'His Horse Was Named Death' - An FP Slideshow On Feb. 21, 2003, 1st Lt. Tim McLaughlin, a 25-year-old Marine platoon commander deployed to the Kuwaiti desert, wrote his initial entry in what would become a remarkable diary of the U.S. invasion of Iraq that spring. "The best writing advice I have been given is just to write," he began. "There will be plenty of time to edit and stylize it later." McLaughlin is a walk-on to history. His diary begins at the Pentagon on the morning of the 9/11 attacks, jumps to his deployment in Kuwait, follows him into battle during the invasion of Baghdad, and recounts the moment his own American flag was draped over the statue of Saddam Hussein in Firdos Square -- an iconic image of the U.S. invasion. Foreign Policy is pleased to present the Iraq War Diaries of Lt. Above: McLaughlin's operations journal from the war, with a quote from the Johnny Cash song "The Man Comes Around." See the entire Iraq War Diaries project, here.
The Shooter The man who shot and killed Osama bin Laden sat in a wicker chair in my backyard, wondering how he was going to feed his wife and kids or pay for their medical care. It was a mild spring day, April 2012, and our small group, including a few of his friends and family, was shielded from the sun by the patchwork shadows of maple trees. But the Shooter was sweating as he talked about his uncertain future, his plans to leave the Navy and SEAL Team 6. He stood up several times with an apologetic gripe about the heat, leaving a perspiration stain on the seat-back cushion. We would end up intimately familiar with each other's lives. In my yard, the Shooter told his story about joining the Navy at nineteen, after a girl broke his heart. "He said, 'Hey, we have snipers.' "I said, 'Seriously, dude. "That's the reason Al Qaeda has been decimated," he joked, "because she broke my fucking heart." Secrecy is a thick blanket over our Special Forces that inelegantly covers them, technically forever. 1.
The Zero Dark Thirty File Washington, DC, January 17, 2013 – The poster for the blockbuster movie Zero Dark Thirty features black lines of redaction over the title, which unintentionally illustrate the most accurate take-away from the film - that most of the official record of the hunt for Osama bin Laden is still shrouded in secrecy, according to the National Security Archive's ZD30 briefing book, posted today at www.nsarchive.org. The U.S. government's recalcitrance over releasing information directly to the public about the twenty-first century's most important intelligence search and military raid, and its decision instead to grant the film's producers exclusive and unprecedented access to classified information about the operation, means that for the time being – for bad or good – Hollywood has become the public's "account of record" for Operation Neptune Spear. Zero Dark Thirty 's screenwriter, Mark Boal, has claimed that the film is "a movie not a documentary" and should not be treated as history.
Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan Was Not a Grand Design But a Grand Entanglement Resulting from Faulty Intelligence, Excessive Secrecy, and a Paralyzed Leadership, According to Conference of Former Decision-Makers Washington, D.C., December 21, 2012 – On December 12, 1979, the Soviet Politburo gathered to formally approve the decision made several days earlier to send a "limited contingent" of Soviet forces into Afghanistan. The secrecy was so tight that the leadership hand-wrote the authorization document in one copy and hand-carried it to each Politburo member for signature. The order does not even mention Afghanistan by name and uses cryptic language to entrust Andropov, Ustinov and Gromyko to oversee the implementation of the decision. The Yeltsin government declassified the one-page record in 1992 as part of a body of evidence for use at the upcoming trial of the Communist Party. Ever since December 1979, the war has continued to ravage the country, and scholars and politicians continue to try to come to grips with what went wrong at each stage.
Lifting the Veil on Colombia's "Emerald Czar" Colombian Army "Facilitated" Paramilitary Operation at Miraflores "From Beginning to End" "Big-Time Narco" Carranza one of the "Best Known" Paramilitaries in Colombia but "Content to Operate Behind the Scenes" Washington, DC, December 21, 2012 – An individual using the reported alias of Colombian billionaire Víctor Carranza Niño “freely admitted” that “he and men under his command” were “responsible for the October 1997 Miraflores massacre” and that the Colombian Army “had facilitated the operation ‘from beginning to end,’” according to a formerly-Secret cable from the U.S. The December 1997 report, titled, “Mapiripán and Miraflores: Increased Signs of Army Facilitation of Paramilitaries,” attributes the confession to “Clodomiro Agami,” an alias strikingly similar to the one said to have been used by Carranza. Paramilitary gunmen murdered 12 people and displaced hundreds more during the three-day operation in Miraflores, which targeted presumed supporters of a leftist guerrilla group.
USS Boxer (CV-21) Commissioned too late to see any combat in World War II, Boxer spent much of her career in the Pacific Ocean seeing 10 tours in the western Pacific. Her initial duties involved mostly training and exercises, including launching the first carrier-based jet aircraft, but demobilization prevented much activity in the late 1940s. At the outbreak of the Korean War, she was used as an aircraft transport before arriving off Korean Waters as the third U.S. Carrier to join the force. After the Korean War, Boxer saw a variety of duties, including as an anti-submarine warfare carrier and an amphibious assault platform. Although she was extensively modified internally as part of her conversion to an LPH, external modifications were minor, so throughout her career Boxer retained the classic appearance of a World War II Essex-class ship. Boxer was one of 24 Essex-class ships to be completed, among the largest and most numerous capital ships produced for World War II.[1] She was ordered in 1943.[2]
Norwegian Vikings grew hemp Remnants of the Iron Age Sosteli farm in Vest-Agder County, Norway's southernmost. Hemp was cultivated here even before the Viking Age. (Photo: Morten Teinum/Visit Sørlandet) The Sosteli farmsted, in Norway's southermmost Vest-Agder County, offers strong evidence that Vikings farmers actively cultivated cannabis, a recent analysis shows. The cannabis remains from the farmsted date from 650 AD to 800 AD. This is not the first sign of hemp cultivation in Norway this far back in time, but the find is much more extensive than previous discoveries. “The other instances were just individual finds of pollen grains. Rope and textiles Sosteli is also further away from current-day settlements than other sites where cannabis finds have been made. Hemp is the same plant as cannabis, or marijuana. Most likely it was grown for making textiles and rope. Found and forgotten The material, which re-emerged by chance, stems from a Norwegian-Danish research project at Sosteli in the 1940s and 1950s. Soaking
U.S. Had Plans for "Full Nuclear Response" In Event President Killed or Disappeared during an Attack on the United States Both USSR and China Were To Be Targeted Simultaneously, Even If Attack Were Conventional or Accidental, and Regardless of Who Was Responsible LBJ Ordered Change in Instructions in 1968 to Permit More Limited Response, Avert "Dangerous" Situation Newly Declassified Document Expands Limited Public Record on Nuclear Predelegation National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 406 Posted - December 12, 2012 Edited by William Burr For more information contact: William Burr - 202/994-7000 or nsarchiv@gwu.edu Washington, D.C., December 12, 2012 – As late as 1968, the U.S. government had plans in place to fire an automatic "full nuclear response" against both the Soviet Union and China in the event of the death or disappearance of the President in the course of an attack against the United States, but President Lyndon Johnson changed that policy in October 1968, according to a previously Top Secret document published today for the first time by the National Security Archive. Documents 1A-B: