It’s a corporate fairy tale: working class boy joins the military, goes into banking, brings the joys of mineral exploitation to exotic locales. From Congo to Colombia, from Iraq to Sierra Leone, [Ian] Hannam [the JP Morgan banker overseeing the development of a gold mine in Afghanistan] and his small team of soldiers-turned-bankers and advisers [...]

The story of the day is from Michael Hastings, fresh off winning a Polk Award for his reporting on the insubordination of key members of Stanley McChrystal’s staff. In today’s story, he describes how Lieutenant General William Caldwell ordered a PsyOp unit to manipulate Senators–including John McCain, Carl Levin, Jack Reed, and Al Franken–to support [...]

The Telegraph reports that a High Peace Council convened by Hamid Karzai may request that some Gitmo detainees be freed so they can participate in peace talks. (h/t Carol Rosenberg) Taliban prisoners would be freed from Guantánamo Bay to potentially join peace negotiations under a proposal from the Afghan council appointed to find a settlement [...]

Le Monde did this graphic of the what kind of deaths the Wikileaks document dump records happening when (blue are American soldiers killed–darker–or injured; green are civilians killed or injured). In an article on another revelation in the Wikieaks document–tracing several more incidents of civilian deaths caused by a helicopter using the same call sign [...]

The military is becoming ever more aggressively meddlesome in civilian control and political decision making at a time where the surveillance and communications control of the military is unparalleled. With public unrest from the dire economic conditions, there may be a further militarization of the political leadership.

I’ve been tracking the debate within the Administration over whether we should tolerate corruption in Afghanistan in the name of sustaining a war against someone–anyone–in Afghanistan or not for some weeks. Underlying the entire debate is the fact that our goals in Afghanistan–which started as a pursuit of those who struck us on 9/11 and [...]

I wanted to add to what David Dayen had to say about these two stories. Last week, the WaPo quoted at least two military figures stating, as fact, that the Taliban was a bigger threat to the US mission in Afghanistan than corruption. Based on that judgment, the WaPo suggests “military officials” are now pursuing [...]

In his statement announcing the firing (technically, acceptance of resignation) of Stanley McChrystal and McChrystal’s replacement with David Petraeus, Obama emphasized the importance of chain of command and civilian control of the military. War is bigger than any one man or woman, whether a Private, a General, or a President. As difficult as it is [...]

Frankly, I’m willing to cut James Risen some slack. So much so that when Monday’s !Afghanistan is Rich! story appeared, I didn’t post my first instincts: that the story felt more like a planted David Sanger or William Broad story (or, for old time’s sake, Judy) than a James Risen story. But in response to [...]

I linked to this Jeremy Scahill post already, but I wanted to point out a few things about Scahill’s elaboration on the WaPo’s covert ops story of the other day. First, Scahill provides a list of locations where Obama’s expanded special operations war has deployed: The Nation has learned from well-placed special operations sources that [...]