This afternoon in a Pentagon press conference, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey chastised House Republicans for passing a measure to provide funding for an East Coast missile defense system. In what seems to be an attempt to reclaim the mantle of the party of national security this election season, House Republicans included the provision in a bill passed today aimed at boosting military spending at the expense of needed social programs for the poor.

During the DOD presser today, Dempsey said he doesn’t “see a need” for the East Coast missile defense:

Q: The House has added $100 million for missile defense into the budget. Do you think that the East Coast needs a missile defense system. Do they need to do this survey that will cost $100 million that the Pentagon didn’t request or is this politically motivated? [...]

DEMPSEY: On ballistic missile defense, as you know we went through a strategic review in the fall and we mapped our budget to it and what I can tell you Jennifer is in my military judgement the program of record for ballistic missile defense for the homeland as we’ve submitted it is adequate and sufficient to the task and that’s a suite of ground based and sea based interceptors. So I don’t see a need beyond what we’ve submitted in the last budget.

Watch it:

Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH,) who supported the East Coast missile defense measure, claims it’s needed “to lessen the threats from both Iran and North Korea.” But the AP reports that Lt. Gen. Patrick J. O’Reilly, the head of the U.S. missile defense program, told Congress recently that North Korea lacks the testing for a capable system and has made little progress in its spaceflight program. And former CIA Mideast analyst Paul Pillar has noted that “the intelligence community does not believe [the Iranians] are anywhere close to having an ICBM [intercontinental ballistic missile].”

Moreover, as Dempsey hinted at in the press conference, Danger Room notes that existing systems already have the eastern sea board covered from ICBM threats.

“This is a political move,” said Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) referring to the GOP’s missile defense scheme. “Every time the election comes around, the Republicans run out a national security agenda.”

Newly disclosed documents reveal the Islamophobic teaching materials used in the Joint Forces Staff College’s cancelled course “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” The course, which led the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff to order a review of all training material in the U.S. military last month, incorporated crude stereotypes of Muslims and promoted a “total war” against Muslims.

The documents, released by Wired’s Danger Room blog, show a series of training materials steeped in anti-Muslim bigotry and repeating Islamophobic characterizations of Islam and Muslims. The Army officer who delivered the lecture, Lt. Col. Matthew A. Dooley, still holds his position at the Joint Forces Staff College in Norfolk, Virginia, pending an investigation. Dooley’s PowerPoint presentations incorporated inflamatory material, such as:

Using the lessons of “Hiroshima” to wipe out whole cities at once, targeting the “civilian population wherever necessary” in a “total war” against Muslims. [PDF]

Claiming “there is no such as thing as ‘moderate Islam,’” and “It is therefore time for the United States to make our true intentions clear. This barbaric ideology will no longer be tolerated. Islam must change or we will facilitate its self-destruction.” [PDF]

Promoting a four phase plan to impose a transformation of Islam. Phase three includes possible outcomes like “Islam reduced to a cult status” and “Saudi Arabia threatened with starvation.” [PDF]

Asserting, “By conservative estimates,” 10 percent of the world’s Muslims, “a staggering 140 million people … hate everything you stand for and will never coexist with you, unless you submit” to Islam.

And, surprisingly, Dooley, taught Army officers that international laws protecting civilians in wartime are “no longer relevant” and that the “historical precedents of Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki” could be applied to bringing about “Mecca and Medina['s] destruction.” [PDF] Dooley, as shown in the slide below, questioned whether “moderate” Muslims exist.

Dooley also invited controversial guest lecturers, such as former FBI employee John Guandolo who has alleged that President Obama has fallen under the influence of Islamic extremists and, in his reference materials for the Joint Forces Staff College, portrayed Muslims as enemies of the west and sought to justify the crusades as a response to “years of Muslim incursion into Western lands.” This view tracks closely with training materials uncovered by ThinkProgress last October, revealing that the U.S. Army War College’s shadowy think tank, the Proteus Management Group, cultivated the anti-Muslim course materials uncovered at the FBI and the Army’s training facilities.

Dooley’s presentations have sent ripples across the U.S. military and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, ordered every military chief and senior commander to dispose of any similar anti-Islam instructional materials.

There were 6,350 reported cases of sexual assault in the military last year, according to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin E. Dempsey. While that number may sound staggering, it’s just a fraction of the predicted number of sexual assaults that went unreported.

Yesterday, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the commandant of the Coast Guard released a letter with new instructions for how to deal with sexual assault among troops, outlining the seriousness of the problem. The letter follows a promise from Defense Secretary Leon Panetta that the military would change its reporting structure and handling of sexual assault cases.

