This week the House is likely to pass an amendment to a Pentagon spending bill that would cut off funds for the war in Libya. The vote reflects the momentum behind a coalition of liberal Democrats opposed to the war and Republicans who want to rebuke the White House for failing to seek approval for the war from Congress.
That vote, …
The battle against the never-ending detonations of roadside bombs in Afghanistan — which is killing, as well as maiming, thousands of U.S. troops each year — has signed up two new recruits: a pair of state-of-the-art MRI machines are going to begin operating in Afghanistan in hopes of detecting, and treating, traumatic brain …
Sherlock Holmes famously spoke of the dog that didn’t bark as a key clue in a case of Silver Blaze, a missing racehorse. Then there’s the case of the supposedly missing cash intended to rebuild Iraq. It too involves a criminal case, as well as something absent. In this case, the perpetrator – a Marine jet pilot – seems to have …
Attorney General Eric Holder, the country’s top cop, is getting pretty sick of members of the legislative branch telling him how to prosecute people.
The latest unsolicited advice came from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who went to the Senate floor earlier this week and urged the Justice Department to drop the …
Nice piece in WAPO about Ayman al-Zawahiri taking over al-Qaeda from the recently assassinated Osama bin Laden. Story leads with remembrances from a guy who knew him back in the day:
He was arrogant, angry and extreme in his ideas,” said Azzam, 40, son of a radical Palestinian ideologue who had become bin Laden’s mentor. “He
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Sure, guys claiming to have earned war medals but never served in combat are scum. So what do you call guys who never served in combat, claim war-hero status, claim they were disabled because of their service — and use those fake wounds to plunder $6.8 million from the Service-Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business Program? Well, in …
UPDATE: Never mind. Move along. Nothing suspicious in backpack or car, police say. Sorry for the inconvenience.
Police took a person into custody Friday morning in connection with a vehicle containing a suspicious device stopped close to the Pentagon. Pentagon police say they are looking for accomplices who may have fled the …
A U.S. military doctor deployed to Iraq subjected troops suffering from traumatic brain injuries to treatment with an unapproved drug, in which he had a financial stake, that may have harmed them, Pentagon investigators report. But a colleague of the doctor insists the probe is a perplexing witch hunt — and that the medication helps …
I wrote yesterday that the debate about whether the Obama administration’ s involvement in Libya is in violation of the 1973 War Powers Resolution is mostly academic, since Congress is basically impotent to stop the President from directing the military to fight at his discretion. (Note: the resolution requires U.S. forces to begin …
Strange little story in Britain, where the Telegraph reports that the UK military is selling its used AV-8B Harrier jump jets to the U.S. Marines for spare parts. After pumping $1.6 billion into the jets over the past decade, the Ministry of Defence reportedly got only $55 million for 40 of the aging warplanes. Not true, the MOD …
In buildings on military installations, it is common to see a rack of news papers and magazines as you walk in. On a few of those racks now lays a magazine put out by an independent network of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered servicemembers known as OutServe.
This is the organization’s second issue of the magazine and so …
Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates has done a lot of good things over his tenure: he carved out a bureaucratic space for the small-wars crowd (Army, Marines, SOF) and he engineered the Navy-Air Force Full Employment Act (otherwise known as the AirSea Battle Concept) to keep the rest of the Building happy; he was tough enough on …
Dov Zakheim was the Pentagon’s top money man when Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld surprised him by tapping Zakheim to run Afghanistan’s reconstruction — in addition to his day job. He writes about the challenges of war-making, nation-building and budget-balancing in A Vulcan’s Tale: How the Bush Administration Mismanaged the …