The television commercial is designed to spark outrage. “Billions of taxpayer dollars spent on green energy went to jobs in foreign countries,” it intones. “The Obama administration admitted the truth — that $2.3 billion of tax credits went overseas, while millions of Americans can’t find a job. ... American taxpayers are paying to send their own jobs to foreign countries.”

President Obama has called a halt to the decade-long rise in defense spending that began after Sept. 11, and has proposed shrinking the Army and Marine Corps by about 14 percent.

Congressional Republicans (not to mention Mitt Romney) say that would be disastrous and that it could jeopardize American troops abroad.

But the military brass has stood behind Obama — literally. When the president announced his proposals, the Joint Chiefs of Staff lined up behind him in the Pentagon’s briefing room. There has been no audible dissent from the officer corps.

Not long ago, an astute reader noted that it has been nearly two years since I wrote in a column that “most experts now estimate that Iran needs about 18 months to complete a nuclear device and a missile to carry it.”

His point — that those estimates were way off — was a good one, especially since experts are still estimating that Iran is 18 months away from being able to build a nuclear weapon.

So what gives? Why does Iran always seem to be about 18 months away from a nuclear bomb, at least in the eyes of U.S. officials?

When it comes to national security, Michael V. Hayden is no shrinking violet. As CIA director, he ran the Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretaps against suspected terrorists.

But the retired air force general admits to being a little squeamish about the Obama administration’s expanding use of pilotless drones to kill suspected terrorists around the world — including, occasionally, U.S. citizens.