Free Range International

The coverage of the impending arrival of General Petraeus to take charge of the Afghan Campaign has been intense.  Pundits both big and small have been offering anaysis almost non-stop – I’m getting Petraeus fatigue reading all this junk.  But for those of you who haven’t reached that point yet here is my [...]

General McChrystal is in hot water over this article in Rolling Stone magazine .  Last night news reports indicated remarks from “aides” to the reporter seem to be blunt, confidential assessments from the General about the  President, Vice President, NSC head Gen Jim Jones (USMC Ret) and the American ambassador among others. [...]

Yesterday the New York Times reported a stunner which was that the United States has discovered 1 Trillion dollars in untapped mineral wealth in Afghanistan.  That news would seem to be a potential game changer and I went out this afternoon to downtown Jalalabad to conduct a couple man on the street interviews with [...]

A few days ago an excellent investigative report by Mitch Potter of the Toronto Star was published informing the citizens of Canada that their signature project in Afghanistan, the Dahla  Dam irrigation project, appears to be failing.  It is a story well told and yet another example of  the insanity of doing the same [...]

It is 88Ëš Fahrenheit during the day in Jalalabad making this the coolest start to summer in memory.  Unfortunately the number of security incidents in Jalalabad and around the country have started climbing  like the temperature normally does.  Yesterday, for the first time since a one-off attack in 2008 the villains struck at [...]

The Chim chims are intel weenies as regular readers of the FRI blog have probably deduced.  They are all former members of our Armed Forces, they are all working in their field of expertise today with traditional Pentagon contractors and none of them is involved with this supposed “contractor spy ring.”  Despite this [...]