rssPosts by Spencer Ackerman
Can Texting Help Afghanistan?
Seriously, that’s the gist of a panel next week at the U.S. Institute of Peace.
The peace-building think tank wants to explore the lessons of SMS-based relief campaigns for victims of the Haiti earthquake and Pakistani military push against Taliban insurgents for the Afghanistan conflict. Both were heavily promoted More…
Left-Right Defense Wonk Coalition Looks to Cut $960 Billion From Bloated Pentagon Budget
Few communities of Washington wonks run into greater structural and institutional obstacles than advocates of reduced defense spending. Defense companies put billions into PR campaigns for the necessity of this or that project that runs over cost. Legislators have every career incentive to lard the defense budget with job-creating bloat More…
Disgrace at Arlington
Army investigators at Arlington National Cemetery have found more than 100 unmarked graves, scores of grave sites with headstones that are not recorded on cemetery maps, and at least four burial urns that had been unearthed and dumped in an area where excess grave dirt is kept.
Meet the Next NSA Top Lawyer
Following up on our stories earlier this week about the legal vacancy at the National Security Agency, Mark Hosenball at Newsweek finds that the Justice Department is sending some relief to Fort Meade.
Declassified has learned that the Obama administration has now asked a career Justice Department
Potential Successor to Gates Lays Out Military Priorities
Just to be clear: Defense Secretary Robert Gates is not talking about leaving the Pentagon. But when he ultimately does depart, possibly as soon as next year, a leading candidate to succeed him is his undersecretary for policy, Michele Flournoy. And judging by her speech Thursday at the annual conference More…
Obama Administration Looks for ‘Root Causes’ of Terrorism
Speaking at the Center for a New American Security’s annual Washington policy conference, Michele Flournoy, the undersecretary of defense for policy (and CNAS co-founder), made some news: The Obama administration is taking a new look at just why it is that the U.S. faces a challenge from terrorism.
“We are More…
Consolidating Federal Powers Against Cyber-Threats
Marc Ambinder reads the text of a bill Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) intends to release today to clarify an organizational structure within the Department of Homeland Security for safeguarding civilian cyber-infrastructure. He focuses on this provision:
The President must notify Congress in advance about the threat and the emergency measures
McChrystal on Kandahar: ‘Slower Than Anticipated’
Gen. Stanley McChrystal effectively settles this calibration of how his strategy for the “process” of securing Kandahar shifted in reaction to local perspectives:
The operation to secure the Kandahar region will unfold more slowly and last longer than the military had planned, Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. The slower pace
Marja’s ‘Government in a Box’ Is Empty
Something that yesterday’s look at the NATO/Afghan “process” to secure Kandahar overlooked is that one of the reasons U.S. officials have taken pains to say that operations in Kandahar won’t look like the February invasion of Marja is that Marja isn’t going particularly well. While the insurgents do not More…
Obama’s Palestinian Initiatives: a ‘Down Payment’ on Gaza, but No More
Hussein Ibish told me earlier today that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas needs to yield a “means of easing the siege on Gaza that helps the ordinary people but does not help Hamas politically or in terms of PR” from his meeting today with President Obama. And just now, the More…
