Middle East, Defense Secretary | featured news

The United States has evidence that the chemical weapon sarin has been used in Syria on a small scale, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said Thursday. But numerous questions remain about the origins of the chemicals and what impact their apparent use could have on the ongoing Syrian civil war and international involvement in it.

It was a harrowing international debut for Chuck Hagel, whose first trip to Afghanistan as U.S. defense secretary went dramatically off-script and challenged the American narrative about the 11-year-old war.

The first Vietnam veteran to be U.S. defense secretary is spending his first overseas trip on the job thanking soldiers and Marines. At about 11 a.m. ET Friday, Hagel touched down in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta arrived in Kabul Wednesday afternoon to take stock of the war as the Obama administration weighs how quickly to draw down troops over the next two years. The trip, likely his last official visit to the war zone, will give Panetta a chance to consult with U.S. commanders and Afghan President Hamid Karzai about the future U.S. role here as the decade-long war comes to an end.

The U.S. military did not quickly intervene during the attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya last month because military leaders did not have adequate intelligence information and felt they should not put American forces at risk, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said Thursday.

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Sunday that Iran is only one year away from producing a nuclear weapon. In an interview on the CBS show "60 Minutes," Panetta said that “the consensus is that, if they decided to do it, it would probably take them about a year to be able to produce a bomb and then possibly another one to two years in order to put it on a deliverable vehicle of some sort in order to deliver that weapon.”

U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has condemned a video that apparently shows U.S. Marines urinating on the corpses of Afghan men, promising to punish those involved. Earlier, an Afghan Taliban spokesman said the video will not affect efforts to broker peace talks.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said on Thursday there would be no hasty U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan and Washington expected the same from its allies.

Perhaps only a “handful” of U.S. troops will leave Afghanistan in 2011, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said.

As Obama's team works on its plans, McChrystal and other advisors are asked to keep the process more private. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Monday that President Obama's advisors should keep their guidance private, in effect admonishing the top commander in Afghanistan for publicly advocating an approach requiring more troops even as the White House reassesses its strategy.