By IRNA,
New York : US President-elect Barack Obama has reached out to Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
On Friday, Obama held a meeting in Chicago, Illinois, with Mullen, US military official said according to The New York Times.
The meeting was a “get-acquainted session,” the official said.
The meeting comes as Mullen is reviewing a formal “request for forces” from commanders in the field for 15,000 to 20,000 additional troops to send to Afghanistan during the opening months of the Obama administration.
It also comes as the president-elect has made statements about his desire to find terror mastermind Osama bin Laden.
The New York Times said that retired Adm. Dennis Blair may be named as director of national intelligence.
He did a tour of duty at the CIA, and his expertise is clandestine military operations.
And Robert Gates?
“One of the most important lessons of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan is that military success is not sufficient to win,” Gates said in a speech at Kansas State University in 2007.
Gates urgently needs the State Department to contribute billions of dollars in aid for Iraq and Afghanistan.
Obama’s potential national security team looks like an all-star lineup: Sen. Hillary Clinton is on track to be secretary of state; Defense Secretary Robert Gates may stay on; and retired Gen. Jim Jones is a leading candidate for national security adviser.