BattlelandWeapons
The mystery mutt who accompanied the SEALs on their mission to Osama bin Laden’s lair is coming in for a fair amount of attention. After all, people love their dogs, and if one can help take out the world’s most wanted terrorist, all the better. Their noses know: the dog’s keen sense of smell, to sniff out …
BattlelandNational Security
It turns out that only one person, Osama bin Laden’s trusted courier, Abu Ahmed al-Kuwaiti, exchanged fire with the Navy SEAL team raiding bin Laden’s compound early Monday morning. Al-Kuwaiti was killed early on in the engagement and those were the last shots fired from bin Laden’s side of the firefight.
The new facts are yet another …
BattlelandCIA
Advocates of so-called “enhanced” interrogation techniques this week seized on the killing of Osama bin Laden to dust off the debate about the efficacy and legality of torture. The proponents claimed the successful raid was a vindication of those brutal intelligence-gathering methods during the Bush administration.
Obama …
BattlelandTerrorism
The man who commanded the SEAL team that hunted down and killed Osama bin Laden studied to be a reporter. If the Pulitzer Prize board establishes a new category — for killing the world’s most wanted terrorist — it’s a safe bet Bill McRaven will win it next spring.
Vice Adm. William McRaven, himself a SEAL, was on the ground in …
BattlelandTerrorism
They both were too identified with the groups they fronted: al Qaeda and Florida orange growers…according to a strange piece in Adweek.
BattlelandTerrorism
…is going to take longer than you might think, according to colleague Bruce Crumley over at Time’s Global Spin.
BattlelandWeapons
BattlelandCIA
World War II Marine Corps interrogator Maj. Sherwood F. Moran. Moran’s counterpart at the German Luftwaffe, Hans Sharff.
These are two names you probably won’t hear from the Liz Cheneys of the world who have seized on the death of Osama bin Laden as vindication of Bush-era torture. The argument goes that torture produced scrap of …
BattlelandPakistan
Even when the U.S. government feels like bragging about a military success, it takes several days for the most elementary outline to surface. Now, imagine it’s a secret raid involving sensitive sources and methods that the U.S. doesn’t want to divulge. Pile on top of that a senior White House official a little too eager to spin a …
BattlelandWeapons
Having rid the world of a terrorist mastermind, America is celebrating a great victory. Yet the military responsible for this success faces unprecedented wartime budget cuts.
President Obama has announced a goal of $400 billion in defense cuts over the next decade. Reductions of that magnitude will surely undermine the ability of the …
BattlelandNational Security
….claims her father was captured alive, and then shot dead, by Navy SEALs.
There are also reports that Osama bin Laden’s final words were: “You mean you’re not from Comcast?”
Bet at least one of those claims is false.
BattlelandPentagon
Jim Lacey is a former Time colleague now a professor of strategic studies at the Marine Corps War College. He’s still writing:
While I was in Kandahar, General Petraeus announced that the Coalition faced about a hundred al-Qaeda fighters. Did anyone do the math? There are over 140,000 Coalition soldiers in Afghanistan, or 1,400 for
…
BattlelandPakistan
The press, among itself, has begun discussing how, and if, to present the photographs of a dead Osama bin Laden, assuming the White House chooses to release them.
