Search results

In 2009, Private First Class Bowe Bergdahl was captured in Afghanistan after deciding to walk off his base. A look at why he left, and the complications surrounding his rescue: “Within an hour, two F-18s were circling overhead. Afghan forces passed along intelligence that a U.S. soldier had been captured by the Taliban. By that […]

An account of how hundreds of Taliban prisoners escaped from Kandahar’s Sarposa prison in Afghanistan through a tunnel in 2011: “At 5 a.m., hours after Rahim and his cohorts passed directly beneath his office, the warden of Sarposa Prison, General Dastagir Mayar, was awakened. One of his guards stood in the doorway. The entire political […]

Inside the Emergency Surgical Center for War Victims, a hospital in Afghanistan that’s funded by an Italian NGO and is committed to helping all victims: “Last year, Emergency’s three hospitals and 34 clinics across Afghanistan treated nearly 360,000 patients. During the course of reporting this article, after visiting these facilities and meeting a number of […]

An anonymous personal account from a Marine Corp medic in Afghanistan: “My corpsmen and I processed dozens of locals who’d been arrested for a countless acts of shadiness. We provided medical exams and documented any marks, scars, or injuries on them before and after questioning. They would arrive with a grape-juice-colored stain across their fingers […]

James Erwin, a writer for software manuals in Des Moines, Iowa, responded to a Reddit thread wondering what would happen if the U.S. Marines battled the Roman Empire. His comments lit up the Internet: “The 35th MEU is on the ground at Kabul, preparing to deploy to southern Afghanistan. Suddenly, it vanishes. “The section of […]

A look into the lives of female war correspondents Christiane Amanpour, Marie Colvin, Janine di Giovanni, Maggie O’Kane, and Jacky Rowland: “Amanpour and her colleagues are reporters, they insist, not women reporters, as rugged as any man, and they’ve got the war stories to prove it. Take Afghanistan alone. Amanpour discovered what she believes were […]

Sam Brown, a soldier badly burned in an IED explosion in Afghanistan, undergoes an experimental treatment to ease his pain through a virtual reality game called “SnowWorld”: “When they first lowered the goggles over his eyes, Brown was not all that impressed. He found himself floating through a kind of glacial canyon, but the overall […]

A look at hundreds of pages of internal White House documents, and what they reveal about the president’s decision-making process: “One Cabinet official made it clear that she did not share the President’s growing commitment to coupon-clipping: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. She rejected the White House’s budget for her department, and wrote the President […]

[Not single-page] Chen, a 19-year-old who grew up in New York’s Chinatown, joins the Army. Nine months later, he’s found dead in Afghanistan from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, after facing constant abuse from his superiors: “The Army recently announced that it was charging eight soldiers—an officer and seven enlisted men—in connection with Danny Chen’s death. […]

Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir’s technology is either creepy or heroic. Judging by the company’s growth, opinion in Washington and elsewhere has veered toward the latter. Palantir has built a customer list that includes the U.S. Defense Dept., CIA, FBI, Army, Marines, Air Force, […]