Did you know that the federal government expects to spend $450 billion on fighting wars over the next decade? This, despite the removal of all troops fron Iraq, and the transition of combat missions over to the Afghans by 2014, if not a year earlier? That’s what we can take from the numbers in the [...]

It occurs to me that we cannot even really have a Pentagon Papers event in this country anymore. Sure, Wikileaks releases gained a decent amount of attention, but the real evidence for this comes in the past week. Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis wrote an 84-page report detailing his experiences in Afghanistan, which are at odds [...]

In the last two countries the United States invaded, Afghanistan and Iraq, officials subsequently set up parliamentary and not republican forms of government, with a unicameral Parliament rather than a bicameral legislature. Afghanistan does have a Presidential system and is thus somewhat closer to the US form of government, but the President in Iraq is [...]

At least so far, the attempts from inside the military to warn against an early withdrawal in Afghanistan are not working. In fact, the US appeared to move in the other direction today, aligning themselves more with France than with the military moles. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta announced that NATO would shift from a combat [...]

A leaked NATO report suggests that the Pakistani security services are helping the Afghan Taliban in their insurgency program, and that even Afghan lawmakers want to sign up with the Taliban. The Taliban in Afghanistan are being directly assisted by Pakistani security services, according to a secret Nato report seen by the BBC. The leaked [...]

The focus on Guantanamo over the past couple years has been misplaced. In fact, the number of detainees there has been dissipating somewhat. The number of detainees at Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan, by contrast, has exploded, with detainees captured throughout the world moved over to Bagram – and shielded from any habeas proceedings [...]

The Defense Department has identified the four Marines who urinated on dead Taliban soldiers in an infamous video that turned up this week. The military may charge the Marines with war crimes, though a final decision has not been made. As investigators begin the job of determining who is guilty of what crime, the Marines [...]

Taliban negotiators approaching discussions on a peace deal with the United States claim that the talks will not be derailed by the emergence of a new video showing Marines urinating on dead Taliban soldiers. The video, released near the 10th anniversary of the opening of the terrorist prison at Guantanamo, was released anonymously on YouTube. [...]

Let’s follow up on today’s item about the Taliban opening an office in Qatar, to begin work on a peace and reconciliation deal in Afghanistan. The counterpart to this action was supposed to be the transfer of several Taliban detainees at Guantanamo into Afghan custody. Because of the constraints placed by Congress on the movement [...]

The Taliban has agreed to open an office in Qatar, seen as a precursor to peace talks in Afghanistan. In a statement, Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, said that along with agreeing to set up the office in Qatar, the group was asking that Taliban detainees held at the American prison in Guantánamo [...]

The future of peace talks with the Taliban to end the Afghanistan war may hinge on thetransfer of a prisoner from Guantanamo Bay. This sign of goodwill could pave the way for broader talks aimed at reconciliation for the Taliban and integration into the Afghan government. But the US is not convinced that they should [...]