The Washington Times reports on a Congressional hearing on Afghanistan, at which representatives of the Obama administration were unable to answer questions on the cost – in money or lives – of America’s ongoing intervention in that country.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee held a hearing on what will happen in Afghanistan after most U.S. troops leave in 2014. Witnesses included “James F. Dobbins, State’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan; Donald Sampler, assistant to the administrator, U.S. Agency for International Development, which provides civilian foreign aid; and Michael Dumont, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Afghanistan, Pakistan and Central Asia.”

Congressman Dana Rohrabacher of California asked ““How much are we spending annually in Afghanistan? How much is the cost to the American taxpayer?”

He was met with stone silence from the witness panel. Mr. Dobbins gestured to the other witnesses for the answer. They, too, came up empty.

“Anybody know?” Mr. Rohrabacker asked. “Nobody knows the total budget, what we’re spending in Afghanistan. It’s a hearing on Afghanistan. Can I have an estimate?

“I’m sorry, congressman,” Mr. Dobbins said.
Mr. Rohrabacker called the lack of an answer “disheartening.”
“How many killed and wounded have we suffered in the last 12 months,” he asked.
Again, none of the three had an answer. Mr. Dumont said he would get back to him.

Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2013/dec/12/obamas-afghanistan-experts-stumped-us-death-toll-w/#ixzz2nOtehEpG

There’s an unhealthy dose of ’80s nostalgia in the media reaction to the emerging Vladimir Putin-brokered settlement of the Syrian chemical weapons attack crisis.

As political scientist Alan J. Kuperman recently explained, NATO intervention “increased the duration of Libya’s civil war by about six times and its death toll by at least seven times, while also exacerbating human rights abuses, humanitarian suffering, Islamic radicalism, and weapons proliferation in Libya and its neighbors.”

Full column by Gene Healy @ http://reason.com/archives/2013/09/17/counting-the-costs-of-obamas-libya-and-s

“Irreverent and unyielding in its opposition to U.S. foreign policy, Antiwar.com has been called many things. But that Washington might consider the 17-year-old news and opinion website a threat to national security should be cause for alarm—especially today.”

“The Obama administration has come under scrutiny this summer following revelations that it’s been snooping on journalists in connection with the unprecedented number of federal leak prosecutions in recent years. Meanwhile, thanks to revelations by Edward Snowden, the American public now knows the government has more access than ever to our Internet browsing habits, e-mails, Facebook accounts, and phone and Skype records.”

“The all-seeing eye may be putting the chill not only on privacy and free speech but also on investigative national-security journalism and the public’s right to know. And this is not limited to the high-profile cases affecting big mainstream players like Fox News, the Associated Press or the New York Times, which have received most of the attention.”

“In May, with considerably less fanfare, Antiwar.com announced it was suing the FBI, demanding the release of records the editors believe the agency has been keeping on founder and managing editor Eric Garris and editorial editor Justin Raimondo. The suit stems from a 2004 memo a reader found through an unconnected FOIA request and passed along to Antiwar.com in 2011. The heavily redacted 94-page document clearly states the FBI had secretly investigated and monitored the website and declared—despite acknowledging there was no evidence of any crime—that further surveillance of Antiwar.com was necessary to determine if “[redaction] are engaging in, or have engaged in, activities which constitute a threat to national security on behalf of a foreign power.”

Full Report by Kelly Vlahos @ The American Conservative http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/antiwar-com-under-surveillance/

The American Conservative magazine reports that The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the Federal Bureau of Investigation on behalf of Antiwar.com, the well-known website devoted to opposing war and interventionism.

Daniel McCarthy writes that “…editors of Antiwar.com have known for some time that the FBI has had an eye on them. Naturally enough, they used the Freedom of Information Act to request bureau’s files on them and their organization—but the FBI hasn’t been forthcoming.”

The ACLU has sued to get the information that the FBI won’t provide voluntarily. Recent revealations of federal investigations of the Associated Press and Fox News provide a context for this lawsuit. Mr McCarthy writes that “Whereas the Justice Department’s investigations were meant to be in pursuit of national-security leaks, Antiwar.com seems to have been targeted based on nothing more than its name and mission: reporting critically on U.S. foreign policy.”

Full story from the American Conservative @ http://www.theamericanconservative.com/aclu-sues-the-fbi-on-antiwar-coms-behalf/