The National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA) was passed by Congress and signed into law by the president on New Year’s Eve of 2011. Activists and other critics charge that the NDAA authorizes the indefinite military detention of U.S. citizens, but supporters counter that the law entails no new powers of detention for the federal government.
In a sense, both sides are right.
Make no mistake: we’re entering a new world of military planning. Admittedly, the latest proposed Pentagon budget manages to preserve just about every costly toy-cum-boondoggle from the good old days when MiGs still roamed the skies, including an uncut nuclear arsenal. Eternally over-budget items like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, cherished by their services and well-lobbied congressional representatives, aren’t leaving the scene any time soon, though delays or cuts in purchase orders are planned. All this should reassure us that, despite the talk of massive cuts, the U.S. military will continue to be the profligate, inefficient, and remarkably ineffective institution we’ve come to know and squander our treasure on.
The United States attacks rescuers of its own drone attacks as well as mourners at funerals of their victims.
Pakistan walks a tightrope between the United States and the Taliban.
When it comes to nuclear weapons and assassinations, Iran is judged by a different standard from the West.
Historian Mark Perry caused a firestorm with his report that Mossad officers posed as CIA officers to recruit Jundallah operatives for attacks within Iran.
The Mujahideen-e Khalq’s Paris-based leadership is reluctantly cooperating with a U.N. plan to resettle its endangered members in an Iraq refugee camp.
Iran war hawks are still trying to establish that Iran was complicit with al-Qaeda in the attacks of 9/11. Paul Mutter at the Foreign Policy in Focus blog Focal Points.
The drone had been in the air for close to five hours before its mission crew realized that something was wrong. The oil temperature in the plane’s turbocharger, they noticed, had risen into the “cautionary” range. An hour later, it was worse, and it just kept rising as the minutes wore on. While the crew desperately ran through its “engine overheat” checklist trying to figure out the problem, the engine oil temperature, too, began skyrocketing.
As the United States struggles to stabilize the volatile landscape in Afghanistan, assert a long-term strategic presence in Iraq, and contain Iran’s nuclear ambitions, it is gradually confronting a precarious and consequential estrangement from its long-term strategic ally, Pakistan. With rising dissatisfaction among the Pakistani political elite and growing popular anger against America, Washington is on the verge of losing another vital ally.