He’ll be at the Center for the American Progress on Monday morning to discuss the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy. Not sure if I’m going to go to that since Adm. Mullen is speaking shortly before then across town. But I notice the administration really seems to be emphasizing that the London conference about the [...]

Scene: the Hart Senate Office Building. A congressional hearing in early 2010. An OBAMA ADMINISTRATION OFFICIAL prepares to testify before a panel of SENATORS. OBAMA OFFICIAL Mr. Chairman, distinguished ranking member, thank you for holding this important hearing. As you’re aware, it’s been a priority of this administration since its first week in office to [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 054-10 January 21, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Sgt. 1st Class Michael P. Shannon, 52, of Canadensis, Pa., died Jan. 17, in Kabul, Afghanistan, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident. He was assigned [...]

So Gen. Petraeus is in town to give some briefings to think tanks and conferences about what his priorities for Central Command will be in the coming year. He’ll be at the Kagans’ Institute for the Study of War tomorrow morning — I’ll be checking that out, mostly to see if the coffee there is [...]

Good news. An upcoming election intended to ease Iraq’s sectarian rifts is instead dredging up old hostilities — with the White House sending Vice President Joe Biden to smooth tensions between the Shiites who hold power and the Sunnis who want a greater slice of it. Some Sunni leaders have been outraged by the Shiite-led [...]

That’s, uh… It was a real eye opener for federal officials to find $200,000 worth of Red Bull was missing from a Navy facility. Now, they’re energetically prosecuting two truck drivers who authorities accuse of routinely stealing cases of the energy drink since 2007. Word is that the Air Force is willing to sell the [...]

I was referencing “Ether” by Nas. Terry McDermott’s Columbia Journalism Review article makes lots of great points about the future of journalism from the perspective of narrative, and even says some nice things about me as well.

If health care reform goes down, as my friend Ezra Klein argues (like my friends at FDL!), so too will the Democratic Party. And that clears the decks for people like James Inhofe, who said this at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Fort Hood that I covered this morning: I’m, for one — [...]

I’m covering the Fort Hood hearings in the Senate Armed Services Committee right now. Check it out. But for the time being, read Fred Kaplan’s musings over whether the implacable GOP hostility to Obama’s domestic agenda will turn him into a foreign-policy president. Fred makes some good points, and he has some appropriate caveats — like [...]

To speak a little colloquially, as long as the U.S. and NATO have enemies like this in Afghanistan, there’s some margin for error. In a piece about the Taliban’s attempted rebranding, the NYT reminds us of the updated fanatics’ code: The Taliban’s spiritual leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, issued a lengthy directive late last spring outlining [...]