Defence and security links post
The reaction to Barack Obama’s announcement of the Defence Strategic Guidance document is as good an opportunity as any to open a thread to discuss defence-related matters. The document puts a little bit more meat on the bones on some [...]
CIA’s fake vaccination drive to get bin Laden
The Guardian reports that the CIA set up a fake vaccination drive in Abbottabad, Pakistan to obtain DNA samples from individuals in the bin Laden compound. The CIA organised a fake vaccination programme in the town where it believed Osama [...]
Obama Afghanistan announcement
Defense officials have been quoted as saying that Mr. Obama will call for an initial withdrawal of about 10 percent of the U.S. forces in Afghanistan, with 5,000 troops to leave first, followed by another 5,000 before the year’s end.
Drug supplies and the law of unintended consequences
Victoria Police have raided a large number of houses in which marijuana was allegedly being grown hydroponically: Thirty four people are in custody after the biggest drug operation in Victoria’s history sent 650 police storming into scores of properties allegedly [...]
Quick link: Afghanistan NGO Safety Office
Independent overviews of the state of the Afghanistan conflict are hard to come by. So the reports of the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (a project co-funded by the Norwegian and Swiss foreign ministeries, and the EU) are very useful. Their [...]
Afghanistan and the sunk cost fallacy
From Tony Abbott’s Parliamentary speech (PDF, page 29) on the Afghanistan war: As things stand, each bereaved family knows that the Australian people respect their loss and value their sacrifice. We have honoured their deaths by continuing their campaign. How [...]
The Afghanistan debate
With parliament about to debate Australia’s deployment in Afghanistan, it’s worth linking to Raspal Khosa’s analysis of what Australia is actually doing in Uruzgan Province. One thing that comes through pretty clearly in Khosa’s report is just how peripheral Australia’s [...]
Rundle on Afghanistan
Reproduced from yesterday’s Crikey with permission. Guy Rundle writes: Reading the assembled Australian punditocracy on the Afghanistan war, you can’t help be reminded of the couple interviewed for Irish television in the 1980s. Who makes the decisions in the household, [...]
Afghanistan and the ADF
The latest ADF deaths in Afghanistan have brought the mission there into media focus – as was asked here a few weeks ago, why wasn’t the Afghanistan War a major election issue? Is the formulation of a viable exit strategy about to become a major post-election deadlock issue?
Quick link: Why isn’t the Afghanistan War a major election issue?
That’s a question worth posing, and it’s posed by Jacinda Woodhead of Overland at The Drum this morning.
Wikileaks Roundtable
Afghan, Pakistani Reactions at Odds Over Leaked US Documents, US says Afghan Wikileaks ‘could put lives at risk’
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