While I was taking a week off to celebrate Memorial Day the story broke about “King David” Petraeus secretly giving himself authority in back in September 2009 to start a war anywhere from the Horn of Africa to the Bananastans*. His secret directive allows him to bury...
On the heels of reports that the Barack Obama administration altered a new manual on military commission rules to accommodate an illegal drone program, a senior United Nations official is expected to call on the U.S. this week to stop Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)...
For six days in late May 2010, Emergency, an Italian NGO providing surgery and basic health care in Afghanistan since 1999, welcomed us to visit facilities they operate in the capital city of Kabul and in Panjshir, a neighboring province. We lived with their hospital...
Sunday's New York Times, gearing up for Memorial Day, carries a leading front-page story direct from the Afghan front, complete with photos. Does it tell of the 1,000 Americans who have perished there in America's longest war, or the unknown number of innocent Afghans...
Kandahar's central slammer got slammed while Canada slept. Recently, two Canadian soldiers have been killed: Col. Geoff Parker of the Royal Canadian Regiment in Kabul and Trooper Larry Rudd of the Royal Canadian Dragoons in Panjwaii, the former by a suicide bomber and...
MEMORANDUM FOR: Congressman David Obey FROM: A Former Admirer SUBJECT: Ducking the Challenge "We can sit, frozen in our own indifference, as President Roosevelt once said…" That's what you said yesterday in connection with saving teachers' jobs....
President Barack Obama's speech to the West Point graduating class last Saturday was meant to convey a "new" American national security strategy, less evident in his words than in the manner in which the White House pitched the speech to the press, the press following...
Human rights advocates are expressing shock at a federal court ruling that detainees held by the United States in Afghanistan do not have the right to challenge their detention in a U.S. federal court – and dismay that their path to a successful appeal to the U.S....
Gen. Stanley McChrystal's team once talked openly about the need to remove Ahmed Wali Karzai, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's brother and the most powerful man in Kandahar, from power. Last October, as reports of Wali Karzai's role in the opium trade were circulating,...
