The Political Conundrum!

A federal grand jury has indicted three military contractors on charges they kidnapped a foreign national at gunpoint while working at an air base in Iraq. The three employees of two Department of Defense contractors were freed on $100,000 bond last week after pleading not guilty to charges that include conspiracy, kidnapping, assault and witness tampering.

A federal grand jury has indicted three military contractors on charges they kidnapped a foreign national at gunpoint while working at an air base in Iraq. The three employees of two Department of Defense contractors were freed on $100,000 bond last week after pleading not guilty to charges that include conspiracy, kidnapping, assault and witness tampering.

A joint Afghan-NATO operation in a volatile region in the country's dangerous south has killed 40 militants, including the Taliban's leader in that region, a government official said Monday.

The system for providing health care to Department of Defense employees remains vulnerable to fraud overseas, years after a Philippines company swindled taxpayers out of $100 million, a recent report warned.

Archaeologists say they have uncovered a third-century battlefield in northern Germany which could prove that Roman legions were fighting in the region much later than historians have long believed.

Russian warships will visit U.S. foe Cuba for the first time since the Soviet era, the navy said Monday.

The power of the milblogs, and more importantly the power of the readers of the milblogs shows its colors once again. The CEO of The Onion has responded and as per him, they have pulled the video that was mentioned on this site and many others. Read the letter from the CEO to BlackFive’s Jimbo over at http://www.blackfive.net/main/2008/12/onion-ceo-respo.html.

Thank you to all of my readers who took action, spread the word or whatever you did that influnced The Onion to make the change.

We often wonder why, even when armed with the best of intentions and perhaps even sound plans, counterinsurgency and counterterrorism efforts seem futile once the fighting stops. Billions of dollars later (and often a good many deaths of our military personnel and others), things head south.

Two stories today offer a partial answer to that question, and demonstrate vividly that a military victory is only a small part of what counterinsurgency and counterterrorism actually are. There have been victories in both Afghanistan (the U.S. and NATO) and Somalia (Ethiopia with U.S. support).

The first story is a reflection in the Washington Post Outlook section on total failure of the Afghan government to mitigate rampant corruption and abuse. The government has often been aided and abetted by international donors and others who value short-term fixes over true reform.

The point made is that the Taliban is resurgent, and somewhat accepted, because the government offers nothing better, or at least is perceived to be corrupt beyond redemption.

I think this is somewhat simplistic and misses some important issues (the Taliban's ability to finance itself through opium etc.), but people living through the current Afghanistan situation say the current level of corruption and abuse by those in power has made a mockery of the government and stripped it of all legitimacy. Perhaps the difference is that government drug traffickers and warlords work only for themselves while the Taliban sends at least some of its illicit proceeds on upgrading the fighting capabilities of its forces.

If the government we support and pour billions of dollars into, cannot come off in the minds of the vast majority of citizens as clearly better, then the efforts are worth little.

The second story is the astounding news that, although the government controls nothing of importance in Somalia and the radical Islamist extremists are now in the capital again holding press conferences, the president and prime minister are at each other's throats. My full blog is here.

A U.S. Army Reservist who holds Israeli citizenship is fighting orders for deployment to Afghanistan, reaching out to Israeli and U.S. diplomatic officials to prevent what her husband says would be "unnecessarily dangerous and irrational" duty, according to an Israeli newspaper report.

The men around Lindsey Graham ignored his powerful political title - U.S. senator - and instead addressed him by rank - colonel. Graham, the only U.S. senator in the military's Guard or Reserves, donned the Air Force's camouflaged uniform for five days last week to serve in Kabul.