C-SPAN microphones caught a group of Pentagon reporters chatting as they waited for President Barack Obama to take the podium and discuss military budget cuts. Among their topics of discussion? What a Ron Paul presidency might mean for their jobs.

Fox News’s Bret Baier broke news this afternoon that the Obama administration is looking to draw American troop numbers in Iraq down to 3,000 by the end of this year. According to Fox’s sources, this number is significantly less than than the military personnel had expected, and, notedly, less than they believe they need. ”We can’t [...]

A film about the American raid that killed Osama bin Laden has prompted New York Rep. Peter King to call for an investigation, suggesting cooperation between the film’s director and the Pentagon could represent a leak of “classified information regarding sensitive military operations” and that the decision serves a “cinematographic view of history.”

According to The Wall Street Journal, the filmmakers will not be receiving any classified information in their briefings:

With its influence on international events like the revolutions in the Middle East, it’s clear that social media has become much more important than as merely the 21st century way to share Charlie Sheen jokes (God, remember when we had to make fun of his legal problems through fax?). And it’s not just billionaire nerds who’ve taken notice; a fascinating article in the New York Times details the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s goal to employ what the Times dubs an “Internet meme tracker.”

The federal government is starting to slowly release items from what is now history’s single largest intelligence treasure trove, Osama bin Laden‘s Pakistani compound, today making public home videos of the al-Qaeda mass murderer’s daily life. Among them, the first to make it on air is that of a frail-looking bin Laden watching himself on television.

Stung by the WikiLeaks release of thousands of Pentagon documents, the military has apparently just gotten around to warning troops that it’s not okay to put classified material on removable media like thumb drives, CDs and DVDs–also known as “easily lose-able media.”

Noah Shachtman writes in Wired‘s Danger Room blog that the order was issued a week ago to all troops using the Pentagon’s secret network–part of an overall strategy to tighten security and prevent further release of sensitive material. The penalty for attempting to copy documents to a disk? Court martial.

A just-released Pentagon study on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell–covered live on all cable nets–finds overturning DADT would not cause any longterm problems for the American military.

“A strong majority (of American troops surveyed)–more than two thirds–do not object to gays and lesbians serving openly in the military,” said Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who introduced the survey’s results alonside Admiral Mike Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So it seems like a missile was launched in Southern California. That’s certainly alarming enough as it is, but prepare to be doubly alarmed: nobody, not even the Pentagon, knows who launched it.

And the DADT plot thickens. Last night, Brian Williams broke the news of a Defense Department survey that asked troops how they’d feel about serving with openly gay men and women. And the survey says… that most of the military is fine with openly gay troops amongst their ranks.

WikiLeaks, the electronic whistleblower that obtained and published nearly 77,000 classified reports about the war in Afghanistan this summer, now has its sights set on Iraq. The Associated Press’s Anne Flaherty reports that the site’s got “as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on operations in Iraq”—and that the Pentagon is already asking reporters not to publish them.

Last week the Pentagon destroyed thousands of copies of a single book. The book was Army Reserve Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer’s new memoir “Operation Dark Heart”, about his time in Afghanistan leading a black-ops team, and the Pentagon was so determined the public not read portions of it they purchased all 9,500 copies of it directly from its publisher, St. Martins, with the express purpose of destroying it.

In observance of the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001, President Barack Obama addressed a crowd of friends and loved ones of the victims of the attacks at the Pentagon, and spoke to the perseverance of the American people as they gather on “hallowed ground” to remember the fallen.

Earlier today, chief Wikileaks spokesman (and suspected founder) Julian Assange told the AP that the Pentagon had communicated to his organization. It took about an hour for the Pentagon to deny any dialogue. Now, after a letter from the Department of Defense to a Wikileaks legal representative has surfaced, the Pentagon is standing by their “no direct contact” claim but backed down on their earlier, more absolute claim. Oh, and they don’t want to cooperate.

According to Wikileaks primary entity Julian Assange, the Pentagon has agreed to talk about working with the whistleblowing organization to help them in releasing the remaining 15,000 Afghan War files Wikileaks has promised to publish online after their initial 90,000+ document leak. Except, according to the Department of Defense, those talks never happened.

In a surprisingly light-handed statement (considering the pending government hit put out on SPC Bradley Manning), Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell asked the people behind WikiLeaks to “do the right thing” today by forking over around 15,ooo currently unreleased documents on the war in Afghanistan, as well as removing the 70,000 documents they put online in July.

In a recent interview, Michael Hastings, author of the Rolling Stone article that led to the ousting of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, denied claims he broke any pre-arranged ground rules for his story, and added that he had another military embed in Afghanistan. The Pentagon, however, is denying him an embed assignment, citing trust problems.

Security surrounding the supposedly confidential “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” survey has been lackluster, to say the least. First, the survey, which was sent to 400,000 non-deployed active troops, was leaked. And now, self-proclaimed gay rights activist and civilian blogger John Aravosis claims he was able to participate in a secondary portion of the Pentagon’s survey.

A congressional subcommittee chaired by Rep. John Tierney, D-Mass., released a report today with allegations that security firms in Afghanistan that hold contracts with the Pentagon may be extorting money and giving it to the Taliban. The report claims that up to $4 million a week of American tax payer money could be being used to help fund our enemies.

A few days ago, federal officials arrested the 22 year old Army intelligence analyst who allegedly leaked the infamous Collateral Murder video to the website WikiLeaks. Philip Shenon of the The Daily Beast is now reporting, though, that the government is “desperately” seeking WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to persuade him not to publish 260,000 classified cables that the analyst, SPC Bradley Manning, also leaked.

In one of the stranger and scarier segments in Rachel Maddow Show history, Rachel Maddow criticizes an Obama administration national security suggestion to reduce America’s nuclear arsenal– by making a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile indistinguishable from a conventional weapon ICBM. Don’t get too excited about Maddow turning on Obama—the idea was Donald Rumsfeld’s.

Tonight’s shootings at the Pentagon Metro station are a brutal reminder that while we may be arguing about the finer terms of the health care bill or a congressman’s lapse in judgment, in a second all of it can fall away as we join together as a nation in concern and astonishment. Pentagon police chief Richard Keevill held a press conference moments ago to tell us what little they know and are willing to divulge about the incident.

A shooting at the Pentagon’s metro station in D.C. has caused the headquarters of the Department of Defense to go on lock-down mode after at least 3 people were injured in the attack. Early reports on the shootings – occurring around 7 p.m. – have identified two of the victims as members of the Pentagon Force Protection Agency.

It appears that there is another news aggregator in the media business, but one of a very different stripe. The official newspaper of the Department of Defense Stars and Stripes reports that the Pentagon has been keeping track of reporters’ coverage of the US Military, grading them as “positive,” “neutral” or “negative.” This, despite strong denials from the Pentagon that no such “tracking” has been taking place.