The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reports, in a just-released audit, that many State Department grants to help rebuild Afghanistan have gone unaudited:
According to State Department records, between
…
Islamabad’s Bin Laden Report: What You Need to Know
A leaked Pakistani report on the May 1, 2001 U.S. raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound provides a first-hand view into the dysfunctions of a Pakistani government that both managed to play host to the world’s most wanted man — and …
Trial Balloon
President Obama is considering pulling all 63,000 U.S. troops still in Afghanistan out by next summer, according to a story in Tuesday’s New York Times.
Apparently, President Obama is piqued over being dissed by Afghan …
Bomb ’em Back to the Stone Age?
U.S. troops patrol through 200-year-old ruins in Mohammadabad, Helmand province, June 24.
Female Troops Medevaced from Afghanistan at Higher Rate Than Male Comrades
As the U.S. military prepares to send women into the toughest combat billets for the first time, Pentagon medical officers have just released data showing that while “battle injuries” were the leading reason male troops were …
650,000
— The number of Pentagon civilians who will be forced to forfeit one day’s work, and the pay that comes along with it, over each of the coming 11 weeks. That's a 20% pay cut over the next three months. The cutbacks, forced by the fiscal vise of sequestration, apply to about 85% of the Pentagon’s non-uniformed workforce. If sequestration remains on the books, layoffs – and not merely furloughs – are all but inevitable for some of the Defense Department’s nearly 900,000 civilian workers beginning in the fall.
Hunting Down Che Guevara
Ernesto “Che” Guevera has morphed from historical figure to historic icon since he was hunted down and killed by U.S.-trained Bolivian forces in 1967. How much of the Argentine Marxist’s story is fact, and how much is …
Bye-Bye Birdies
F-18s leave the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower in the Atlantic July 2 as they return to Norfolk.
July 4th: For Some, Freedom Is Fleeting
Well, it’s been quite a couple of weeks, depending on your viewpoint, for social reform or social un-inform.
The Joint Chiefs, admitting the military has not done enough to ensure the safety of women and men against rape and …
“We always knew that our rights can only be regained by force, and that is why we have chosen the ammunition box instead of the ballot box. If you want to shake off injustice and create change, it can only be done by the sword. We choose to negotiate in the trenches, not in hotels.”
— Statement by the al-Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, reacting to the ouster of democratically-elected Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi.
The Air Force’s Future May Be in Drones, But Its Generals Won’t Be
Ever since Predator drones appeared on the horizon in a big way shortly after 9/11, the Air Force has dismissed any suggestion that its core constituency of fighter pilots feels threatened by the unmanned aircraft.
That may, …
.500
— The batting average of the ground-based national missile shield, following Friday's "strike." The test involved a fake enemy missile fired from a Pacific atoll and an interceptor designed to destroy it launched from the California coast, the Pentagon said, here. The miss marked the eighth failure in 16 attempts. The last successful test was in 2008. Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941.
