by Christophe Haubursin | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON — There are days when Navy veteran Brian Lewis is in too much pain to get out of bed. Since he moved to the outskirts of Saint Paul, Minn. three months ago, he’s been trying to get a medication consultation at the local veterans hospital. Lewis, a former...
by Christophe Haubursin | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON — Appearing before a Senate panel, former Lance Corp. Jeremiah Arbogast asked for better healthcare for veterans from a wheelchair stamped with a Marine Corps emblem. But Arbogast’s injuries were not sustained on the battlefield. They were from a 9mm...
by Ryan McCrimmon | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security
On a scorching day in Helmand province in southern Afghanistan, Shafi Sharifi found himself sitting with an opium farmer in the middle of a brightly colored field of poppies. It was 1999. Sharifi was working for Doctors Without Borders, distributing mosquito nets to...
by Cat Zakrzewski | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON — After President Barack Obama’s 2015 defense spending plan was unveiled, hawkish Republicans were quick to criticize the president for drawing back military funding as Russia intervened in Ukraine’s Crimea peninsula. “We are deeply concerned that the...
by Vesko Cholakov | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security, Politics
Explore how the Crimean crisis unfolded, leading to a vote seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia, and what it revealed about President Barack Obama’s diplomatic, economic and military tactics. How would you have played the foreign policy game yourself?
by Mary Kate Hayes | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security, Politics
WASHINGTON — The Department of Homeland Security joined forces Tuesday with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Postal Inspection Service to identify major players in an international operation involving underground child pornography. In the past few...
by Stephanie Haines | Mar 18, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON—Two years after President Barack Obama removed all U.S. combat troops from Iraq, the al-Qaida threat in the region has grown more menacing, but few analysts or lawmakers agree on what role the U.S. should play in the on-going conflict. “Al-Qaida was...
by Stephanie Haines | Mar 18, 2014 | Education, National Security
WASHINGTON — A year after the Defense Department cuts mandated by the sequester, many professional military educators and their students worry that the military colleges across the country won’t be spared in the across-the-board cuts, creating an environment of job...
by Cat Zakrzewski | Mar 12, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON — Secretary of State John Kerry told a House subcommittee Wednesday that isolating Russia could jeopardize U.S. interests in Iran and Syria, but “we will do what we have to do.” The hearing came a day before Kerry plans to depart for London to meet with the...
by Jessica Floum | Mar 11, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON — CIA Director John Brennan Tuesday denied allegations that his agency tampered with the network of senators investigating the CIA’s controversial detention and interrogation program even as Sen. Dianne Feinstein sharpened her accusations, accusing...
by Jane Herman | Mar 11, 2014 | National Security
WASHINGTON–Locked in a seven by ten foot cell for twenty-three hours a day, with little to no human contact except for the brief mutterings of a prison guard: this was Brian Nelson’s typical day for 23 years in solitary confinement. “Yes I committed a...