IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 507-10 June 19, 2010 DOD Identifies Navy Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a sailor who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Seaman William Ortega, 23, of Miami, Fla., died June 18 in Helmand Province, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained from an improvised explosive device blast while conducting combat operations [...]

According to the latest three-month United Nations report on political and security developments in Afghanistan, NATO-attributable civilian casualties have declined to 30 percent from 33 percent over the last reporting period. That at least shows an attention to NATO’s own findings of a statistical rise in NATO-attributable casualties earlier in the year. So a rise [...]

Do you remember how fucking crazy this country was in 2003? No? Jeff Stein: NASA officials worried that al-Qaeda might attempt to attack the space shuttle Columbia on its launch pad in 2003 because there was an Israeli astronaut aboard, according to a new book by a former CIA operations officer. Their concern was shared [...]

You know who has a useful and clear-eyed take on the destructive interplay of NATO money, Ahmed Wali Karzai, private security contractors, warlords, militias and the Taliban in southern Afghanistan? Kim Kagan and the Institute for the Study of War. Good for her and Carl Forsberg for publishing this.

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 506-10 June 18, 2010 DOD Identifies Army Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Spc. Benjamin D. Osborn, 27, of Queensbury, N.Y., died June 15 in Shigalwashheltan district, Konar, Afghanistan, of wounds sustained when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms [...]

Adam Serwer reports from Dawn Johnsen’s speech to the American Constitution Society: “Of course the real lesson is one should not live one life deciding whether or how to write such briefs based on crass political judgments about possible future political payoffs,” Johnsen said. “You should stand on principle and speak out because that is [...]

Thanassis Cambanis has an absolute must-read in Foreign Affairs from Gaza about how thoroughly Hamas has benefited materially from the now-to-be-loosened Israeli siege. You know, like most ruling cliques subject to the most-often-counterproductive tactic of economic strangulation. (Sigh.) This, however, ought to be explored: Since the 2006 elections, Hamas’ brain trust has been trying to [...]

Reading over a sadly-not-yet-available-online Joint Force Quarterly debate between John Nagl and Gian Gentile (yes, another! It will never end!) is Brian McAllister Linn, who finds that the COINdinista and the COIN critic are firmly within the same Kuhnian circle. This is Linn’s framework for understanding several contending schools of military perspectives: Guardians: “war is [...]

Leila Fadel has a maddening and heartbreaking story about the human consequences of the Iraq war: For Shaker and for scores of other Iraqis, every street is a reminder of what was, what is and what could be again: Reminders of people gingerly stepping over the bodies thrown in the streets in tit-for-tat killings between [...]

This occurred to me when checking out the $12,000 bill the Pakistani Taliban paid Faisal Shazad: [T]he U.S. can now say that for $12,000 and the pricelessness of sustained ridicule, Shahzad’s life is over at 30. Two of the ten counts in his indictment carry charges of life in prison. It’s notable that so far, [...]