Looks like the State Department is seeking someone to build a 920-bed prison in northern Afghanistan for under $10 million. Let’s hope they do a better job of it than the Pentagon did in Iraq.
Iraq
Retired Generals and Wartime Sales Jobs
Celebrating Iraq Withdrawal: Tempting Fate?
It has been three days since the last U.S. troops left Iraq. Tuesday will mark the third time President Obama has celebrated the end of the war. No one is going to quibble with a heartfelt Hooah! for the troops for a job well …
Army Drill-Sergeant School Boss: Missing In Action
PFC Bradley Manning (cont.)
Army Private First Class Bradley Manning’s Article 32 hearing begins at Fort Meade, Md., Friday – 18 months after his arrest for allegedly leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.
Because the …
Iraq: Assessing Worth
“We’ve paid a great price here,” Army General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said as the U.S. wrapped up its mission in Iraq on Thursday. “And it has been a price worth paying.”
This led to a piquant …
So Long, Iraq: The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
The good happened Thursday morning, as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta presided over the end of the U.S. military mission in Iraq, from a concrete courtyard at the Baghdad International Airport:
The cost was high — in blood and
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Why Is the U.S. So Good at Nation-Breaking And So Poor at Nation-Building?
As the colors are cased in Baghdad on Thursday, and U.S. military says its goodbyes, Iraq remains a nation with large, gaping wounds nearly a decade after the U.S. invaded. While the U.S. military remains the world’s best at …
Political Squabbling Over Iraq: Can’t We Shut Up, Just for a Bit?
So President Obama visited Fort Bragg in North Carolina on Wednesday and thanked the troops there for a job well done as the nation wraps up its military presence in Iraq:
Tomorrow the colors of United States Forces-Iraq, the
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$128 million
Is Iraq Headed for a Crackup?
Patrick Cockburn, one of the best reporters now covering the Middle East, recently described the growing tensions in Iraq over the question of sharing its oil wealth among its constituent regions. Specifically, Exxon is
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Capturing Saddam
Seems kind of funny that the same month we’re pulling out of Iraq, retired Army lieutenant colonel Steve Russell is releasing We Got Him! A memoir of the hunt and capture of Saddam Hussein. Russell, who served 21 years in the …
Burned by the Boss: How To Tell We’ve Been at War Too Long
There are lots of signs the nation, now amid its longest war ever in Afghanistan – and just finishing up a second lengthy military campaign in Iraq – has been fighting too long. Sure, the budget deficits are one sign. So is …