By Charles Hoskinson

CORRECTION – We got a preposition wrong in our note Thursday about the new CBO estimate on war cost savings. The estimate dropped by $440 billion from $1 trillion to $560 billion.

HOUSE SPEAKER BOEHNER ADDED HIS VOICE THURSDAY to the chorus telling the debt-reduction supercommittee to leave defense spending alone. “I would argue that they’ve taken more than their fair share of the hits,” Boehner told reporters. http://wapo.st/uyB0o3

HE ALSO SAID automatic across-the-board cuts in spending would be an unacceptable outcome of the panel’s deliberations – the latest sign that lawmakers are backing off the painful “trigger” mechanism designed to force agreement, even as there’s a growing sense that the panel may fail to reach one by the Thanksgiving deadline . http://politi.co/vpYB7

THE POTENTIALLY WORRISOME RESULTS of pulling the trigger were again on display Thursday as the HASC Readiness Subcommittee heard from the vice chiefs. Among the possibilities are drastic cuts to Army and Marine Corps troop strength, which Dunford said would make the Corps unable to respond to contingencies. “We … will not be there to deter our potential adversaries. We won’t be there to assure our potential friends, or to assure our allies. And we certainly won’t be there to contain small crises before they become major conflagrations,” he said.

CHIARELLI HIT BACK AT THOSE WHO SUGGEST the Army can take a large hit to its endstrength, saying that every time ground forces have been drastically cut in the past “it has cost us lives.”

THE TOP DEMOCRAT ON HASC SAYS DIRE PREDICTIONS aren’t enough to stave off further cuts to DOD spending in an environment where that’s the easy answer to deficit reduction. In a speech at AEI, Adam Smith of Washington argued for his colleagues to build a case for both entitlement cuts and new tax revenues and overcome the public’s – and the politicians’ – reluctance to address those issues. “If we don’t make the case for how to fix that, defense is going to get crucified,” he said. “If you don’t confront that larger argument, the snowball is riding downhill right over you.”

STANLEY RESIGNED THURSDAY as undersecretary for personnel and readiness. He’ll be replaced on an acting basis by his deputy, Jo Ann Rooney. News reports in August indicated that the IG was investigating complaints about his leadership style. Our story is here: http://politi.co/viIosj

OBAMA’S DECLARATION A WEEK AGO that the Iraq war is over at the end of this year isn’t sitting well with most GOP members of SASC. Eleven of them, along with independent Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, want the panel to hold a hearing on the administration’s policy toward Baghdad. The senators are particularly concerned about mixed signals on whether the United States will still try to negotiate a deal to train Iraqi forces. Our story is here: http://politi.co/tiOLBr

MEANWHILE THE WHITE HOUSE IS FEUDING with McClatchy over a story saying that Obama and Biden were not deeply involved in talks with Iraq over a new troop deal. The White House is calling the story false, but has refused to release information that would counter McClatchy’s contention that the two “remained largely aloof from the process” of negotiating a new agreement. The story is here: http://bit.ly/tWIajJ

MYSTERY SOLVED – The Los Angeles Times reports today that “a federal audit has finally accounted for nearly $6.6 billion in Iraqi reconstruction money that seemed to have disappeared after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. … After a burst of unflattering publicity in the spring, officials of the Central Bank of Iraq and the U.S. Federal Reserve gave investigators access to their records, helping them determine that most of the money had been turned over to Iraqi authorities.” The story is here: http://l at.ms/rzA5EA

MILITARY POST OFFICES IN IRAQ will stop processing mail on Nov. 17, and the U.S. Postal Service will no longer accept mail with those addresses on that date. Personnel remaining in Iraq will get their mail through the U.S. embassy and consulate post offices. http://1.usa.gov/t2kfdB

TURNING TO AFGHANISTAN, Scaparrotti told reporters Thursday that Pakistani Frontier Corps troops may be helping insurgents who stage cross-border attacks against U.S. and Afghan forces. “In some locations, from time to time you’ll see what just appears to us to be a collaboration or was a collaboration or, at a minimum, looking the other way when insurgents conducted rocket or mortar fire in what we believe to be visual sight of one of their posts,” he said.

T HE NUMBER OF ATTACKS SHOT UP THIS SUMMER as contacts with the Pakistanis dried up in the wake of the May raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Scaparrotti painted a bleaker picture than other officials of the raid’s effect on military-to-military relations: “After the Bin Laden raid, those routine communications just were not available in most cases. We had a difficult time arranging border flag meetings. We had a difficult time arranging communications back and forth.”

ONE MORE TIDBIT OF NEWS – Scaparrotti said he thinks the United States could meet its goal of leaving a stable Afghanistan by 2014 even if those cross-border sanctuaries aren’t eliminated, “but I believe, in order to do that, we have to build a strong, capable layered defense with the ANSF in order to provide, you know, a proper interdiction. And it’ll be a much tougher task.”

THE PENTAGON TODAY RELEASES ITS SEMI-ANNUAL PROGRESS REPORT on Afghanistan at a 2 p.m. background briefing with senior officials from both DOD and State.

PANETTA WILL BRIEF HOUSE MEMBERS IN SECRET TUESDAY on national security. House insiders expect it to cover all ongoing U.S. military operations, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, the Horn of Africa and Uganda, among other hot spots. A congressional aide tells us State and DNI will also participate. POLITICO’s John Bresnahan and Jake Sherman have the story here: http://politi.co/sQczcb

A NEW FRONT – From today’s Washington Post, by Craig Whitlock – “The Air Force has been secretly flying armed Reaper drones on counterterrorism missions from a remote civilian airport in southern Ethiopia as part of a rapidly expanding U.S.-led proxy war against an al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, U.S. military offic ials said. … The Air Force has invested millions of dollars to upgrade an airfield in Arba Minch, Ethiopia, where it has built a small annex to house a fleet of drones that can be equipped with Hellfire missiles and satellite-guided bombs. The Reapers began flying missions earlier this year over neighboring Somalia, where the United States and its allies in the region have been targeting al-Shabab, a militant Islamist group connected to al-Qaeda.” Read the story here: http://wapo.st/vgSM1O

A GAO OFFICIAL TOLD HASC MEMBERS THURSDAY that DOD is struggling to put in place new financial-management systems seen as crucial to its goal of being audit-ready by the legally-required deadline of 2017. “Implementation has been impaired by delays, cost increases, failures in delivering necessary functionality, and a lack of compliance with required standards,” said Asif Khan, GAO’s director of financial management and assurance. “Preliminary results from audits of two of the systems — which are used for tasks like accounting and supply-chain management — showed they lacked expected capabilities and that “users were relying on manual workarounds to perform day-to-day operations.” Read the full report here: http://1.usa.gov/tHqLI5 (H/T: Austin Wright)

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