WASHINGTON, April 3 (UPI) -- There are several intellectual fashions about the patterns of war in the 21st century -- and all of them drive different procurement patterns for buying weapons and structuring defense industries.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 8 (UPI) -- Barack Obama's selection of former Army Chief of Staff Gen. Eric K. Shinseki as his first secretary of veterans affairs is a political coup that solves several political domestic problems for the president-elect. It also sends a strong signal to the world about the very different form the U.S. government's policymaking apparatus will take in the new administration.

WASHINGTON, June 19 (UPI) -- A former U.S. military official says U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney may have known military personnel were using torture techniques on Iraqi detainees.

WASHINGTON, June 18 (UPI) -- A CIA lawyer told U.S. Defense Department officials that harsh interrogation techniques were permissible, documents from a congressional investigation showed.

WASHINGTON, May 30 (UPI) -- Former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan wrote a blistering memoir in which he accused President Bush of misleading the nation into an unnecessary war in Iraq. But what he had to say is precisely what a large part of the foreign policy establishment, including so-called moderate Republicans, concluded five years ago.

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- Global oil prices spiked at nearly $127 a barrel this week, and Republicans and Democrats alike in Congress don't have the faintest idea what to do about it.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- In his classic work "Command in War," Israeli military historian Martin van Creveld describes how the German General Staff in the first years of the 20th century under Field Marshal Alfred Count von Schlieffen was determined to bring scientific rationalism and perfect comprehension to the battlefield by micro-managing the deployment of millions of men with overwhelming firepower to crush France in the very first weeks of any conflict.

WASHINGTON, Oct. 4 (UPI) -- It was fitting timing that the U.S. Missile Defense Agency held its latest successful interception test of an incoming intercontinental ballistic missile on Friday, Sept. 26. For the test took place five days before Brig. Gen. Patrick J. O'Reilly, the MDA's deputy director, received his second star.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 21 (UPI) -- With the situation in Iraq becoming more complicated amid increasing setbacks so too is the political recrimination becoming more apparent. Meanwhile, attributing blame for the failures in Iraq is turning into something of a national pastime.