In the newly-released instructions, titled, the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Program (SAPR), stress the importance of reducing the number of cases of rape and sexual abuse. They establish five new “Lines of Effort” in dealing with assault: “Prevention, Investigation, Accountability, Advocacy and Assessment,” and establish how members of the military can play a role in each of these lines of effort.

The instructions also offer up a new definition of sexual assault, striking the usual sterile military language of “military sexual trauma,” which puts the onus on the victim, not the perpetrator. The instructions clarify the new definition:

In 2007, Congress amended the UCMJ to address a wide range of sexual assault offenses under a single article, Article 120, which has since been amended again and will take effect on June 28, 2012. These amendments reorganize, revise and simplify the Article into four distinct offenses: Rape, Sexual Assault, Aggravated Sexual Contact and Abusive Sexual Contact. These four distinct offenses, when coupled with Forcible Sodomy (Article 125, UCMJ) and Attempts to commit these offenses (Article 80, UCMJ), constitutes the category of sexual assault crimes within DoD’s SAPR Program.

The American Civil Liberties Union has requested more information through the Freedom of Information Act on the number of incidents that don’t make it into official reports. A judge has ruled that the military must hand over that information by May 15.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) today walked back his previous accusation that generals were lying about their support of President Obama’s Pentagon budget. On CNN’s “State of the Union” this morning, Ryan said that he had called to apologize to Gen. Martin Dempsey, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

RYAN: I really misspoke, to be candid with you, Candy. I didn’t mean to make that kind of impression. So, I was clumsy in describing the point I was trying to make. The point I was trying to make — and General Dempsey and I spoke after that. I wanted to give that point to him, which is that’s not what I was attempting to say. [...]

CROWLEY: You have apologized to him?

RYAN: Yeah, I called him to tell him that.

Watch it:

On ABC’s This Week, Ryan also said he “totally misspoke,” and claimed, “My issue is I think that the president’s budget on the Pentagon is a budget-driven strategy, not a strategy-driven budget.” But even that statement is a false attack on the generals.

After ThinkProgress reported earlier last week that Ryan said he doesn’t “think the generals are giving their true advice,” Gen. Dempsey explicitly said, “My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”

Yesterday during a policy discussion hosted by the National Journal, Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the House GOP’s supposed budget guru, said that America’s top military brass were lying about their support for President Obama’s Pentagon budget. When asked why the GOP’s budget — which passed the House yesterday — ignores the generals advice and increases military spending, Ryan replied, “We don’t think the generals are giving us their true advice.”

Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Martin Dempsey fired back at Ryan, the Wall Street Journal reports:

“There’s a difference between having someone say they don’t believe what you said versus … calling us, collectively, liars,” Gen. Dempsey told reporters aboard a U.S. military aircraft after a four day visit to Latin America. ”My response is: I stand by my testimony. This was very much a strategy-driven process to which we mapped the budget.”

Dempsey — who said in February that the Pentagon’s new budget will “maintain our military’s decisive edge and help sustain America’s global leadership” — added that the budget “was a collaborative effort” among the nation’s top military officers as well as combat leaders.

Pentagon spokesman George Little also responded to Ryan’s comments yesterday. “We value Congress’s oversight role and the secretary expects honest, straightforward input from our military leadership,” he said, adding, “and he believes that’s precisely what they do on a military basis time and time and time again.”

The former head of Israel’s vaunted Mossad spy agency, who retired just last year, warned American television audiences against attacking Iran before all other options have been exhausted. Meir Dagan, the legendary spymaster and former paratrooper, made the comments in an interview with CBS News’ Leslie Stahl. A portion of the discussion aired last night, with more to come Sunday on the news magazine 60 Minutes.

Asked by Stahl about his comments last year that attacking Iran is “the stupidest thing I have ever heard,” Dagan responded that the West had “more time” before such a decision needed to be made:

DAGAN: An attack on Iran before you’re exploring all other approaches is not the right way how to do it.

STAHL: The dispute seems to come down, though, to whether you are at the end of everything that you can try or whether you have a lot of time left to try other things, which seems to be your position.

DAGAN: I never said that it’s a lot of time, but I think that…

STAHL: Well, more time.

DAGAN: More time.

