A statement from Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) on CNN’s John King USA received a great deal of attention in the blogosphere late Thursday night and Friday morning. When asked about the policy riders on social issues like abortion, environmental regulation and health care reform that are holding up budget negotiations, More…
UK newspaper The Guardian reports today that U.S. Central Command (Centcom), responsible for military operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, has awarded a contract to Ntrepid, a California security firm, to develop so-called “sock puppet” software for use by the military.
The software would allow military More…
The U.S. Senate failed to file cloture on the National Defense Authorization Act, which included an amendment to repeal “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” the military’s ban on allowing openly gay service members in the armed forces. The bill was blocked from proceeding to full debate by 57-40 margin. All Republicans More…
A very disturbing — and disturbingly vague — announcement came early this morning from the U.S. military command in Afghanistan. According to Army Lt. Col. Joseph “Todd” Breasseale, a command spokesman, the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division is investigating whether an unknown number of American soldiers are responsible for the “unlawful More…
A military judge’s ruling that U.S. officers used “cruel and inhuman” treatment and possibly “torture” on an Afghan teenager imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay provides strong support for the argument that the government should embark on a broader investigation of the treatment of “war on terror” detainees during the Bush administration. More…
With a new Pakistani military response to Taliban advances underway, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy goes before the House Armed Services Committee this afternoon to discuss what military training and aid in counterinsurgency the United States is offering that the Pakistanis will accept. Working with a More…
A wealth of new details emerged Tuesday about how techniques designed to help captured U.S. troops resist torture formed the basis for the post-9/11 interrogation policies of the Bush-era Pentagon.
Instructors of those techniques proved to be eager in 2002 and 2003 to disseminate them to an emerging crop of More…
In a rare victory for torture victims, a federal judge yesterday ruled that detainees who claim they were tortured at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq can move ahead with their lawsuit against defense contractor CACI, which t the U.S. government hired to assist in interrogations of Iraqi prisoners. More…
Remember how I said in my piece this morning that the Center for American Progress’s new defense report “largely embraces the tenets about the future of warfare put forth by a rising generation of counterinsurgency theorist-practitioners emerging from the Iraq and More…
I don’t really have much to add to Laura and Matt‘s takes. Just one quick item worth mentioning.
These two things cannot coexist: the McCain-Palin insistence on deferring to ground commanders in war and the McCain-Palin insistence that the “surge strategy,” as Palin put it, is necessary in Afghanistan.
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