Terror cannot be defeated with military action, no matter how powerful or how well equipped the military that takes the action. Terror, let us not forget, is a feeling. Terror grips us when fear strikes in such a way that neither fight nor flight is an option. Unable to find a solution to an adrenaline [...]
BAGHDAD — Days after the U.S. officially ended combat operations and touted Iraq’s ability to defend itself, American troops found themselves battling heavily armed militants assaulting an Iraqi military headquarters in the center of Baghdad on Sunday. The fighting killed 12 people and wounded dozens. It was the first exchange of fire involving U.S. troops [...]
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — It was a broiling fall evening in this southern Afghan battlezone, and U.S. Army Sgt. Charles Reed wanted to celebrate his birthday in style – at T.G.I. Friday’s on the boardwalk. So the military intelligence soldier ducked inside the Western diner with a dozen friends, climbed atop a chair, and began a [...]
KABUL, Afghanistan — Seven U.S. troops have died in weekend attacks in Afghanistan’s embattled southern and eastern regions, while officials found the bodies Sunday of five kidnapped campaign aides working for a female candidate in the western province of Herat. Two servicemen died in bombings Sunday in southern Afghanistan, while two others were killed in [...]
No, I don’t think either of the stars of last Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” gathering in DC will run for office this year. I do think that they have revealed a compelling narrative just in time for campaign season, however. The well produced plot — funded by billionaires with an eternal grudge — has primed the [...]
KABUL, Afghanistan — Six more American troops were killed in action in Afghanistan, ending August with a spike in bloodshed that has claimed the lives of 19 U.S. service members in only four days. The U.S. death toll for the month stood at 56 – three-quarters of them in the second half of the month [...]
I had made that walk at least a hundred times before. The long and arduous trek from the front gate back to our offices, humping fifty pounds of body armor on my back with a heavy machine gun slung on my side. The smell of sweat and dirt filled my nostrils as the Kevlar collar [...]
According to The New York Times, excess weight is the leading reason the Army rejects potential recruits. Earlier this year, a group of retired generals and admirals released a report called “Too Fat to Fight.” (Making Soldiers Fit to Fight, Without the Situps) Exercise and diet have not worked and extreme measures, such as Jillian [...]
From 1999 to 2010 the Pentagon’s managers squandered $1 Trillion. In the next ten years, it should be returned to the Treasury. In 1998, the Pentagon budget was at a twenty three year low at $361 billion. For 2010, the DOD budget was $697 billion (all dollars in this piece are normalized to their 2010 [...]
Thomas Jefferson periodically expressed support for a free press as essential to an “enlightened citizenry,” but when the reality of political life settled on him during his presidency and beyond, Jefferson had harsh words for it. The newspapers, he complained in 1803, “present only the caricatures of disaffected minds.” In his “retirement” a decade later, [...]
