Frank Gaffney‘s Center for Security Policy honored Rep. Allen West (R-FL) in New York this week, where West “made a presentation delineating some of our more pressing national security concerns.”

During the speech, West turned to the issue of the Gaza flotilla that has been making headlines in recent weeks. A group of pro-Palestinian activists, led by several Turkish groups, have said they plan to sail to Gaza on a humanitarian mission to break the Israeli blockade. Last year, Israeli commandos killed a number of activists on a similar mission, including one American citizen.

But West seems to think that because Turks are involved in the flotilla, it’s actually the Turkish government that is leading the charge. Thus, West said to Gaffney’s group, because Turkey is a NATO ally, the United States would have to attack Israel if Israeli defense forces again storm the flotilla:

WEST: And be very nervous about one simple thing. I know that we were talking about this flotilla. If Turkey establishes a flotilla, and supports a flotilla going down, and all of the sudden Israel attacks this flotilla, Turkey is a member of the EU and also a member of the NATO, can wave and say, “As a member of NATO, we have been attacked and therefore, part of the charter is all NATO countries must come to the aid of a NATO member that’s been attacked.”

And see, this is the kind of stuff that I sit down in my lonely little apartment in Washington, DC and I think about.

During the same speech, West also called Fatah, the political block ruling the Palestinian Authority, “a terrorist group,” adding that if the Palestinians go to the U.N. this summer to declare statehood, it will be “nothing more than a new terrorist state.” Watch it:

First, “Fatah is not currently regarded as a terrorist organization by any government.” But second, West’s understanding of NATO and the situation with the flotilla is way off. Turkish rights groups, not the Turkish government, are sponsoring the flotilla, thereby making NATO, and Article V of the Washington Treaty, completely irrelevant. Moreover, Haaretz reported this week that Turkish representation in the flotilla will be limited because the main flotilla sponsor, the Turkish Humanitarian Relief Foundation, announced that it will not participate in the mission.

But also, even if West’s imaginary scenario had some sort of basis in reality, he’d know that the United States never attacked Israel last year when Israeli commandos raided the flotilla. In fact, the U.S. government barely said anything about the Israelis killing an American during the operation.

It’s sort of ironic then, that West said in the same speech that the GOP’s presidential candidates don’t know anything about national security. Yet, these are the issues that, according to West, he sits down in his lonely apartment in DC and thinks about.

Former Minnesota governor Tim Pawlenty delivered a major foreign policy speech yesterday that was widely panned for its confusion and incoherence. One observer even went so far as to say, “It was actually a little painful to watch.”

But apparently, one of Pawlenty’s goals with his speech yesterday was to distance himself from the neocons. The Cable’s Josh Rogin noted yesterday that Pawlenty’s views mirror those of GOP hawks Sens. John McCain (R-AZ), Linsdey Graham (R-SC), and Joe Lieberman (I-CT), but he “doesn’t want to be identified as a neoconservative, and doesn’t want his views to be tied to those senators in particular.” Indeed, in a recent interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, Pawlenty specifically asked not to be associated with McCain’s neocon/hawkish wing of the GOP:

“I wish you could think of another way to describe this wing of the party, other than McCain and Lindsey Graham. I love John, but that’s like saying we’re embracing Nelson Rockefeller on economics.”

But despite Pawlenty’s wishes, it seems like the only people who had any sense of admiration for what he said in his speech were McCain and the neocons. “Strong foreign policy speech by @timpawlenty yesterday, worth reading in full,” McCain tweeted this afternoon. And to top it off, the war hawk oped writers in Washington signed on too:

THE WEEKLY STANDARD: “Tim Pawlenty strongly criticized President Obama’s ‘murky policy’ of ‘engagement.’

WASHINGTON POST RIGHT TURN: “Former Minnesota governor and 2012 Republican candidate Tim Pawlenty delivered a strong foreign policy speech at the Council on Foreign Relations yesterday.”

COMMENTARY: “I have been complaining that too many Republicans seem eager to run away from their party’s proud legacy of being strong on national security policy. But there are some notable exceptions, including presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty.”

AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE: “This morning, former Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty sought to claim the mantle of Ronald Reagan, delivering a speech at the Council on Foreign Relations that vigorously endorsed a freedom-centered foreign policy for the Republican Party.”

Seeming to recognize that the war mongering nature of neoconservatism has been discredited and is deeply unpopular, Pawlenty can try all he wants to say he’s not sympathetic to its credo. But neocons know they have their man in Pawlenty, and as the old saying goes, you can run but you can’t hide.

Our guest blogger is CAP Visiting Fellow Pratap Chatterjee.

The number of contractors in Afghanistan is likely to increase significantly in the next year as the Obama administration pulls back some of the extra 68,000 troops that it has dispatched there since January 2009.

Typically, the U.S. pays one contractor to support every soldier that has deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. The ratio of contractors to troops increases dramatically during a military surge as well as during a drawdown, and often stays higher than troop levels when military numbers are low, i.e. down to 30,000-50,000.

The reason is simple — the military needs extra workers to build new bases as well as to shut them down. Just like a hotel or restaurant, a military base also needs a minimum number of people to do the basics like janitorial or food service work. And as troops withdraw, U.S. diplomats are likely to hire extra security contractors as they are doing now in Iraq.

Using a range of 1.3 to 1.4 (based on what Afghanistan needed before the surge and Iraq needed after the drawdown), I would project that if the Obama administration draws down to 68,000 troops in Afghanistan by September 2012, they will need 88,400 contractors at the very least, but potentially as many as 95,880:

The majority of these workers do maintenance and other support tasks. But the one group that has seen demand explode since Obama became president is the number of private security contractors (men or women with guns), which spiked from a flat line of about 4,000 to almost 19,000 today. Given the attack on the Intercontinental in Kabul yesterday, that number seems very unlikely to drop:

Read more