It’s a sad commentary on our media that the President had to answer questions yesterday about drones for the first time, and the questions didn’t come at a White House press briefing or major print interview, but in a virtual YouTube town hall with members of the public. FDL’s Kevin Gosztola covered this at The Dissenter last night, but there’s more to say about the disconnect between the concerns of the media and the concerns of ordinary Americans in that.

The Pentagon today announced its “lighter” budget, which should more accurately be referred to as its reorganization of the military. It’s hard to call this a smaller budget when you look at this fact sheet. The only reason the budget gets “smaller” is the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

A provocative article in Foreign Policy magazine suggests that Israeli Mossad officers recruited members of the Pakistani terrorist organization Jundallah to aid in the covert operations against Iranian targets, including bombings in the Baluchistan region and potentially the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Mossad officers, according to Mark Perry, posed as American intelligence agents during the recruitment, using US passports.

In a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Obama calmly explained that his Administration asked Iran nicely for their drone back. “We’ve asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said. He added that the matter was classified, but the acknowledgement that someone wrote a note to the Iranian Lost & Found seeking one RQ-170 Sentinel stealth plane basically confirms the capture of the drone.

People would rather not focus on the litany of undeclared wars this country currently fights, but when one of the adversaries considers putting defensive weaponry at the border to guard against future attacks, it’s worth taking notice.

Iran showed off their new toy, courtesy of the CIA, on state-run television, proving their possession of a US surveillance drone.

The condition suggests that the Iranians took control of the remotely-piloted aircraft rather than shooting it down.

The media has begun to recognize that the United States is routinely engaged these days in covert wars involving extrajudicial assassinations in foreign countries. Well, they’re not quite putting it that way. But this story about the huge explosion at an Iranian missile base doesn’t require much reading between the lines.

In some sense, the Obama Administration has taken the Pentagon strategy of “transformation” put forth by Donald Rumsfeld to its logical conclusion. Rumsfeld sought a light footprint in warmaking, a small, agile force that could quickly move through regions with superior firepower. The innovation from Obama’s Administration has been to get rid of the footprint altogether. Instead of standing armies occupying foreign countries, the move is toward shadow wars, and unmanned flying robots, and special operations forces. That is the new American way of war.

On a conference call with progressive media, White House deputy national security adviser for strategic communication Ben Rhodes stressed that the United States would now commence a “normal” relationship with the Iraqi government, an equal partnership between two sovereign nations. But it’s hard to square that with the reality that the United States will have a massive diplomatic presence in the country, with the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, two consulates in Ibril and Basra, and as many as 5,000 private military contractors under the direction of the State Department protecting it all.

Lindsey Graham hit the war default button yesterday on one of the Sunday shows, saying that the US should engage in military action against Pakistan for their relationship with the Haqqani network. The US has accused the network of a truck bomb attack on the US Embassy and NATO headquarters on September 13.

What is less known is that the Obama Administration reportedly threatened the same thing last week. They said that Pakistan must engage the Haqqanis or face unilateral action against them from the US.