I have to admit I didn’t pick up on the Green Day dis the first time I saw the “Bottled Up In Cork” video, but damn, cold as ice.

Via Small Wars Journal, a fantastic Boston Globe piece about the institutional obstacles to cultivating exceptional military officers: For an officer rising through the ranks, the right experiences are critical. A Marine friend of mine faced a situation a few years ago in which a phenomenal opportunity lay right in front of him, but he [...]

When planning my trip to Afghanistan this summer, I opted not to go to the south. Why go south? I figured. Every reporter is going to head to Kandahar. Wouldn’t it make more sense to head east,* an area more clearly connected to al-Qaeda’s Pakistani safehavens than the south, so as not to be scrambling [...]

Steve Aftergood with the summary: “Pakistan is in the midst of a catastrophic natural disaster that has precipitated a humanitarian crisis of major proportions,” a new report (pdf) from the Congressional Research Service observes.  The widespread flooding that has displaced millions of Pakistanis also represents a political crisis that “may undermine the already waning legitimacy [...]

Leila Fadel has an excellent Washington Post piece about the Iraqi Interior Ministry essentially de-certifying 410 Anbar Awakening fighters whom the U.S. turned into police officers. The Awakening vets never graduated from any police academy, and that’s all the pretext the ministry evidently needs. A typical quote from a cashiered cop: “We sacrificed our blood [...]

I’m on my way to a thing at the Pentagon that’s going to take up my morning. But take a look at how Israeli settlers in the West Bank celebrated the expiration of Prime Minister Netanyahu’s moratorium on expanding the settlements: “The building freeze is over,” Danny Danon, a right-wing lawmaker from Prime Minister Benjamin [...]

I was in a foul mood after the disruption of traffic created by Fiesta DC led me to slouch through the neighborhood in my girlfriend’s car for over half an hour. Seriously, Metro Police: if you’re going to reroute traffic patterns, at least make very, very clear where we can and can’t drive. The wages [...]

I’m not so sure I buy Michael Yon’s conclusion that we won the Iraq war. But I’m definitely interested in checking out his forthcoming book Iraq: Inside The Inferno, his photo-heavy account of reporting from Iraq from 2005 to 2008 — in large part precisely because I’m not sure I buy his bottom line. If [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 874-10 September 24, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Anthony J. Rosa, 20, of Swanton, Vt., died Sept. 23 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to 2nd Battalion, 6th [...]

The first Justice Department lawyer to sign off on the Obama administration’s brief to dismiss a lawsuit* seeking an injunction on executing Anwar al-Awlaki? That would be Tony West, the assistant attorney general for the civil division, one of a group of lawyers whom Keep America Safe called the “Al Qaeda Seven.” Can’t West keep [...]