The D Brief: Kabul grows dangerous; Wendy Anderson leaves Commerce; What about Bob (McDonald)?; Embedded media, the military and blind dates; And a bit more.

Former Hagel deputy chief of staff Wendy Anderson is leaving Commerce. Anderson, who also served Ash Carter, the former Deputy Secretary of Defense as his chief of staff, is announcing this morning that she will leave the Commerce Department after only five months for a job back inside the national security apparatus after leaving Hagel’s employ this summer. Anderson, in an email to colleagues this morning provided to The D Brief: “…As most of you know, I have spent nearly 20 years working on national security issues in non-governmental organizations all over the world, in the U.S. Senate and, most recently, as part of the senior leadership team at the U.S. Department of Defense.  The decision to move to Commerce represented an exciting opportunity to branch into new territory.  However, in light of the complex and vexing national security challenges facing the country, and with the knowledge that my deepest and most abiding commitments are to our security and defense, I have decided to return to that calling.  Last Monday, I informed the Secretary, and she supports my decision whole-heartedly… I will provide additional details in coming weeks about my new coordinates.”

John Allen emails The D Brief: “Wendy Anderson is an exceptional public servant in every manner who has been at the forefront of defense and security matters for some time.  I have no doubt that strong background, and her recent experience at Commerce, will fit her well for the next challenges in her life.  There is much ahead for her, and this country will be very well served by whatever course she takes.”

Meantime, Kabul has suffered nearly a dozen bombings or attacks in the past two weeks, prompting the police chief to resign on Sunday. Nathan Hodge and Habib Khan Totakhil for the WSJ: “The Afghan capital has become the focus of a violent campaign by Taliban insurgents seeking to exploit the new government’s infighting and drive out the country’s foreign backers.

The past two weeks have seen a string of attacks on diplomatic and international targets in Kabul, including a deadly assault Saturday on a guest house belonging to a nongovernmental organization, Partnership in Academics and Development. This past Thursday a suicide attack hit Wazir Akbar Khan, the heart of the diplomatic quarter, and a car bombing struck a British diplomatic convoy.

All told, the city has seen about a dozen bombings or attacks in about two weeks—a frequency much greater than usual.” Read that here.

And also this morning, “A suicide bomber Monday killed at least nine people in an attack on the funeral of a pro-government tribal chief in northern Afghanistan, officials said, the latest assault amid a sharp rise in insurgent violence in the country. The attacker detonated his suicide vest in a crowd of mourners at the funeral of tribal leader Hakim Bay, in Burka district in Baghlan province, said Gen. Aminullah Amarkhil, the provincial police chief.

“Nine people including two policemen were killed and 18 more wounded in the suicide bombing,” Gen. Amarkhil said.” Read that in the Journal, too, here.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani dismissed previous “holdover” ministers from the Karzai administration in the hopes of accelerating the formation of a new government in Kabul. Joseph Goldstein for the NYT: “The underlying problem, which various factions in the government point to, is the power-sharing agreement that followed this year’s disputed presidential election… Since the deal was struck in September, Mr. Ghani and Mr. Abdullah have been unable to agree on a new cabinet, leaving the government in the lurch and raising questions about the long-term chances of the power-sharing deal.” More here.

The Taliban launched three offensives in Helmand province late last week, including a three-day assault on Camp Bastion. Long War Journal’s Bill Roggio, here.

It will take at least another three years before Kabul’s Air Force can relieve U.S. air power in Afghanistan. Reuter’s Kay Johnson and Mirwais Harooni, here.

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In Defense One: The Pentagon’s recent tech-centric, “offset” strategy may not yield the sort of investment from large defense firms that’s really needed to have a significant impact, Defense One’s own Marcus Weisgerber reports: “Companies with large commercial businesses oftentimes spend multiples more on research than pure defense companies. That’s because there is a far greater chance of recouping investments with a successful commercial technological breakthrough. That is not the case with defense technology… If Lockheed Martin develops a new missile with sensitive military technology and DOD doesn’t want it, the company loses the money it cost to build the weapon since there are not as many sales options...” Read the rest of this bit here.

Turkey and the U.S. grow closer after the Biden visit. The WSJ’s Adam Entous: “U.S. and Turkish officials have narrowed their differences over a joint military mission in Syria that would give the U.S. and its coalition partners permission to use Turkish air bases to launch strike operations against Islamic State targets across northern Syria, according to officials in both countries.

