The key to diplomacy is to tell lies plausible enough that the listener isn't embarrassed:A foretaste of what would be in store for President Hamid Karzai after the election of a new American administration came last February, when Joseph R. Biden Jr., then a senator,...
afghanistan
Hadn't seen this before... I wonder how many people have survived after throwing themselves onto grenades? There's not even a category on wikipedia:A Royal Marine who threw himself on to.
Creative COIN:U.S intelligence officials use "novel incentives," but this is not limited to Viagra. Sometimes, "notoriously fickle warlords and chieftains" can be won over with tools, school equipment, and surgical.
The Astute Bloggers make a claim:I have believed from the start that Bush should have nuked Tora Bora in 2001. The GWOT would have ended right then and there. It would have sent the right message: Don't Tread On Me!Instead Bush has has the USA...
Lots of commentary on Bing West's attack on Nir Rosen today; see especially Ackerman and Abu M. A couple points of my own:It's obviously different in a lot of ways,.
Last week, Spencer Ackerman and I diavlogged about Afghanistan. Spencer was in Kabul at the time; I was merely in Cincinnati...Also check out Spencer's Afghanistan coverage at the Washington Independent.
While recognizing the general principle that prisoners, even in Afghanistan, ought to have some contact with the outside world, I have to question the wisdom of allowing this:This month's spectacular prison escape in Kandahar began with a jailed guerrilla's phone conversation with the No. 2...
Back in 2005 I sat on a panel at the University of Kentucky library on the future of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. At one point the conversation became.
Congressional Budget Office, The Long-Term Implications of Current Defense Plans: Summary Update for Fiscal Year 2005In its cost-risk projections, CBO assumes that activities in Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere could cost.
SecDef Gates:"I worry that for many Europeans the missions in Iraq and Afghanistan are confused," Mr. Gates said as he flew here to deliver an address at an international security conference."I think that they combine the two," he added. "Many of them, I think, have...
There's a good piece by Tim Golden in today's Times about the detention center at Bagram, where conditions are even more bleak than at Guantanamo; conditions are overcrowded (the population.