As they say: it’s a wrap! In many ways, 2012 was a status quo year. At its end, Barack Obama is still president, and our global war continues to march in varied incarnations across the Middle East, Africa and Central Asia. At home, Americans toil and play in a...
My dad called me and left a message the other day, having just heard that former Senator Chuck Hagel was being considered for Secretary of Defense. “You have a connection to him, no?” he asked, before hanging up. A connection, yes — a very brief and limited, but very...
It was like walking through a nightmare: drifting in an out of hospital rooms, down the long hallways, her contact with shock-ravaged Iraqi parents interrupted only by glimpses of their physically deformed and terminally sick babies who in many cases, would never see...
Gauging U.S. military policy — at least on a meta level — isn’t as hard as it looks, as long as you remember a few general axioms: like, what seems to be true today, will almost certainly change tomorrow, and never, ever listen to a four-star commander when he says...
As far as villains go, Pfc. Bradley Manning is hardly quintessential. At 5 foot 2 inches tall, his slender frame and bespectacled image has invoked snickers, sarcasm and according to reporting over the last two years, a lifetime of bullying. That bullying reached an...
Never underestimate the power of a fantabulous writing team. That’s just what I did when I suggested, however gently, that the new shows Person of Interest (CBS) and Homeland (Showtime) might tank for all of their overdone, paranoid schlock. This is what I wrote last...
It was in the middle of a breaking news story and MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell sounded like she was going to cry. It had to do with CIA Director David Petraeus. She was ticking off his accomplishments one by one, the words “personal tragedy” ringing forebodingly like...
For the better part of two years the campaign saga has pounded the surf of our daily lives like a relentless black tide. Now, in a matter of hours, polling places at last will close, with either President Barack Obama or Mitt Romney emerging victorious at the other...
On Halloween, an army of the undead will be unleashed upon Mission Bay off the coast of San Diego. U.S. soldiers, Marines, special forces, police and emergency responders will face the challenge of a lifetime as the flesh-eating scourge threatens to devour their ranks...
The much awaited foreign policy debate Monday night probably did nothing to create a clear contrast between President Barack Obama and his challenger Mitt Romney. It did, however, confirm that neither candidate offers much of a foreign policy vision moving into the...
