‘National affairs’ Archives
Intel Vets Talk about Trump
April 13 -- Thursday was yap day for three former intelligence heads and the present CIA director who spoke at two different think tank forums in D.C. “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence,” [...]
Swampland: Watching and Leaking, Susan Rice and Unmasking Washington
April 18 -- Okay, I’m way out of orbit from the consensus of reporters reporting on anonymous sources that say Susan Rice was not politicizing her choice of unmasking. I retract any skepticism in the blather below. Twitter is full of claims by journalists claiming that Ryan Lizza of The New Yorker has obliterated any claims to the contrary. John [...]
Edward Snowden Opens Can of Worms
Today, Edward Snowden claimed he is responsible for leaking the goods on the architecture of the U.S. PRISM program, an international surveillance program that monitors Internet traffic en masse. The bold, ballsy admission opens a frothy can of wormy issues – from international relations between China and the U.S. to the nature of U.S. [...]
The Contractor’s Fight at Home
I hooked up Dan Rather's producer to many of the sources and events in this Dan Rather Reports: "The hidden story of Americans serving in Iraq, the civilian contractors." Never did get a thank you. by David Phinney March 24, 2007 -- War for Hire: Dan Rather's producer called me for sources for a report exploring the "invisible army" in [...]
Giant Sucking Sound at the Border?
DynCorp is Hiring Again: 120 openings. Compensation includes more than $134,000 in salary, much of it tax-free, plus a $25,000 bonus for signing up in time for a May 5 training session. Working Conditions: Challenging. The border is in Iraq. (more…)
War in Iraq Costs: A Half-Trillion-Dollars and Counting
Receipts for the war in Iraq to will soon be ringing up to $564 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service. That's more than ten times the $50 billion that the Bush administration once predicted before the war started in March 2003. "It's worth it," Bush said last May, when the tab was about $320 billion. "I wouldn't have [...]
Willing to Please
There once was a line of thinking that the sign of a good manager is when one knows his or her weaknesses and compensates those weaknesses with the strengths of a well-rounded staff. Good presidents also go out of their way to find the strongest thinkers of opposing views to help probe policies for their weaknesses and figure out where solutions [...]
A ‘Clara Barton’ of the Web for Civilian Contractors Injured in Iraq
Jana Crowder, raised in Houston and now living in Tennessee, just may deserve a medal. Certainly, many owe her their thanks. Using the Internet to optimum effect over recent years, Ms. Crowder quietly built a community network that addresses the concerns of civilian workers and shares information among those fighting for medical treatment and [...]
Iraq Vet Says Bank Heist Might Be ‘Political’
AN ARMY VET HAS BEEN TELLING THE NEWS MEDIA that he witnessed US military personnel commit war atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, including the rape of an Iraqi woman, the execution of 12 to 17 prisoners in Afghanistan and robberies. He claims that after reporting the crimes to his superior officers he was told "to forget about it." Former Army [...]
Al Gore Taps the Internet for Crusade Against Global Warming
by David Phinney Feb. 28, 2007 -- From the man accused of taking credit for inventing the internet, a new political crusade is heating up to fight global warming. Fresh off his Oscar winning power-point presentation, An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore launched a chain email lobbying effort this week to pressure Washington into heeding his [...]