Stahl commented that while head of the Mossad, which he ran from 2002 to 2011, Dagan poured over detailed intelligence about Iran, “gaining insight and a surprising appreciation.” The camera cut to the interview, and Dagan declared: “The regime in Iran is a very rational regime.” Stahl then questioned him about whether Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was “rational”:

DAGAN: The answer is yes. Not exactly our rational, but think that he is rational.

STAHL: So, you think they’re rational enough that they are capable of backing down from this?

DAGAN: No doubt that the Iranian regime is — maybe not exactly rational based on what I call western thinking, but no doubt that they are considering all the implications of their action.

Watch the interview clip that aired last night:

Dagan’s assertion that Iran is “rational” tracks with what the top U.S. military officer Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey, top U.S. intelligence officer Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and President Obama have said about the Iranian regime: that it operates on a cost-benefit analysis based on its interests, and can therefore be dissuaded from pursuing a nuclear weapons program.

According to reported but still secret U.S. and Israeli intelligence estimates, Iran has not yet made a decision to build a nuclear bomb. That notion was openly discussed by Clapper and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta last month on Capitol Hill. The U.N. nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), did not conclude that Iran was building a bomb in its latest report on the program last month, despite warning about “serious concerns” of “possibly military dimensions” to the program. The IAEA is also reportedly concerned that the Iranians are making attempts to cleanse a military site of nuclear weapons related work.

Iranian stonewalling and behavior have raised these concerns in the U.S. as well. Last month, delivering a speech to the Israeli American Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Obama ruled out containment of a nuclear-armed Iran, warning that an Iranian bomb posed a threat to the U.S. and its allies, as well as the international non-proliferation regime. Yesterday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice concisely laid out the Obama administration’s policy, and said a negotiated, diplomatic end to the crisis was the “best and most permanent way” to end the standoff.

Today during a Oval Office press briefing with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, President Obama said the two leaders “prefer” to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis “diplomatically.” But the two men have not always seens eye-to-eye on how to confront Iran’s alleged nuclear weapons program. Netanyahu has openly rejected efforts to diplomatically deter Iran from pursuing a nuclear weapon while Obama, speaking at the AIPAC conference on Sunday, warned that “loose talk of war” is benefiting the Iranian government.

But a full page Washington Post ad taken out by the National Iranian American Council (NIAC) — and signed by eight retired, high ranking, military and intelligence officials — urges Obama to continue exploring diplomatic paths and resist the push for war with Iran. The ad reads:

Unless we or an ally is attacked, war should be the option of last resort. Our brave servicemen and women expect you to exhaust all diplomatic and peaceful options before you send them into harm’s way.

Preventing a nuclear armed Iran is rightfully your priority and red line. Fortunately, diplomacy had not been exhausted and peaceful solutions are still possible.

While Obama reiterated in his speech to AIPAC yesterday that he “will take no options off the table” in dealing with Iran’s nuclear program, GOP presidential candidates Rick Santorum, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney have blasted Obama as insufficiently hawkish on Iran.

In their testimony before Congress, American intelligence and military leadership consistently make the case that Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon and diplomacy and sanctions can still work to deter Iran from restarting its nuclear weapons program. The IAEA has repeatedly expressed concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program but has not concluded that Tehran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.

Signatories of the NIAC letter — which include five retired Generals — urge Obama to “resist the pressure for a war of choice with Iran.”

Indeed, George W. Bush’s CIA director issued an even more stark warning. In January, former CIA director and NSA chief Gen. Michael Hayden told Foreign Policy’s Josh Rogin that the Bush administration had carefully examined the possibility of bombing Iran and concluded that “[attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon.”

Right-wing hawks have been incensed since Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria last month that Iran is a “rational actor.” Dempsey and Obama administration officials have faced increasing hostility from the right for their views, backed by IAEA reports and U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, that sanctions and diplomacy are effective tools in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. In fact, the Joint Chiefs chairman, when pressed by Republicans in separate Senate and House hearings this week, stood by his claim that Iran makes cost-benefit calculations.

In an interview with the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg published today, President Obama said that it is “unacceptable” for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons and said that he would authorize military force if necessary to prevent that. “I don’t bluff,” Obama said.

The President also noted that the diplomatic and sanctions tracks have been effective. “We have a sanctions architecture that is far more effective than anybody anticipated,” he said, adding that the United States wanted to solve the Iranian nuclear crisis “permanently.” “They are self-interested,” Obama said of the Iranian leadership, and later backed Dempsey’s assessment:

OBAMA: [O]ur argument is going to be that it is important for us to see if we can solve this thing permanently, as opposed to temporarily. And the only way, historically, that a country has ultimately decided not to get nuclear weapons without constant military intervention has been when they themselves take [nuclear weapons] off the table. That’s what happened in Libya, that’s what happened in South Africa. And we think that, without in any way being under an illusion about Iranian intentions, without in any way being naive about the nature of that regime, they are self-interested. [...]

