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By Alec Wilkinson
$15.61
By Joe Sacco
$19.77
$17
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AP / Anjum Naveed
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Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was flexing her diplomatic chops on Monday during a strategic visit to Pakistan, where she announced a hefty aid package—to the tune of $7.5 billion—and this time, the funding is ostensibly intended for nonmilitary purposes.
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By William Pfaff — The European Union deliberately has chosen not to challenge the United States as a military or political superpower. This is convenient for most and saves Europe a great deal of money. It is prudent, since no one knows what the U.S. would do if the Europeans undertook a role that challenged American primacy.
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Department of Defense / Staff Sgt. Phil Schmitten
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Just after a U.S. spy plane was shot down in 1969, President Nixon appears to have ordered nuclear bombers to prepare to attack targets in North Korea, but he quickly changed his mind. More extensive plans (one with the Bush-esque name of “Freedom Drop”) for nuclear strikes on as many as 16 North Korean targets were also devised.
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Flickr / Boris SV (CC-BY-ND)
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The family of a Russian scientist convicted in 2004 of spying for the CIA says he and nine other prisoners were being prepared for an exchange brokered by U.S. and Russian authorities. The deal would reportedly see the return of the alleged Russian spies who were recently arrested on American soil.
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AP / Gerald Herbert
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By Fred Branfman — It is amazing how little commentary there has been on the key issue raised by the McChrystal Affair: Should U.S. war policy be made by Rolling Stone?
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Alfredo V. Ferrer
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By Amy Goodman — The U.S. will eventually negotiate its withdrawal from Afghanistan. The only difference between now and then will be the number of dead, on all sides, and the amount of (borrowed) money that will be spent.
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U.S. Air Force / Tech. Sgt. Francisco V. Govea II
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By Robert Dreyfuss, TomDispatch —
Afghanistan is the place where theories of warfare go to die, and if the COIN theory isn’t dead yet, it’s utterly failed so far to prove itself.
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Secret FCC meetings, what it’s like to be a Canadian doctor, why modern art is in your head, and what science has to say about the best vacation ever—all after the jump.
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U.S. Army / Sgt. Joseph Rivera Rebolledo
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CIA Director Leon Panetta estimates that there are currently fewer than 100 al-Qaida fighters—that’s one for every thousand or so U.S. soldiers—left in Afghanistan. Outgoing intelligence director James Jones has used the same figure. (Rant continues after the jump.)
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Flickr / cobby17
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Canada’s Ontario province, possibly inspired by the decade-long assault on civil liberties in the U.S., has secretly passed a regulation allowing Toronto police to arrest anyone near the security zone for the upcoming G-20 financial summit who declines to identify himself or herself or submit to a search.
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By Eugene Robinson — The good news? Nobody has to pretend anymore that Gen. Stanley McChrystal knew how to fix Afghanistan within a year. The bad news? Now we’re supposed to pretend that Gen. David Petraeus does.
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U.S. Air Force / Master Sgt. Jerry Morrison
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Early reports already chewed over the insults to Ambassadors Eikenberry and Holbrooke and National Security Adviser Jones, but there’s a lot more to the Rolling Stone article that could mean Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s ass. Here (after the jump) are 11 jaw-droppers, groaners and sigh-inducers.
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Al Jazeera English
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The 465-mile-long wall that divides the Palestinian territories from neighboring Israel is both illegal and an eyesore, but one West Bank restaurant owner has decided to use the barrier for good: to screen every match of the World Cup soccer tournament.
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By Eugene Robinson — It’s great that President Obama and his advisers finally seem to understand the atmospherics of responding to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. Now if they’d only get the policy right.
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Flickr / MichalFoto (CC-BY-ND)
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By John Feffer —
Turkey has ambitions beyond the Middle East and the means to get there.
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How Sarah Palin says she would have dealt with the oil spill, why white people in Santa Monica are dodging immigrant police, and why the EPA is after the Amish.
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By William Pfaff — Even though Barack Obama writes that America cannot allow the burdens of the 21st century to “fall on American shoulders alone,” he similarly cannot accept that the United States deviate from the globalist ambitions emphasized in the published strategies of both the Bush and Obama administrations.
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By Amy Goodman — They called it “Operation Sea Breeze.” Despite the pleasant-sounding name, Israel’s violent commando raid on a flotilla of humanitarian aid ships, which left nine civilians dead, has sparked international outrage.
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AP / Mikhail Metzel
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By Ivo Mijnssen and Philipp Casula —
Russia has come a long way, but geopolitics in Eastern Europe are still overshadowed by a mutual distrust rooted in World War II.
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AP / Ariel Schalit
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By Joe Conason — The government of Israel is supposedly run by the Jewish state’s toughest and most ardent defenders, but so far they have inflicted worse damage on its security and its future than its enemies ever could.
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AP / Elizabeth Dalziel
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By Chris Hedges — Hope in this age of bankrupt capitalism will come with the return of the language of class conflict. It does not mean we have to agree with Karl Marx, but we have to speak in his vocabulary.
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White House / Pete Souza
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By William Pfaff — Though the president reiterated his promise of success, the future he outlined at West Point is hard to distinguish from what we have already been through in Iraq, with less than reassuring results.
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U.S. Marine Corps / Lance Cpl. Christopher M. Burke
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Tensions between North and South Korea are spiraling out of control. The north has cut all ties, and Kim Jong-il reportedly ordered his forces to prepare to defend against attack. Seoul continues to push for satisfaction in the U.N. Security Council after the north allegedly torpedoed a South Korean warship. (continued)
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By Joshua Holland, AlterNet —
The bill would cut the DoD’s budget and use that money to make the first $35,000 each American earns tax-free.