As part of the deal, U.S. and Turkish officials are discussing the creation of a protected zone along a portion of the Syrian border that would be off-limits to Assad regime aircraft and would provide sanctuary to Western-backed opposition forces and refugees.” Read that here.

Meantime, the Iraqis discover they have a ghost army in their midst. The WaPo’s Loveday Morris: “The Iraqi army has been paying salaries to at least 50,000 soldiers who don’t exist, Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said Sunday, an indication of the level of corruption that permeates an institution that the United States has spent billions equipping and arming. A preliminary investigation into ‘ghost soldiers’ — whose salaries are being drawn but who are not in military service — revealed the tens of thousands of false names on Defense Ministry rolls, Abadi told parliament Sunday. Follow-up investigations are expected to uncover “more and more,” he added.

“Abadi, who took power in September, is under pressure to stamp out the graft that flourished in the armed forces under his predecessor, Nouri al-Maliki. Widespread corruption has been blamed for contributing to the collapse of four of the army’s 14 divisions in June in the face of an offensive by Islamic State extremists.” More here.

Nearly 40,000 Iraqis who in various ways helped U.S. forces are holding in a bureaucratic limbo while living in fear that their families are being targeted. WSJ’s Miriam Jordan, here.

ISIS has become the unwelcome new guy among rival terrorists, writes LA Times’ Raja Abdulrahim—adding that the group has scored the equivalent of only D-list celebrity endorsements among their contemporaries. More here.

U.S. war planes pounded ISIS targets around their stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, over the weekend. Reuters, here.

Afghanistan is having its own problems with the Special Immigrant Visa program, too—with the BBC turnings its light on what it calls “blacklisting” former interpreters for U.S. forces who have since become security risks. BBC’s Thomas Martienssen from Kabul, here.

Who’s doing what today? Air Force Secretary Debbie Lee James is back from the Pacific after visiting troops at installations in Hawaii, Guam, Japan, the Republic of Korea, and Alaska… Naval chief Adm. Jonathan Greenert is also fresh off a trip visiting Sailors and Marines in the Gulf and Bahrain over the holiday week… DNI’s National Intelligence Council Chairman Gregory F. Treverton—in his first public and on-the-record discussion since taking the job in September—talks about adaptive intelligence for new threats at the Atlantic Council tonight at 5 p.m.

Just call the VA’s Bob McDonald, “Bob.” It’s hard to imagine Eric Shinseki, the former head of the VA, being this loose – or chatty with the press. But McDonald, the new VA head, is using his charms to persuade a wary public – and press – that the VA is on the move. Military Times’ Leo Shane with this profile: “…VA is a great place to work, [McDonald says] – despite what you may have heard recently. Bob is just another guy, one charged with reforming and rebuilding the fourth-largest government bureaucracy in the midst of a yearlong crisis. And he really wants you to buy what he’s selling…” Read the rest of Shane’s bit here.

ICYMI, a “band of mothers” : Watch this bit about “The Mighty Moms of Walter Reed,” who take care of their children there and their little-known story is a tough one to hear. Fox News’ Jennifer Griffin and Justin Fishel:  “…Some of these mothers have spent up to four years living with their child at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland while they recover from multiple amputations and traumatic brain injuries. The stories they tell of the challenges they face as caregivers to our nation's wounded warriors are searing, inspiring and uplifting. Fox News interviewed half a dozen of these mothers to learn what they’ve been through and the ‘band of mothers’ that they have formed as a result.” Watch it here.

As the ground wars end, is the embedded media program – and the relationship between the military and the media entering a new phase? Former WaPo reporter and now an editorial writer for the NYT, Ernesto Londono compares the embedded media program to a blind date: “During the eight years I covered the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I came to see being embedded with American military units as a bit like going on blind dates. Some were exhilarating and fascinating. Others were mind-numbingly dull. It paid to do legwork upfront, vetting units and missions closely before committing. When things got off to an awkward start, there was no easy way to flee. But sometimes, you’d get lucky.” More here.

ICYMI: CNAS’ Richard Fontaine and Vance Serchuck (former aides to Sens. John McCain and Joe Lieberman, respectively) penned this bit about how how foreign policymakers view history will tell a lot about how they will faced challenges this year. Read that in Politico magazine here.

