Secretary of Defense Robert Gates has been one busy official of late. Last week, on a surprise visit to Afghanistan, he managed to apologize for U.S. helicopters killing nine boys collecting wood on a hillside in Kunar Province, even as he announced that a negotiating...
They can’t help themselves. Really, they can’t. Like children, the most monstrous of secret police outfits evidently come to believe themselves immortal. They lose all ability to imagine that they might ever go down and so keep records to the very moment of their...
A week or so ago, a friend of mine noticed a poster taped to a wall inside the rotunda of the Wisconsin State Capitol building, where American demonstrators were camped out. It showed a lone demonstrator walking toward a line of helmeted Egyptian police, holding high...
Talking about secretaries of defense... Oh, we weren’t? Well, let’s. After all, they’re in the news. Take former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who, on leaving government service—and I hope you don’t mind if I mangle a quote from Gen. Douglas MacArthur here—...
What if you went to a restaurant and found it rather pricey? Still, you ordered your meal and, when done, picked up the check only to discover that it was almost twice the menu price. Welcome to the world of the real U.S. national security budget. Normally, in media...
This is a global moment unlike any in memory, perhaps in history. Yes, comparisons can be made to the wave of people power that swept Eastern Europe as the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989-91. For those with longer memories, perhaps 1968 might come to mind, that...
Here's the truth of it: You don't need an $80-billion-plus budget and a morass of 17 intelligence agencies to look at the world and draw a few intelligent conclusions. Nor do you need $80 billion-plus and that same set of agencies to be caught off-guard by...
With Hosni Mubarak gone, let's do a little Egyptian math on the Mubarak years. According to experts, the fortune amassed by Egypt's former president and his two sons (both billionaires) could reach $70 billion. That includes funds in secret offshore bank accounts and...
