First there was Talisman Energy’s “Joe Camel” moment with Terry the Fracking Dinosaur – a clumsy oil and gas industry attempt to win young hearts and minds over to hydraulic fracturing. Now come revelations of actual psychological operations aimed at breaking adult resistance to fracking.
Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine) doesn’t buy into the new Afghanistan strategy. She worries that if Gen. McChrystal doesn’t make the progress he thinks he needs to make in six months, a year and 18 months, he’ll just come back to Congress and make minor adjustments — that he’ll never say More…
Say this for the insurgents in Afghanistan: they evidently have a good lesson-learning process. As I wondered after gunmen stormed a U.N. safe house last week, the U.N. mission in Afghanistan will follow the a similar script as after the 2003 bombing of its compound in Iraq. It’s More…
Sean Naylor at Army Times has an absolutely killer piece that goes into granular detail to explain how Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s team is structuring a program to reintegrate so-called “angry brothers” — those who join the insurgency because they’ve been aggrieved by the behavior of U.S. or allied troops — More…
Just as President-elect Barack Obama’s key defense aides conduct a policy review at the Pentagon, a new report from the Center for American Progress lays out a progressive agenda for both military policy and defense budgeting for the next several years.
The report largely embraces the More…
This just came to my inbox from USFOR-A, the new consolidated U.S. military command in Afghanistan:
One U.S. servicemember was killed today when an Afghan National policeman attacked a dismounted patrol in Bermel District, Paktika province.
The ANP member opened fire from a tower and threw a hand grenade toward
The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, feeling the pressure from his diminishing popularity, has been hinting he wants to negotiate a deal to draw at least some factions of the Taliban into the national government.
The whole thing has been sub rosa, occurring under the auspices of the Saudis More…
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 More…
FORWARD OPERATING BASE SALERNO, Afghanistan – The loudspeaker sounded a few minutes after the Hot Gun began firing. “Attention on the FOB,” the voice intoned. “Shamrock Red.”
“Shamrock Red” indicates an incoming medevac, the staff of the base’s media operations center explained. It was unclear if the casualty or casualties More…
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