What little idea did Jim Mattis, Bill McRaven, Ray Odierno and Jim Amos all love? The one where the U.S. supports a venture capitalist named Jim Hake and his Spirit of America in the door. From the WSJ’s Weekend section: “… How a group as tiny as Spirit of America came to have such outsize clout is one of the more cheerful stories to emerge from the post-9/11 era. It’s the story of a citizens’ organization that emerged from the ashes of the World Trade Center bombing in September 2001, began its work in the Iraq war, migrated to Afghanistan and is now operating in support of U.S. troops opposing Islamic State terrorists.”

Jim Hake’s “light bulb moment”: “…An Army sergeant first class named Jay Smith described his work with a special-operations team in Afghanistan. The team hunted al Qaeda terrorists and worked with local populations. For the latter, Sgt. Smith needed things like sports equipment, blankets and school supplies. And where did he get this stuff? His wife sent them over. Jim Hake thought, his wife? His next thought was: I can do this.” Read the rest here.

In Defense One: The Defense Department has some serious work to do if it hopes to harness the Next Big Thing from Silicon Valley, says national security analyst August Cole in Defense One: “Google and other deep-pocketed tech firms are buying the very innovations that should be at the top of the Pentagon’s wish lists. Pentagon and defense industry officials shouldn’t fear this. They should embrace it… It would be an overstatement to say the defense industry and Silicon Valley are adversaries but the two are in competition more than they realize, and there is a lot the defense industry can learn from the rivalry…” Read the rest here.

"My wife says she can smell it on my clothes." Travel inside Minot AFB’s unusually smelly, underground “nuke pods” with Military Times’ Andrew Tilghman—where Airmen are dusting off neglected and depressing workspaces as part of SecDef Hagel’s “deep clean” measures announced in mid-November. More here.

This is the kind of SecDef Obama needs. The NYT ran a little bit from four folks about why Hagel was let go and what kind of person should replace him as the nat-sec community awaits a decision from the White House about just who will replace Hagel, who resigned under pressure last week. Janine Davidson’s take: “…having such a strong, competent, professional at the helm in the Pentagon will make zero difference if the president is not willing to consider uncomfortable advice on everything from timelines for withdrawal in Afghanistan to numbers of boots on the ground in Iraq. If he is not willing to nominate someone able speak truth to power -- and also willing to listen to her or him, he risks leaving national security on an even worse trajectory than he inherited, a remarkable legacy indeed.” More from Davidson, here.

Kiron Skinner: “…President Obama is in search of a doctrine that puts the brakes on American retreat but respects the limits of American power. Perhaps now is the time to select a secretary of defense who can rise above administration politics to articulate a strategy — or, at the very least, set the conditions for the military brass to do so.” More of Skinner’s bit, here.

John Nagl: “…Fortunately, two veterans of those early years in the Obama Pentagon are available to serve. The physicist Ashton Carter ran the Pentagon’s weapons acquisitions and logistics programs before becoming Leon Panetta’s deputy secretary of defense, the chief management officer of the world's biggest organization. John McHugh, a Republican congressman from New York, has been Obama's only secretary of the Army, ably managing the nation's largest armed service. Both have earned the president’s trust; either would serve ably and well in a role the president thought he no longer needed: secretary of war.” More from Nagl, here.

Larry Korb: “…A new secretary must first and foremost be comfortable with the dominant role of the White House in the decision-making process, and must forcefully support the president’s approach to foreign policy challenges, both publicly and privately, despite opposition from the military, the Republicans and much of the foreign policy establishment. Obama is looking for a loyalist, not an iconoclast.” More from Korb, here.

 “Colossal corruption” defines the Russian system under President Vladimir Putin, and thievery has made he and his friends fabulously rich, writes Soviet and Russian scholar Karen Dawisha in her new book “Putin’s Kleptocracy,” covered in the NYTs Sunday Book Review, here.

Russian security forces are allegedly using anti-insurgency tactics against Crimea’s Tatar population. WaPo’s Michael Birnbaum from Belogorsk, Crimea, here.

FARC rebels in Colombia released the general they held captive for two weeks. CNN, here.

Apropos of nothing: We’re reminded once again of why this man’s sighting of a double rainbow – or is it a triple?? -  is one of the best things the Internet machine has ever offered. Watch it here.