MMEDIATE RELEASE No. 811-09 October 17, 2009 DoD Identifies Army Casualties The Department of Defense announced today the death of two soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died Oct. 16 in Wardak province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device. The soldiers were assigned to [...]

Cliff Lee! The most important pitching trade of the year! Who’da thought, right? But you saw what he did against the Rockies in NLDS Game 1: complete game; one earned run; six hits; five walks; oddly, no Ks. And then in Game 4: seven innings pitched; one earned run (two more would score); three walks; [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 810-09 October 17, 2009 DoD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Sgt. Christopher M. Rudzinski, 28, of Rantoul, Ill., died Oct. 16 near Kandahar, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked his vehicle with an improvised explosive [...]

Ike Skelton and Joe Lieberman write: Here at home, we must stabilize public support by convincing an increasingly skeptical American people that the Afghan war is in fact winnable. This will happen when Americans begin to see the kind of visible gains that only a properly resourced counterinsurgency campaign can achieve through the use of [...]

Are you crazy? The Yankees aren’t even through the fourth. Yeah, but whatever, what about that quote in the piece where he’s like, ‘The New Taliban are buck wild and they can’t possibly be split from al-Qaeda!’ That’s in your wheelhouse! Why do I even read this blog? Say something! I will! But first I [...]

So did we win last night or did the Angels lose it? C.C. certainly won. And it’s not like we didn’t hit the ball, as good as Lackey pitched. But we continue to strand runners. Don’t get me wrong: I don’t mean to fixate on what didn’t go perfectly; and we don’t have to be [...]

I don’t know anything about Hannah Schwarzschild, and a quick perusal of her organization suggests that it’s several ticks to the left of where I am (two states, peace-n-security, not everything is the fault of any one side), but her quote in this rather excellent Nation story about J Street and the New American Jew [...]

My sainted mother keeps this postcard framed in her living room. Nerd that I am, I thought of the Obama administation’s Afghanistan strategy review when I saw it during my most recent visit to Brooklyn.

Pakistan’s Waziristan offensive is under way. Already, it appears, four troops have died. Dawn has a good amount of detail. In a previous interview with AP, army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas said the assault would be limited to slain Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud’s holdings – a swath of territory that stretches roughly 3,310 square [...]

It’s so cold in the heart of the city. A miserable and wet day in New York has come to a kind of chilly equilibrium, as if the storm yesterday was intended to provide C.C. Sabathia with a dramatic introduction to a place the Yankees haven’t gone since the horrible fall of 2004. [Update: Well, [...]