TIME’s photo editors bring you the best pictures from the front lines and home.
BattlelandMilitary
BattlelandMilitary
BattlelandMilitary
Viral Atrocities and the Dark Complexity of War
A funny thing happens when you speak with a room full of school children–they have a tendency to say exactly what’s on their minds. When I returned from my first tour in Iraq, just before Christmas 2006, the principals in my …
BattlelandChina
The Perfect Headline on the Silent Sino-American Limited Liability Partnership
Comes from Bloomberg:
China Gets Cheaper Iran Oil as U.S. Picks Up Tab for Hormuz Straits Patrols
Brilliant huh?
But a wonderful capture of the illogic of Obama’s “strategic pivot” to East Asia: the more we try to hem in …
BattlelandAir Force
Great Moments in Military Aviation: Death of a Blimp
How can the Air Force lose a blimp two-thirds the size of a football field? When the winds are wrong, alas, anything can happen.
Battleland readers of a certain vintage may recall, with wonder and delight, the goofy …
BattlelandIran
We Mean It This Time
Sunday, January 8, on CBS’s Face the Nation:
We have made very clear that the United States will not tolerate blocking of the Straits of Hormuz. That’s another red line for us — and that we will respond to that.
— Defense Secretary Leon Panetta
Friday, January 13, on the front page of the New York Times:
WASHINGTON — The
…
BattlelandJapan
Marines on Okinawa: Time to Leave?
TOKYO – More than six decades after U.S. Marines stormed ashore on Okinawa, it may finally be time for them to go home. Japan Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda on Friday fired his defense minister, in part for missteps and verbal …
BattlelandMarines
A Onetime Marine Scout Sniper on What His Comrades Did to the Dead Taliban
Alex Lemons, a former Marine sergeant who deployed to Iraq three times – including once as scout sniper – reflects on the video of four Marines urinating on the corpses of three dead Taliban in Afghanistan:
This is all …
BattlelandMarines
The Few. The Proud. The Morons.
[vodpod id=Video.15946643&w=425&h=350&fv=%26amp%3B]
Senator John McCain said the viral video clip of U.S. Marines in Afghanistan apparently urinating on three corpses identified as Taliban enemy dead “makes me so sad” on CBS Thursday morning.
There’s not a lot else that needs to be said.
“I don't want to leave anybody with the impression that we're somehow zorching two carriers over there because we're concerned about what happened today in Iran.”
BattlelandNuclear Weapons
Killed in Iran: Part of a Nuclear Trifecta
It has been a busy day or so on the nuclear front:
— An Iran nuclear scientist was assassinated Wednesday morning in Tehran.
— The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved its Doomsday Clock warning of nuclear war to 11:56 …
BattlelandMilitary
Just the Facts…
This came across the Reuters wire Monday:
…when President Obama crossed the Potomac last Friday, he was on a mission to reclaim enemy territory. In an unusual move, he made the budget announcement from within the Pentagon itself.
That’s reporter Michael Hastings blogging about President Obama’s visit to the Pentagon last week to …
BattlelandTaliban
Happy 10th Birthday, Guantanamo Bay
Guantanamo Bay remains the persistent headache that pretty much all Americans would like to go away. Wednesday marks its 10th birthday as home to alleged terrorists scooped up by the U.S. following the 9/11 terror …
BattlelandKorea
Girth of a Nation
North Korean television has released a 50-minute video honoring the Sunday birthday of Kim Jong Un, the country’s new leader. U.S. intelligence analysts are poring over it, looking for clues into what new direction, if any, the …