ackerman

Last night, TWI’s Spencer Ackerman appeared on the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC to discuss President Bush’s “magical mystery tour,” as he calls it — a last-ditch effort to shore up his questionable legacy. It’s a great segment, and a motion picture must be worth about a billion words, so I’ll let it speak for [...]

COMBAT OUTPOST ZORMAT, Afghanistan — Walking through a local bazaar, national security reporter Spencer Ackerman speaks with locals about life in the region.

COMBAT OUTPOST ZORMAT, Afghanistan — This just in from the Pentagon. That troop boost, totaling 5,700 soldiers, is on its way to Afghanistan in the fall:

COMBAT OUTPOST ZORMAT, Afghanistan – A friend emailed me to say that all my journalism is for naught if I don’t report what 1st Platoon Hooligans are listening to these days. While I don’t concede the point, I did put the question to the platoon as they waited — in vain, it turned out — [...]

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – Early in the late Michael Bhatia’s December 2007 report on Paktika Province — which I referred to in “Through Afghan Eyes” — he gives an overview of what previous studies have found about conditions in the province.
It’s a stark picture of what it’s like to live in one of [...]

FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – This is by far the darkest FOB I’ve ever been on.
By 7 p.m., it’s pitch black out here, and to leave a lighted area like the dining facility results in a few seconds of total blindness.
Salerno does not accommodate you with any lights, presumably because they’d make the base [...]

The Salerno army base offers a window into the hard counterinsurgency battle at the Afghanistan-Pakistan border.

BETWEEN BAGRAM AIR FIELD AND FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – When I arrived at Bagram, a public-affairs officer named Chuck asked me what I thought of Afghanistan, notwithstanding the fact that all I had seen so far was Kabul. I told him that the place reminded me of the moon. Chuck laughed as he [...]

As part of my continuing quest to one-up Laura McGann — you guys have been reading her great Alaska stuff, right? — I’ve got an announcement. By this time tomorrow, I’ll be on a plane heading for Afghanistan. I’ll be near the Pakistan border with U.S. troops, trying to learn how a deteriorating war can [...]