Subject: POLITICO's Morning Defense: U.S. lifts Vietnam arms embargo — Obama confirms death of Taliban leader — Carter speaks at Yale today
From: Morning Defense <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 23 May 2016 06:31:56 -0600

By Jeremy Herb | 05/23/2016 08:30 AM EDT

With Louis Nelson and Connor O'Brien

BREAKING OVERNIGHT I - OBAMA LIFTS U.S. ARMS EMBARGO WITH VIETNAM, The New York Times reports from Hanoi: "President Obama said at a news conference on Monday in the Vietnamese capital that the United States had agreed to lift completely its embargo on lethal weapons sales. 'The United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam that has been in place for some 50 years,' Mr. Obama said.

"Vietnam had long asked for the embargo to be revoked. The decision, which comes more than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, involved weighing Vietnam's human rights record against the country's need to defend itself against an increasing threat from China, its neighbor."

BREAKING OVERNIGHT II - OBAMA CONFIRMS TALIBAN LEADER'S DEATH, via The Associated Press: "President Barack Obama said Monday that the violent death of Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour by a U.S. airstrike should send a 'clear signal' to anti-American extremists that 'we're going to protect our people.' Obama also said Mansour's death was an 'important milestone' in the yearslong effort to bring peace to Afghanistan.

"'It has been confirmed that he is dead," Obama said Monday during his first visit to Vietnam. 'He is an individual who, as head of the Taliban, was specifically targeting U.S. personnel and troops inside of Afghanistan' who Obama sent there to help counter terrorism and help train Afghan troops. Mansour was killed when a U.S. drone fired on his vehicle in the southwestern Pakistan province of Baluchistan, though it was unclear whether the airstrike took place on Friday or Saturday."

- WITH STRIKE, U.S. TAKES WAR BACK TO PAKISTAN, writes The Washington Post: "The U.S. drone strike that killed Taliban chief Akhtar Mohammad Mansour represents another escalation in U.S. involvement in the war in Afghanistan by trying to cripple an insurgent group that has for years found refuge on Pakistani soil. The strike early Saturday marks the most aggressive U.S. military action in Pakistan since the 2011 raid that killed Osama bin Laden. 

"But unlike the bin Laden raid, which prompted outrage in Pakistan, the reported strike on Mansour provoked a fairly muted reaction Sunday from Pakistani government and military leaders, even as Afghan officials cheered and described the attack as proof of the Afghan Taliban's deep presence in Pakistan. 'While further investigations are being carried out, Pakistan wishes to once again state that the drone attack was a violation of its sovereignty,' the country's Foreign Ministry said in a statement, adding that it was unable to confirm whether Mansour had been killed."

THE VIEW FROM AFGHANISTAN - MANSOUR'S DEATH GREETED AS HOPEFUL SIGN, reports the AP: "The killing of Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Akhtar Mansour in a U.S. drone strike was greeted Sunday by Kabul's political leadership as a game-changer in efforts to end the long insurgent war plaguing Afghanistan. In a rare show of unity, President Ashraf Ghani and Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah both welcomed the news of Mansour's death as the removal of a man who unleashed violence against innocent civilians in Afghanistan and was widely regarded as an obstacle to peace within the militant group."

WAR REPORT - IRAQI FORCES BEGIN ASSAULT ON FALLUJAH, reports The Wall Street Journal: "Iraqi forces have begun their assault on Islamic State in Fallujah, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said late Sunday, an operation that aims to evict the extremists from one of their last major territorial holdings in Iraq. 'The moment of real victory has come, and Daesh has no option but to flee,' Mr. Abadi told state TV, using an Arabic acronym for the Sunni extremist group. The operation follows months of planning and preparation in coordination with a U.S.-led military coalition that is backing Iraqi forces with airstrikes."

HAPPY MONDAY AND WELCOME TO MORNING DEFENSE, where we think this busy morning is an indication of how this whole week is going to go. We'll do our best to keep you up to speed, so keep the tips, pitches and feedback coming at [email-masked], and follow on Twitter @jeremyherb, @morningdefense and @politicopro.

HAPPENING TODAY - CARTER'S YALE HOMECOMING: Defense Secretary Ash Carter travels to Connecticut and Rhode Island this week, with a visit today at Yale University. There, Carter will speak at the first commissioning of Yale's ROTC students since the early 1970s. It's a homecoming for Carter, too, as he earned his bachelor's degrees in physics and medieval history from Yale in 1976.

NOT HAPPENING TODAY - OPEN HEARING ON AN AIRCRAFT CARRIER, our story with Connor O'Brien on the late change of plans: "The House Armed Services Committee has scrapped a controversial field hearing on an aircraft carrier docked in Virginia. According to an internal email shared with POLITICO, Monday's field hearing will be changed to a CODEL - an acronym for trips by congressional delegations - with the joint Seapower and Readiness hearing now scheduled to take place Thursday on Capitol Hill, instead of aboard the aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower while pierside at Naval Station Norfolk, Va.

"The hearing was organized by Rep. Randy Forbes, the Seapower Subcommittee chairman who is running for reelection in a new district after the courts redrew Virginia's congressional districts last year. It would have been co-chaired by his fellow Virginia Republican, Readiness Subcommittee Chairman Rob Wittman, who plans to run for governor next year."

