Mark Thompson

Pulitzer Prize-winner Mark Thompson has covered national security in Washington since 1979, and for Time since 1994. Follow him on Twitter at @MarkThompson_DC

Articles from Contributor

Battleland Battleland

Pentagon Is "Stodgy," Experts Confirm

Apparently it’s not just the Pentagon’s weapons that represent relics of the superpower rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union — it is the Cold War way it continues to develop weapons despite today’s very different world. The chart above shows just how much time it takes the military to come up with new weapons — some as long as …

Battleland Battleland

Help, At Last, For Those On The Home Front

We read so much about the stresses and strains nearly a decade of war has put on our troops. Army boosters are formally acknowledging something just as important: spouses face challenges when their significant other deploys, too.

That’s why the Walter Reed Army Medical Center has just launched a “Significant Others Support Group” …

Battleland Battleland

Pentagon Wish List

Sure, they call it the National Military Strategy of the United States of America. It’s a smart but eye-glazing document that oozes national-security platitudes on every one of its 21 pages:

The United States remains the world’s preeminent power, even as a growing number of state and non-state actors exhibit consequential influence.

Battleland Battleland

Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defensive

I covered Donald Rumsfeld during his second incarnation as defense secretary, from 2001, through 9/11, and the two wars it triggered. President George W. Bush ousted him in 2006 as ever-grimmer news continued to flow out of Iraq. Rumsfeld vanished from the world stage. But he’s back, as of Tuesday. His autobiography, Known and Unknown, …

Battleland Battleland

Wither Egypt

My colleague Massimo is right, for once. Things have slowed down dramatically in Egypt in recent days. But folks I have been talking to aren’t convinced this is necessarily a good thing, or in the U.S.’s long-term interests. Here’s Washington’s pickle: now that the protesters — and the international community, led by Washington — have …

Battleland Battleland

Super Bowl Munchies For The Troops

The nearly 150,000 U.S. troops now in Afghanistan and Iraq will be chowing down like many other Americans when the Packers meet the Steelers in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Here’s what you’re feeding them. It sure seems like a lot of stuff, but maybe they like leftovers as much as we do — or perhaps they’ll just invite some of the roughly …

Battleland Battleland

Gitmo: Exercise Can Kill

It was less than two weeks ago that we quoted lawmakers detailing how sunny life can sometimes be for the detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:

While it’s no tropical paradise, GOP lawmakers said it isn’t the hellhole that many paint it. “Despite some of the earlier and changing popular perceptions about Guantanamo Bay, there is a

Battleland Battleland

"Fill 'Er Up, Please! Premium!"

How isolated are some U.S. posts deeps in the nooks and crannies of Afghanistan? So isolated that they’ve been supplied totally by air — for years. Over two recent days, three huge C-17 aircraft parachuted in 120 bundles of fuel to keep Forward Operating Base Waza K’wah in the Paktika province of Afghanistan up and running. It was the …

Battleland Battleland

The Pentagon's Marauding Fraudsters

Fraud is big business at the Pentagon. Always has been, always will be. When you’re spending more than $1 million a minute, some is bound to be pilfered one way or another. But it’s rare to find all such chicanery cataloged in one place. Thanks to Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, we now have one-stop shopping for Pentagon fraud.

He …

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