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By Joe Conason — Within hours after the car bomb fizzled in Times Square, the nonstop noise resumed on Fox News and talk radio, warning that the Barack Obama administration is failing to protect us.
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Flickr / nedrichards (CC-BY-SA)
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The United Kingdom will not allow an official representative of Israel’s security services into the country, according to an Israeli report, until Israel promises, in writing, not to abuse British passports. Israel has so far refused, the report said.
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U.S. Air Force / Airman 1st Class Eboni Knox
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By Chris Hedges — We are approaching a decade of war in Afghanistan, and the war in Iraq is in its eighth year. The peace movement, despite the heroic efforts of a handful of groups, is dead.
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White House / Krisanna Johnson
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Laura Bush’s new memoir reportedly features a scene at a German hotel fit for a Poirot mystery: The president and his entourage suddenly taken ill as the Secret Service frantically searches for poison. The hotel in question says Mrs. Bush is probably just trying to sell books.
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Flickr / dibau_naum_h (CC-BY-SA)
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While armed militias get all the attention, some Palestinian organizers are embracing nonviolent strategies like peaceful marches and boycotts as a more effective avenue to peace. As one organizer quoted by The Christian Science Monitor put it: “It’s not a war between two armies. By using non-violence, we take away the security excuse from the Israelis.”
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By William Pfaff — Large and firmly implanted bureaucratic organizations are almost impossible to kill, even when they have no reason to continue to exist, as NATO has not since the Soviet Union, communism and the Warsaw Pact all collapsed.
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By William Pfaff — The specific inspiration for weapons proliferation among vulnerable Third World states is the desire to have a nuclear deterrent against invasion or attack by the United States (or in the Iran case, Israel), or by some other nation in the future.
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By David Sirota — There is record support for marijuana legalization, as more Americans see the drug war for what it really is. But framing the debate in terms of tax revenue is just bad politics.
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If you missed Robert Scheer discussing his column, nuclear weapons and President Obama with readers or you just want to relive the excitement, you can read a full transcript right here.
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AP / Alaa al-Marjani
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In the early hours of Saturday morning, a group of men dressed as Iraqi army soldiers busted into five houses in a southern district of Baghdad, handcuffing up to 25 people and shooting them in the head.
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By Joe Conason — When the Department of Homeland Security released a cautiously worded report on the potential dangers of right-wing extremism last April, the talk-radio wingnuts and certain Republican lawmakers went into spasms of indignation.
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AP / Hadi Mizban
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By Scott Ritter — A recent Washington Post story claiming that Saddam Hussein thought about buying nuclear technology from Pakistan has been picked up around the world and is already shaping policy. Unfortunately, it isn’t true.
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Flickr user / Vanity Press
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Two separate explosions in the Moscow subways killed at least 38 people, according to Russian officials. One of the blasts occurred at a station beneath the headquarters of the Russian security service. Officials said two women suicide bombers carried out the attacks, though no group has yet claimed responsibility.
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By Ruth Marcus — No one really knows how such sweeping changes to the health care system are going to play out.
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By William Pfaff — The relationship between the United States and Israel has always rested on a number of pretensions, politically useful to politicians on both sides, but because they are untrue, certain eventually to prove destructive to both countries.
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Hop on past the jump to find out who owns the media, how Gen. David Petraeus wants to handle Israel and why a 13-year-old genius is suing his school.
Posted on Mar 16, 2010
READ MORE 
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U.S. Army
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A Defense Department official may have diverted millions from a Pentagon-funded research website to hire a rogue band of spies he reportedly called “my Jason Bournes” (as in the Matt Damon super assassin). These Jason Bournes, The New York Times reports, allegedly spent time running around both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border looking for militants to have killed.
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AP / Muhammed Muheisen
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By Chris Hedges — The Israeli government, its brutal war crimes in Gaza exposed in detail in the U.N. report by Justice Richard Goldstone, has implemented a series of draconian measures to silence and discredit dissidents, leading intellectuals and human rights organizations inside and outside Israel.
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AP / Jack Plunkett
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By Reese Erlich — There seems to be some confusion about who are the real terrorists these days. Allow me to shed some light on the issue.
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By Joe Conason — When Elizabeth Cheney, William Kristol and their media friends slander Justice Department attorneys as the “al-Qaida 7” and malign the “Department of Jihad,” they are engaging in the smear tactics that became synonymous with Joseph McCarthy.
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By William Pfaff — Internationally speaking, there are only two subjects to talk about in the Middle East. These are Israel, the Palestinians and the Americans; and Iran and Israel.
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AP / Ben Margot
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By Chris Hedges — Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying. How do we fight back?
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AP
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By Joe Conason — If the earthquakes in Chile and Haiti carry any message for those of us fortunate enough not to live in those places, perhaps it is that government regulation could save your life—while right-wing ideology may kill you someday.
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U.S. Air Force / Senior Airman Wesley Farnsworth
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The Department of Defense didn’t have an official policy on what it calls “new/social media”—until now. Starting immediately, DoD employees (including troops) are free to use most of the non-porn Web, from Facebook to YouTube, without worrying about a court-martial. The usual rules on national security still apply. (continued)
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By Joe Conason — Before Najibullah Zazi is finally dispatched to a secure cellblock for good, it is important to remember how the taxi-driver-turned-terrorist was brought to justice—and why the critics who jeered his civilian prosecution were dead wrong.
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Flickr / jamesdale10 (CC-BY)
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The Senate Armed Services Committee is investigating a Blackwater subsidiary’s role in the shooting of two Afghans last year. The panel also criticized the Army for not properly supervising the company. Despite a dreadful track record, Blackwater, now called Xe, continues to have contracts with the U.S. government.
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