In about a month and a half it will be 2014. As far as U.S. policy in Afghanistan is concerned, 2014 is a big year. When President Obama announced the military surge in 2009, he mapped out a so-called "withdrawal" plan and the date for the official end of the surge...
Since Edward Snowden's leaks, much attention has been paid to the domestic surveillance capabilities of the NSA, which have turned out to be more egregious than many predicted. But it's worth remembering that the government has all kinds of ways to invade the privacy...
Last week, Matthieu Aikins at Rolling Stone shed light on evidence that U.S. forces committed war crimes against Afghans, including extra-judicial executions, torture, and disappearances of at least 17 men. The following day, Human Rights Watch issued a statement...
Via Ma'an News, Israel is close to carrying out plans to forcibly displace tens of thousands of Bedouin Palestinians in southern Israel, demolishing their villages, and erecting new Jewish settlements in their place. Israel's Prawer Plan calls for the relocation of...
The Washington Post's Bart Gellman, one of the journalists in possession of the full cache of Edward Snowden's leaked NSA documents, debated former NSA/CIA chief Michael Hayden yesterday. Lengthy, but worth watching.
The Washington Post reported last week that hundreds of Afghan detainees held at Bagram airbase were transferred to Kabul's control, as per earlier agreements, and hundreds were simply released. At Lawfare, Robert Chesney was none too happy about this, arguing they...
The big news coming out of the Iran negotiations at the end of last week was that France took an unexpectedly rejectionist stance in the talks and refused a deal that was all but agreed upon. One of the reasons this was a huge deal is that the P5+1 and Iran really did...
The public editor at the New York Times reported the following: [Former director of the NSA Michael] Hayden told me that he can’t prove any harm to national security from the publication of the eavesdropping stories... That must have been when he wasn't toeing the...
Secretary of State John Kerry's last minute decision to make a surprise visit to Geneva, Switzerland, where negotiations between the P5+1 and Iran are rapidly progressing, led to an enormous amount of speculation that a first-step deal was imminent and may even be...
The Rolling Stone's Matthieu Aikins, who reported on alleged U.S. war crimes of torture, executions, and disappearances in Afghanistan, has posted another short piece and a video depicting U.S. soldiers standing by as Afghan forces whip a detainee. Aikins: The scene...
