‘SEE HOW NICE I’M BEHAVING’: At his rally last in Mosinee, Wis., President Trump began by addressing the “suspicious devices and packages” mailed to former president Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Rep. Maxine Waters, former Attorney General Eric Holder, billionaire George Soros, and former CIA director and current MSNBC contributor John Brennan, without mentioning any of them by name.

HAPPENING TODAY: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis is traveling again after a few days back in Washington following his week-long trip Asia. This time Mattis is heading to Bahrain to participate in the Manama Dialogue. Mattis is scheduled to address the conference and “meet with key leaders on a broad range of security issues,” according to the Pentagon.

The peripatetic secretary will also visit the Czech Republic, where he will meet Czech Prime Minister Andres Babis and attend the Czech centennial celebration.

AFGHANISTAN MIA IN MIDTERMS: The midterm elections are two weeks away and President Trump’s strategy for the country’s longest war is not going well. Most recently, a U.S. brigadier general was shot and the top commander in Afghanistan was caught in the crossfire in a brazen insider attack last week by the Taliban.

But as Americans go to the polls for a key election that many believe will hinge on Trump, his year-old war strategy is not only unlikely to affect the outcome. In fact, the lack of demonstrable progress by traditional metrics in Afghanistan is largely absent from the public debate.

“There is no question that it has fallen off the charts. Just look at news reports, you hardly ever hear about it,” said Fran Coombs, the managing editor of Rasmussen Reports, a polling company. “I think there is no question if public figures put more of a spotlight on it people will care more about it.” Rasmussen’s most recent poll on Afghanistan in July found that 21 percent of voters do not think the U.S. is still at war and 21 percent don’t know. Gallup and the Pew Research Center have not even done midterm polling on the war.

‘NONE OF THAT HAS HAPPENED’: Trump himself has rarely mentioned Afghanistan in public since sending an additional 4,000 U.S. troops there last year to force the Taliban into peace talks. Outside of the Pentagon’s insistence that the strategy is working, assessments are now bleak. “Since Trump announced a reboot of the Afghan strategy, the goal was we’ll add additional military personnel, work closely with the Afghan military, we’ll beat them back on the battlefield and force them to the negotiating table. Well, none of that has happened,” said Bill Roggio, the editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal.

Trump has talked a lot about rethinking U.S. relationships with allies and entanglements overseas, such as saying he would bring the roughly 2,000 troops in Syria home “very soon.” That is the message that could reach voters. “He’s tapped into what I think has been a serious fatigue for this country for a lot of moms and a lot of dads out there who’ve had their kids injured in the last wars that we’ve been in and I think probably pretty grateful that he’s not trying to redeploy them everywhere in the world right now,” said Rick Dearborn, Trump’s former deputy chief of staff.

BOEING’S WINNING STREAK: Growth in Boeing’s defense business, which won a lucrative series of military contracts this summer, pushed third-quarter sales higher than Wall Street expected despite a slowdown in commercial aircraft deliveries.

BILL WOULD BLOCK SAUDI ARMS SALES: A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced legislation that would immediately end all military sales and aid to Saudi Arabia, in the wake of dissident Jamal Khashoggi’s death at the hands of Saudi agents.

BIG LOBBYING PUSH: “Working behind the scenes in Washington, a defense industry group has circulated talking points to industry executives, focusing on the importance of arms sales to U.S. allies. Companies hope to preserve the deals on the Saudi list with near-term delivery dates in 2019 and 2020, ideally firming up the soft commitments made during Trump’s trip in May 2017,” Reuters reports.

“‘Contingency Points On Defense Sales to Saudi Arabia’ were emailed to defense contractors by the Aerospace Industry Association (AIA) in recent days, instructing executives to explain that stopping arms sales could reduce the U.S. ability to influence foreign governments.”

MORE CIVILIAN DEATHS: The Associated Press reports: “A Saudi-led coalition airstrike at a fruit-and-vegetable market near Yemen’s flashpoint Red Sea port of Hodeida killed 19 civilians, including children, Yemeni officials said Thursday.

“Wednesday’s strike comes amid mounting fears of a fresh coalition assault on Hodeida — a city that has been the lifeline for international aid deliveries to Yemen, ravaged by a brutal three-and-a-half year war between the Saudi-led alliance and Shite rebels known as Houthis.”

DEMS DEMAND BRIEFING: The top Democrats on the House Armed Services and Foreign Affairs committees want a briefing from the Trump administration on its plans to withdraw from a Reagan-era nuclear arms control treaty.

In a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Mattis, the lawmakers warned that scrapping the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty could “plunge us headlong into a twenty-first century nuclear arms race.”

Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin says if the U.S. deploys intermediate-range missiles in Europe, Russia will target the nations where they are based. “If they are deployed in Europe, we will naturally have to respond in kind,” Putin said at a news conference, according to the AP. “The European nations that would agree to that should understand that they would expose their territory to the threat of a possible retaliatory strike. These are obvious things.”

The U.S. has no ground-launched cruise missiles in its arsenal because of the treaty restrictions, but Congress has approved funding to begin research into new missiles in response to Russia’s alleged violations.

TRUMP GETTING PRAISE: The decision to withdraw from the INF is getting praise in some quarters, including from some of Trump’s harshest critics.

“Just because President Trump does something doesn’t mean it’s wrong,” writes Max Boot in the Washington Post. “Declaring that the United States is ready to walk away is a good first step toward dealing with the security challenges of today’s world, which are vastly different from those of 1987. The United States can now develop a new land-based intermediate-range ballistic missile to counter a growing Chinese threat — a successor to the Pershing II missiles destroyed under the INF Treaty — while retrofitting the Tomahawk cruise missile, already ubiquitous at sea, for launchers on land.”

“The INF Treaty is simply no longer relevant,” agreed Riki Ellison, chairman of the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance. “The INF Treaty is outdated and an antique valued relic of the past that does not address nor contain current Russian technological developments on missiles that are tremendously more lethal, more capable, and certainly not limited to being based on land.”

KAREM TO THE SENATE: Less than a year and a half after being confirmed for a position at the Pentagon, Assistant Defense Secretary Robert Karem is leaving for a job with the Senate majority leader. The announcement came from Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office Wednesday that Karem, who was on the senator’s staff previously, would be returning as his national security adviser. Karem oversaw international security affairs at the Pentagon and briefly served as acting undersecretary for policy.

OOPS: A C-17 cargo plane accidentally air-dropped a Humvee on a residential neighborhood near Fort Bragg, N.C., yesterday afternoon. The vehicle was supposed to land at a designated drop zone about a mile away, but was apparently pushed out of the back of the plane a little too early and instead descended by parachute in the nearby Johnsonville community. No one was hurt, and the Humvee was retrieved undamaged, according to local news reports.

THE RUNDOWN

Washington Post: CIA director listens to audio of journalist’s alleged murder

Washington Examiner: Saudi Arabia turns to one-time DC playboy who dated CNN anchor to contain Khashoggi fallout

New York Times: When Trump Phones Friends, the Chinese and the Russians Listen and Learn

AP: NATO’s biggest peacetime drill kicks off, angering Moscow

Defense News: What’s going on with the Pentagon’s chief management officer?

Space News: Analyst predicts Space Force will fuel infighting among military services

Washington Post: U.S. military scales back contacts with Afghans after ‘insider’ shootings

Military Times: US troops in Syria take fire from Turkish proxy fighters

Military.com: US Troops Continue Central American Missions as Trump Vows to Pull Aid

New York Times: Saudi Crown Prince Distances Himself From Khashoggi Death, Calling It ‘Heinous’

AP: North Korean general says country seeking ‘stable peace’