Last week I spent two days in court for a pretrial motions hearing in the court martial of Bradley Manning, the private accused of leaking documents to WikiLeaks that showed widespread unethical and illegal behavior by the Department of Defense and State Department....
Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta called it “utterly deplorable.” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton expressed “total dismay.” General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, was “deeply disturbed” that the actions in question would “erode the reputation of...
Next week, as the country's Christmastime frenzy is in full swing, a 24-year-old American Army private will be on trial for his very life. His supporters say “we are all Bradley Manning,” and perhaps they are right. His first hearing since he was arrested in May 2010...
It’s hardly a secret at this late date that, while the Obama administration arrived in office promoting “a new standard of openness” in government, in practice it’s cast not sunshine, but a penumbra of gloom over the workings of Washington. Talk about a closed and...
Even though the yellow ribbons of the Bush era are out of fashion, the admonition to support our troops continues to grate. In January 2006 then-Los Angeles Times humor columnist Joel Stein wrote an inflammatory oped titled "Warriors and Wusses." "I don't support our...
Was Adel Hamlily an agent for MI6, the British secret services, and simultaneously a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaeda"? Was there a secret al-Qaeda cell in Bremen that even the German government knew nothing about? And could it be...
The WikiLeaks documents released on Guantanamo prisoners indicate appalling military incompetence in haphazardly patching together sketchy and contradictory information that has allowed many high-risk terror suspects to go free, while low-risk or innocent detainees...
Imperial powers hedge their bets. The most striking recent example we have of this is in Egypt. While the Pentagon was pouring money into the Egyptian military (approximately $40 billion since 1979), it turns out—thank you, WikiLeaks!—that the U.S. government was...
One hundred and forty-five years later, the room was almost pleasant. There was an embrasure with an open window at the extreme end of the casemate, looking out over the moat and the pretty buildings of Fort Monroe beyond. The sun played over the water and sent...
