War
Extra Extra Monday: Nebraska releases prisoners early; Koch brothers hold secret summit; Missile defense system proves unreliable
$40-billion missile defense system proves unreliable | Los Angeles Times The Ground-based Midcourse Defense system, or GMD, was supposed to protect Americans against a chilling new threat from “rogue states” such as North Korea and Iran. But a decade after it was declared operational, and after $40 billion in spending, the missile shield cannot be relied…
Read MorePentagon slow to identify remains of missing service members
The Pentagon spends about $100 million a year to find men like World War II POW Arthur “Bud” Kelder, following the ethos of “leave no man behind,” ProPublica reports. Yet it solves surprisingly few cases, hobbled by overlapping bureaucracy and a stubborn refusal to seize the full potential of modern forensic science. Last year, the military identified just…
Read MoreEmail shows effort to shield bin Laden photos
According to the Associated Press, “A newly-released email shows that 11 days after the killing of terror leader Osama bin Laden in 2011, the U.S. military’s top special operations officer ordered subordinates to destroy any photographs of the al-Qaida founder’s corpse or turn them over to the CIA.” When the AP initially asked for emails…
Read MoreWaste Lands: America’s forgotten nuclear legacy
Seven decades after the Manhattan Project turned the nation into a “factory” frantically focused on building the world’s first nuclear bomb, this Wall Street Journal investigation scrutinizes the government’s efforts – and failures – to clean up nuclear material haphazardly strewn across hundreds of sites in dozens of states.
Read MoreOn the Ground With Syria’s News Smugglers: They go where professional journalists won’t
Syria is now the most dangerous country in the worldfor reporters: According to the Doha Centre for Media Freedom, at least 114 journalists have died there since the spring of 2011, the News Republic reports. Among the dead are seasoned correspondents like the American Marie Colvin, who was killed in Homs in 2012, and freelancers…
Read MorePortrait of an Afghan Assassin
Green-on-blue (or insider) attacks have been sweeping Afghanistan, leaving dozens of Americans dead, Mother Jones reports. The surge of internal attacks came out of nowhere. In 2007 and 2008, there were just six such attacks combined against members of the US-led International Security Assistance Force. The following year there were 8, the next, 15. In 2011, there…
Read MoreIn Afghanistan, redeployed U.S. soldiers still coping with demons of post-traumatic stress
“A diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder is not a barrier to being redeployed. Not when the Army needs its most experienced soldiers to wrap up the war. Instead, the Army is trying to answer a new question: Who is resilient enough to return to Afghanistan, in spite of the demons they are still fighting?”
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