Search Results for: military

Reza Abedi’s Greatest Escape

Longreads Pick

Once in Venezuela, other teams were put up in nice hotels, but the Iranian team, at the insistence of its country’s officials, was forced to stay in military barracks. Abedi was in a room with his brother’s best friend, Asgari. Quietly in the showers or in private moments between matches, Abedi began sharing his intentions with a few teammates. Two other wrestlers, both named Abbas, confirmed that they, too, would not return.

Source: OC Weekly
Published: May 13, 2011
Length: 18 minutes (4,666 words)

The Stoner Arms Dealers

The Stoner Arms Dealers

The Stoner Arms Dealers

Longreads Pick

David Packouz and Efraim Diveroli had picked the perfect moment to get into the arms business. To fight simultaneous wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush administration had decided to outsource virtually every facet of America’s military operations, from building and staffing Army bases to hiring mercenaries to provide security for diplomats abroad. After Bush took office, private military contracts soared from $145 billion in 2001 to $390 billion in 2008. Federal contracting rules were routinely ignored or skirted, and military-industrial giants like Raytheon and Lockheed Martin cashed in as war profiteering went from war crime to business model. Why shouldn’t a couple of inexperienced newcomers like Packouz and Diveroli get in on the action? After all, the two friends were after the same thing as everyone else in the arms business — lots and lots and lots of money.

Author: Guy Lawson
Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Mar 17, 2011
Length: 43 minutes (10,854 words)

The Boy from Gitmo

The Boy from Gitmo

The Boy from Gitmo

Longreads Pick

Eight years ago, an [REDACTED] Afghan kid—some say he was [REDACTED] years old, others say he was 12—was grabbed in a Kabul marketplace after a grenade attack on two American soldiers. He was interrogated, [REDACTED], and then taken to Guantánamo. He spent his teenage years there, seven in all, confined in a [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] with the supposed “worst of the worst.” But then, thanks ot the superhuman efforts of his defense team and one intense [REDACTED] military lawyer, the government’s case against him disintegrated. Now he’s back in Afghanistan, free as a badly damaged bird, in a [REDACTED] country he barely recognizes, wondering where you go when you grew up nowhere

Source: GQ
Published: Feb 1, 2011
Length: 36 minutes (9,063 words)

A Declaration of Cyber-War

A Declaration of Cyber-War

The Liberation of Lori Berenson: Life After 15 Years in a Peruvian Prison

Longreads Pick

Such an outpouring of rage at a 40-year-old woman, mother to a toddler, who was convicted in her mid-20s of abetting a terrorist plot that never took place, is a measure of the degree to which Peruvians are still traumatized by the violence that convulsed their country during the years when the Shining Path warred with the military and nearly 70,000 Peruvians were killed. It also underscores the fact that terrorism, all but defunct in Peru for more than a decade, is still a hot political issue.

Published: Mar 2, 2011
Length: 34 minutes (8,601 words)

The Unsung Hero of the Nuclear Age

Longreads Pick

I went ahead and dedicated my new book to Maj. Harold Hering because Maj. Hering sacrificed his military career to ask a Forbidden Question about launching nuclear missiles. A question that exposed the comforting illusions of the so called fail-safe system designed to prevent “unauthorized” nuclear missile launches. How can any missile crewman know that an order to twist his launch key in its slot and send a thermonuclear missile rocketing out of its silo—a nuke capable of killing millions of civilians—is lawful, legitimate, and comes from a sane president?

Source: Slate
Published: Feb 28, 2011
Length: 17 minutes (4,362 words)

Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Another Runaway General: Army Deploys Psy-Ops on U.S. Senators

Longreads Pick

The orders came from the command of Lt. Gen. William Caldwell, a three-star general in charge of training Afghan troops – the linchpin of U.S. strategy in the war. Over a four-month period last year, a military cell devoted to what is known as “information operations” at Camp Eggers in Kabul was repeatedly pressured to target visiting senators and other VIPs who met with Caldwell. When the unit resisted the order, arguing that it violated U.S. laws prohibiting the use of propaganda against American citizens, it was subjected to a campaign of retaliation.

Source: Rolling Stone
Published: Feb 24, 2011
Length: 8 minutes (2,235 words)