As American commanders meet this week for the Afghanistan review, Obama is hiring military contractors at a rate that would make Bush blush. Tim Shorrock on the Blackwater heirs. Top U.S. commanders are meeting this week to plan for the next phase of the Afghanistan war. In Iraq, meanwhile, gains are tentative and in danger of unraveling.
Both wars have been fought with the help of private military and intelligence contractors. But despite the troubles of Blackwater in particular – charges of corruption and killing of civilians—and continuing controversy over military outsourcing in general, private sector armies are as involved as ever.
An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film "Erin Brockovich."
Israel is preventing Palestinian development in parts of the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem while pouring funding into Jewish settlements, the Human Rights Watch group said on Sunday.
At two in the morning on Sept. 9, 2005, five DynCorp International security guards assigned to Afghan President Hamid Karzai's protective detail returned to their compound drunk, with a prostitute in tow. Less than a week later, three of these same guards got drunk again, this time in the VIP lounge of the Kabul airport while awaiting a flight to Thailand.
Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy organization who was released from a British jail late last week, is facing a new challenge: the leak of a 68-page confidential Swedish police report that sheds new light on the allegations of sexual misconduct that led to Mr. Assange’s legal troubles.
Bank of America Corp. Friday said it was joining other financial institutions in declining to process payments intended for WikiLeaks.
Janis Karpinski believes one day, a call will come from Washington, D.C., and a voice will tell her she has been cleared of the wrongdoing that thrust her into the national spotlight. "So then they'll be, of course, an outpouring of media requests," Karpinski said. "Maybe I'll be selective. Maybe Olbermann, maybe O'Reilly."
During a July 2007 meeting of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Canada supported the appointment of a representative to the chair to report on anti-Semitism. Despite calls for a change in OSCE policy, Ottawa supported recognizing prejudice against Jews as a unique phenomenon, not one among many forms of bigotry. The OSCE meeting condemned all forms of racism, discrimination and “aggressive nationalism” but added: “Recognizing its unique and historic character, [we] condemn anti-Semitism without reservation, whether expressed in a traditional manner or through new forms and manifestations.”
The US Senate has passed bill to end the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy, putting the long campaign to end the ban on gay men and lesbians close to its conclusion. The final vote was 65 Senators in favor and 31 opposed to the bill.