GOLDBERG: Last week, General Martin Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. referred to the Iranian leadership as “rational.” Where do you fall on this continuum? Do you feel that the leaders of Iran might be so irrational that they will not act in what we would understand to be their self-interest? … Do you think they [the Iranian leaders] are messianic?

OBAMA: I think it’s entirely legitimate to say that this is a regime that does not share our worldview or our values. I do think, and this is what General Dempsey was probably referring to, that as we look at how they operate and the decisions they’ve made over the past three decades, that they care about the regime’s survival. … They are able to make decisions based on trying to avoid bad outcomes from their perspective.

It’s unclear what Obama meant by a “temporary” solution to resolving the Iran nuclear impasse. However, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said in November that using military force would only delay Iran’s nuclear progress. When asked if he agreed with his predecessor’s evaluation that “bombing would at most delay that program or derail it up to two or three years at most,” Panetta responded: “I see no change in the assessments.”

While the IAEA has expressed serious concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence reports have asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.

Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey are facing increasing hostility from the right wing for their views, backed by IAEA reports and U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, that sanctions and diplomacy are effective tools in preventing Iran from acquiring a nuclear weapon. Just last week, Newt Gingrich slammed Dempsey, saying “I can’t imagine why he would have said [Iran is a rational actor].”

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) challenged the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff’s assessment of Iran’s intentions yesterday during a House committee hearing:

PRICE: I want to visit a comment you made recently regarding the nation of Iran and the statement, and I think have the quote correct here, that stunned me and many of my constituents. And that is your quote, “We are of the opinion that Iran is a rational actor.” Do you stand by that statement and maybe you wanna explain a little more?

DEMPSEY: Yes, I stand by it because the alternative is almost unimaginable. The alternative is that we attribute to them that their actions are so irrational that they have no basis of planning. You know, not to sound too academic about it but Thucydides in the fifth century B.C. said that all strategy is some combination of reaction to fear, honor and interests. And I think all nations act in response to one of those three things, even Iran. The key is to understand how they act and not trivialize their actions by attributing to them some irrationality. I think that’s a very dangerous thing for us to do. It doesn’t mean I agree with what they decide by the way but they have some thought process they follow.

Watch it:

Price wasn’t persuaded by Dempsey’s explanation and went on to question the “rationality of an assassination attempt on the Saudi ambassador in our territory” but Dempsey pushed back that while he wouldn’t justify Iran’s alleged actions, he stands by his assertion that Iran engages in calculated, rational actions.

Right-wing hawks are taking a noticeably hostile tone towards the U.S.’s top military officer following his February 19 comments to CNN’s Fareed Zakaria that: Iran has not yet decided to pursue a nuclear weapon; it wouldn’t be “prudent” for Israel to attack Iran at this time, and “we are of the opinion that the Iranian regime is a rational actor.”

While the IAEA has expressed serious concerns about possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear program, neither the IAEA nor U.S. intelligence reports have asserted that Iran has restarted its nuclear weapons program.

This month, Director of National Intelligence (DNI) James Clapper and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta fell under attack for making public statements asserting that U.S. intelligence indicates Iran has not yet decided whether to pursue a nuclear weapon. Newt Gingrich adviser Christian Whiton accused Panetta of not “telling the truth” about Iran’s nuclear program and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told Clapper that, despite U.S. intelligence assessments to the contrary, “I’m very convinced that they’re going down the road of developing a nuclear weapon.”

Today, Graham asked Panetta a similar question during a Senate Budget Committee hearing:

LINDSEY GRAHAM: Do you believe the Iranians are trying to develop a nuclear weapon?

LEON PANETTA: I think they’re developing a nuclear capability [but] our intelligence makes clear that they haven’t made the decision to develop a nuclear weapon.

Watch him:

Graham moved on and chose not to publicly disagree with the Secretary of Defense but the message from Panetta was clear. U.S. intelligence, at this time, does not conclude that Iran is in the process of building a nuclear weapon.

These views are echoed by the the IAEA — the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog agency — which, just last week, reiterated its “serious concerns regarding possible military dimensions to Iran’s nuclear programme,” but came short of concluding that Iran is pursuing a nuclear weapon.