Tom Ricks gets an interview with Gen. David Petraeus that mostly featured Petraeus attempting to avoid making news. But this was funny:
[Ricks]: You keep on saying you are not running for president. Why do you think people seem to believe you are?
[Petraeus]: Beats me. I’ve been as
Via Marcy Wheeler and Rachel Maddow, this video obtained by Wikileaks shows what the classified information repository Website claims is an “unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers” by a U.S. helicopter in Baghdad in 2007. “Two young children involved in the rescue were More…
All of the Special Operations Forces action may concern Afghanistan (and, uh, Pakistan) right now, but Adm. Eric Olson, leader of U.S. Special Operations Command, said today that approximately 4,500 SOF troops are going to stay in Iraq while conventional forces complete their drawdown by Aug. 31.
“The special
Last time, it was the lascivious behavior of ArmorGroup — the private security firm handling the U.S. Embassy in Kabul — that attracted headlines. Those revelations led to disclosures of how contractors knowingly hired guards with poor English skills to save money — something the State Department knew More…
McClatchy’s Nancy Youssef has a big story: as a dividend for leaving Iraq, the Marines will spend twice as much time at home as deployed in a combat zone, reaching the desired two-to-one so-called “dwell to deployment” ratio that the Army won’t see until at least 2012. As the Marines More…
Few people focus more on the signature weapon of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars — the improvised explosive device, or IED — than Lt. Gen. Michael Oates, who heads the military task force designed to study and defeat the IED threat known as JIEDDO. As is quickly clear from More…
Michael Barbaro previews a possible New York Senate bid by former Defense Department adviser Dan Senor, by my count the 1045th person to consider challenging Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.). At CPAC, Conservative Party chairman Mike Long told me that the party was looking hard at a serious candidate against More…
Troops who served in Iraq earn the right to display the Iraqi Campaign Medal. From the perspective of the medal, there have been four phases of the war that the medal recognizes: “Liberation,” “Transition,” “Iraqi Governance” and “National Resolution,” all covering the period from 2003 to 2007. Draw your own More…
This is the English-language website of Ahrar, a secularist Iraqi political party contesting the March 7 parliamentary elections that used to be somewhat affiliated with ex-Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. Does it remind you of a certain American political campaign? One that promised “Hope For The Future”?
As reported on Monday, the Pentagon didn’t embrace Stuart Bowen’s proposal to create a new agency — the U.S. Office of Contingency Operations — to help plan and coordinate civilian-military operations in conflict and post-conflict zones and failed states. But that’s not to say that Robert Gates, the secretary More…
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