troops from Iraq today according to a statement from the army's General Staff:

"It was determined that the aims set at the start of the operation had been achieved," the General Staff said in a statement. "Our units returned to their bases (in Turkey) on the morning of February 29."

Turkey claims it killed 240 P.K.K. rebels during the eight day operation and suffered 27 casualties of its own. The P.K.K, meanwhile, says that it has killed 130 Turkish troops and is also claiming victory:

"Because of the fierce battles between the PKK and the Turkish forces, the Turkish forces have withdrawn," said Ahmed Danees, the PKK's foreign relations spokesman in northern Iraq.

It's fairly clear that neither side scored a decisive blow and this conflict isn't anywhere near to a resolution. Still, Turkey's ground invasion didn't lead to the region-wide catastrophe that many had feared. That, at least, is cause for relief.

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When FP recently surveyed more than 3,400 retired and active duty military officers holding the rank of major or above, 60 percent told us that they believe the U.S. military today is weaker than it was five years ago at the start of the Iraq war. Asked why, a majority told us they believe it is due to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the pace of troop deployments those missions require.

It is not uncommon for Marine Corps units, in particular, to serve two, three, or even four deployments to Iraq. But yesterday, something unique happened. The 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment (3/4) based at Twentynine Palms, California, reportedly became the first Marine Corps unit to be deployed to Iraq a record five times.

There's been much ado about how, even though these repeated deployments are taking their toll on units and families, there is a bright side. Repeated deployments are also helping to develop the most combat-experienced force in decades. But, interestingly, the 3/4's deployment suggests that, while that may be true within the higher echelons of the officer corps, it does not necessarily hold true at the grunt level. In an interview featured on the front page of Wednesday's San Francisco Chronicle, Col. William Vistead, the 3/4's commanding officer, estimates that 60 percent of his men will be going to Iraq for the first time. In other words, grunts are serving their four years and getting out. The same is happening within the junior and mid-level officer ranks. And there's no bright side to that.

Via FP contributor Benjamin H. Friedman, now with the Cato Institute, an astonishing gambit by the U.S. Air Force:

This week’s Air Force Times reports that the Air Force wants an extra $59 million of your tax dollars next year to pay for a campaign to win tens of billions more of your tax dollars.

You see, the Air Force's research shows that the American public does not appreciate the Air Force as much as the Air Force thinks it should. Air Force generals worry that Americans may conclude that our current wars, which are relatively low-tech, ground power-centric affairs, are a reasonable basis for making procurement decisions. That conclusion may produce budgets that favor the ground forces, thwarting the Air Force’s plan to become the service that runs future wars. And the administration has already refused the Air Force an extra $20 billion for its annual budget.

So the defense budget submitted recently to Congress would more than double the Air Force’s advertising spending to insure that the public doesn’t figure out that platforms like the F-22 are white elephants.

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Anyone in the D.C. area yesterday evening can tell you that there was some kind of incredibly slippery, impossible-to-detect robo-ice on the ground -- the perfect conditions for  major falls and car accidents. The freezing rain caused so much havoc in neighboring Maryland that a judge allowed the polls for the presidential primary to stay open there until 9:30 p.m., 90 minutes after they were due to close. I saw plenty of people slipping and sliding on my walk home, which made my own fall only slightly less embarrassing.

Even the man in charge of the world's most powerful military wasn't immune to the perils of robo-ice. Pentagon chief Bob Gates slipped on the ice outside his D.C. home last night and fractured his right shoulder. He's apparently back at work, though he's not attending this morning's Senate hearing on the mammoth defense budget. He -- and his ego -- are no doubt feeling a little bruised.