DRIVING THE WEEK ON CAPITOL HILL - SENATE DEFENSE ACTION: The Senate plans to consider the National Defense Authorization Act on the floor this week, which will provide a better sense of the direction of the final bill on several contentious issues. One of the key fights will be over how much funding is authorized by the bill itself, as Senate Armed Services Chairman John McCain (R-Ariz.) said last week he plans to offer an amendment to authorize an additional $17 billion, which would closely follow the House NDAA. He makes his case in a "dear colleague" letter here. 

McCain will also be at the center of two potential fights on the bill: requiring women to register for the draft and Russian rocket engines. And if that wasn't enough, the Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittee will mark up its spending bill on Tuesday, and the full committee could take it up Thursday. 

DRIVING THE WEEK OVERSEAS - OBAMA IN ASIA: As we saw this morning, Obama will be making news while the U.S. is sleeping all week during his Asia trip that will take him to Vietnam and Japan. The trip includes a visit to Hiroshima, a stop that our colleague Edward-Isaac Dovere writes is part of Obama's penchant for confronting complicated truths about the past: "He's not sorry. Seven years after kicking off his presidency with a famous outreach to the Arab world speech in Cairo, skipping Israel, Barack Obama is about to bookend it with one of his last big trips on Air Force One, landing first here in Vietnam and then on to Hiroshima.

"Obama's critics call stops like this an apology tour. He and his White House aides call it 'reckoning with history.' Some prefer 'coming to grips with history.' These trips are deliberate, ordered up by a president whose foreign policy has been shaped by a sense of himself as a catalyst forcing the world to deal with the past in order to deal with the future, according to current and former officials close to the president."

BATTLE OF THE BANDS - LAWMAKERS SCRUTINIZE THE MILITARY'S MUSIC BUDGET, our colleague Ellen Mitchell reports: "Live music in the military has become a nearly half-billion-dollar-a-year road show. But even some of the Pentagon's top supporters in Congress say it's time to cut the volume. From their humble origins in the American Revolution's fife-and-drum corps, the U.S. military's musical ventures have grown to include thousands of service members and at least 137 bands - some of whose members are outfitted with $11,000 flutes and $12,000 tubas.

"That has placed them in the crosshairs of lawmakers who say it makes no sense to lavish this kind of money on music when the Pentagon is scaling back combat troops. Entertainment is "just not the role of the military," said Rep. Martha McSally, a hawkish Arizona Republican and retired Air Force colonel who serves on the Armed Services Committee."

TOP U.S. COMMANDER MAKES SECRET VISIT TO SYRIA, AP's Robert Burns has more from the ground in Syria: "On a secret trip to Syria, the new commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East said Saturday he felt a moral obligation to enter a war zone to check on his troops and make his own assessment of progress in organizing local Arab and Kurd fighters for what has been a slow campaign to push the Islamic State out of Syria. 'I have responsibility for this mission, and I have responsibility for the people that we put here,' Army Gen. Joseph Votel said in an interview as dusk fell on the remote outpost where he had arrived 11 hours earlier."

- KUDOS TO VOTEL: The new U.S. Central Command chief opted to bring a small group of reporters with him to Syria, under the ground rules they didn't disclose the visit until they had left, nor report the type of aircraft or exact location, according to the AP: "We don't have anything to hide," Votel said. "I don't want people guessing about what we're doing here. The American people should have the right to see what we're doing here."

MORNING D TRIVIA: Albert Calamug was the first to correctly answer that the last time the NDAA was signed into law before the fiscal year began on Oct. 1 was Sept. 23, 1996 - and yes, it's been 20 years since the bill was finished and signed on time. Although, that also was a presidential election year. Stay tuned Friday for our next trivia question.

SPEED READ

- A pair of suicide bombers kill dozens of people in Aden, Yemen, in an attack targeting army recruits: AP

- China plans a base station for an advanced rescue ship in the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea: Reuters 

- Advocates for military benefits worry that proposed congressional changes will hit troops' wallets - and morale: Military Times

- A fast-growing movement armed with guns and the Constitution sees a dire threat to liberty, but law enforcement officials say they're dangerous and delusional: The Washington Post

- The Afghan government is giving money and military support to a breakaway Taliban faction in an attempt to sow rifts within the insurgency: WSJ

- Funded by money from Saudi Arabia, mosques preaching conservative forms of Islam have turned Kosovo into a pipeline for jihadist fighters: The New York Times

- The foggy numbers of Obama's wars and non-wars: The Washington Post

- Navy SEAL leaders publicly respond to a recent wave of criticism and public scrutiny: The San Diego Union-Tribune

- Chinese and Russian warplanes have grown increasingly aggressive, patrolling near the West Coast and intercepting U.S. military aircraft: USA Today

- Boeing's stock could fall as much as 15 percent if aircraft sales slow, according to a new financial report from Barron's: Reuters

- 2,000 Okinawans gather outside the Marine Corps headquarters on the island to protest crimes committed there by Americans: Stars and Stripes

- The president is likely to push back the planned withdrawal of U.S. troops in Afghanistan, leaving the decision on how to end America's military mission there to his successor: Military Times

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