Last Friday, I met a boy, just before he was assassinated by the CIA. Tariq Aziz was 16, a quiet young man from North Waziristan, who, like most teenagers, enjoyed soccer. Seventy-two hours later, a Hellfire missile is believed to have killed him as he was travelling in a car...
Posted August 19, 2010 | 13:09:04 (EST)
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.
"Find, fix, finish, and follow-up" is the way the Pentagon describes the mission of secret military teams in Afghanistan which have been given a mandate to pursue alleged members of the Taliban or al-Qaeda wherever they may be found. Some call these “manhunting” operations and...
Posted March 21, 2010 | 19:36:04 (EST)
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.
The Pentagon faces a tough choice: Should it award a new contract to Xe (formerly Blackwater), a company made infamous when its employees killed 17 Iraqis in Baghdad in 2007, or to DynCorp, a company made infamous in Bosnia in 1999 when some of its employees...
Posted February 7, 2010 | 22:22:08 (EST)
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com.
Sitting in air-conditioned comfort, cans of Coke and 7-Up within reach as they watched their screens, the ground controllers gave the order to strike under the cover of darkness. There had been no declaration of war. No advance warning, nothing, in fact, that would...
Posted November 17, 2009 | 11:49:49 (EST)
Cross-posted with TomDispatch.com.
Kabul, Afghanistan -- Every morning, dozens of trucks laden with diesel from Turkmenistan lumber out of the northern Afghan border town of Hairaton on a two-day trek across the Hindu Kush down to Afghanistan's capital, Kabul. Among the dozens of businesses dispatching these trucks are...
Posted June 2, 2009 | 13:09:37 (EST)
Crossposted with TomDispatch.com
Or How to Stay Out of Sight While Profiting From the War in Iraq
The Houstonian Hotel is an elegant, secluded resort set on an 18-acre wooded oasis in the heart of downtown Houston. Two weeks ago, David Lesar, CEO of the...
Posted February 19, 2009 | 14:42:00 (EST)
Cross-posted from TomDispatch.com
President Obama will almost certainly touch down in Baghdad and Kabul in Air Force One sometime in the coming year to meet his counterparts in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he will just as certainly pay a visit to a U.S. military base or two. Should he...
138 Comments | Posted November 10, 2011 | 13:56:21 (EST)