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Thomas E. Ricks' daily take on national security.

McCain on all things military

For the last event in the Future of War conference, I interviewed Sen. John McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, about this and that.

mccain
mccain

For the last event in the Future of War conference, I interviewed Sen. John McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, about this and that. I was too busy to take notes, but here are some of the things I remember:

For the last event in the Future of War conference, I interviewed Sen. John McCain, the new chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, about this and that. I was too busy to take notes, but here are some of the things I remember:

–We talked some about the state of the officer corps, and his views of today’s flag officers. Some of it is on this video, which opens about 5 minutes into the talk, I think.

–He is going to give the Navy a kick in the butt on UCAS.

–When I asked him if Sen. Lindsay Graham is his “Mini-Me,” he revealed that the South Carolinian is in fact his “illegitimate son.” He said that Graham is taking over the subcommittee on personnel issues because he enjoys suicide missions.

–He had a bunch of specifics on what he wanted to see deployed against ISIS, but I don’t have his exact words. See video.

–When I suggested that the answer to 10-month-long deployments of Navy ships is to allow sex on those ships, he looked a bit alarmed and said he wasn’t gonna touch that.

–When I asked him what he had been reading, he recommended Andrew Roberts’ new biography of Napoleon.

WAKIL KOHSAR/AFP/Getty Images

Thomas E. Ricks covered the U.S. military from 1991 to 2008 for the Wall Street Journal and then the Washington Post. He can be reached at ricksblogcomment@gmail.com. Twitter: @tomricks1

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