Kofi Annan has stepped down as the international crisis mediator for the UN on Syria, in an acknowledgement that without unity on the Security Council, nothing will be done at an international level. Former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan is stepping down as the U.N.-Arab League mediator in the 17-month-old Syria conflict at the end of [...]

As a reminder that the United States is still at war, 6 US soldiers were killed in a roadside bomb attack in Afghanistan. As a reminder that the United States is still at war in countries you don’t even know about, there’s this from the Washington Post: In pre-dawn darkness, a ­Toyota Land Cruiser skidded [...]

In a report required by the War Powers Resolution, President Obama for the first time acknowledged that the US has taken “direct action” in Somalia and Yemen to attack remnants of Al Qaeda, spreading the battlefield authorized by the AUMF passed shortly after the September 11 attacks in 2001. In the letter, the President updates [...]

I recall someone telling me at Netroots Nation that the Justice Department had appointed two prosecutors to investigate recent leaks over the Predator drone program, the foiled Underpants Bomb II attack and cyberwarfare against Iran. I wondered how the prosecutors would go about arresting the PR agent for the President’s “tough on national security” re-election [...]

NATO formally announced a new timeline for the winding down of troops in Afghanistan, agreeing to transfer responsibility for security to the Afghans by the summer of 2013, with the withdrawal of most troops timed for the end of 2014. This is a similar timeline to the exit of troops from Iraq, with a transfer [...]

It’s a sad commentary on our media that the President had to answer questions yesterday about drones for the first time, and the questions didn’t come at a White House press briefing or major print interview, but in a virtual YouTube town hall with members of the public. FDL’s Kevin Gosztola covered this at The [...]

The Pentagon today announced its “lighter” budget, which should more accurately be referred to as its reorganization of the military. It’s hard to call this a smaller budget when you look at this fact sheet. The only reason the budget gets “smaller” is the end of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The base budget [...]

A provocative article in Foreign Policy magazine suggests that Israeli Mossad officers recruited members of the Pakistani terrorist organization Jundallah to aid in the covert operations against Iranian targets, including bombings in the Baluchistan region and potentially the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists. The Mossad officers, according to Mark Perry, posed as American intelligence agents [...]

The Christmas drone truce in Pakistan has ended. Last night, the US launched a drone strike in North Waziristan, site of many of the drone attacks over the past several years. Four purported militants have been pronounced dead. An American drone strike killed four Islamist militants in Pakistan, the first such attack since errant U.S [...]

In a press conference with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, President Obama calmly explained that his Administration asked Iran nicely for their drone back. “We’ve asked for it back. We’ll see how the Iranians respond,” Obama said. He added that the matter was classified, but the acknowledgement that someone wrote a note to the Iranian [...]

People would rather not focus on the litany of undeclared wars this country currently fights, but when one of the adversaries considers putting defensive weaponry at the border to guard against future attacks, it’s worth taking notice. Pakistan may deploy air defense weapons to the Afghan border to prevent future NATO airstrikes such as the [...]