Spencer Ackerman

Andrew Exum writes a very valuable post hinging off the Tony Cordesman piece that I cited earlier, and the point of both posts is to test the tensile strength of the assumptions behind the Obama administration’s counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan. As a meta-point, it amuses me when critics accuse counterinsurgents of dogmatism or closed-mindedness. Ex [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 500-10
June 16, 2010
DOD Identifies Army Casualties
The Department of Defense announced today the deaths of four soldiers who were supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. They died of wounds suffered when enemy forces attacked their vehicle with an improvised explosive device [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 499-10
June 16, 2010
DOD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.
[...]

So this Petraeus/Flournoy hearing so far has been dominated by a very politicized parsing of what the July 2011 “inflection point” is and isn’t. You can read about that here. We’re at a 10 minute break two hours in — there’s a Senate vote — and I haven’t heard anything substantial about Kandahar.
But another thing. [...]

Eli Lake reports that Pakistan desires more helicopters than, apparently the Pakistan Counterinsurgency Contingency Fund the U.S. established last year. The helicopters, they say, will support a “silent surge” of “more than 100,000 troops into the mountain lairs of al Qaeda’s senior leadership in the country’s Northwest Frontier Province.” In other words, exactly what the [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 497-10
June 15, 2010
DOD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Spc. Brian M. Anderson, 24, of Harrisonburg, Va., died June [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 496-10
June 15, 2010
DOD Identifies Army Casualty
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Sgt. Mario Rodriguez, 24, of Smithville, Texas, died June 11 [...]

Man, Marc, I dunno about this:
When was the last time a U.S. war effort was so tied to one man?
An Army friend likes to say, “if there’s one thing the Army taught me, it’s that we’re all replaceable.”
Minds wandered there today when Gen. David Petraeus briefly fell ill during his Senate hearing on the future [...]

“The Diamond Church Street Choir” from the Gaslight Anthem’s just-released-today record American Slang has been my song of the week. Sadly, I can’t seem to embed it, so here you go. It’s a pretty and pride-filled ode to New Brunswick of the sort you get from the city’s better punk bands (Sticks & Stones, Lifetime). [...]

So, quite a morning: Gen. Petraeus and Undersecretary Flournoy cited progress in training and equipping Afghan security forces to a Senate panel. Then Petraeus briefly passed out and, halfway around the world, insurgents murdered a Kandahar district governor.
Something else worth highlighting from the Petraeus/Flournoy testimony are some rather supportive statements about reconciliation with the Taliban. [...]