Filmmaker Michael Jorgensen has charted a remarkable journey with Vietnam vet Tom Faunce in the documentary "Unclaimed," which aims to reconnect a U.S. Vietnam war vet, reported dead in 1968, with his American family.

The man, whom Faunce believes to be Special Forces Green Beret Master Sgt. John Hartley Robertson, remembers only that his helicopter was shot down in Laos in 1968 and that he had a wife and children in Alabama. Though presumed dead by Americans, the man says that he survived a year of torture in Vietnam and then married the nurse who cared for him.

From the Toronto Star:

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Syukri says he now suffers from short-term memory loss, pointing to a zigzag scar beneath a shock of thick, black hair.

“I didn’t feel anything,” he said, recalling the lengthy interrogations. “It felt like I was already dead.”

His story is one of thousands involving kidnap, torture, rape and murder at the hands of the Indonesian military, which some victims here say was aided by US oil giant ExxonMobil.

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"Look, I don't know if you know this," says Stewart, "but we've moved on from that Patton thing. War is a little more modern, now."

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To answer this question, one obvious place to start is school textbooks. I looked at several of them, and was happily surprised. The books present a fairly complex and balanced view of the war in Iraq, avoiding the falsehoods and sugarcoating that has so often marred American history instruction. But textbooks only tell part of the story.

Just as important is what is actually emphasized in the classrooms, and the ability of teachers to engage in real inquiry. Unfortunately, a combination of school policies and judicial decisions have made it so that many kids learn little or nothing about what we have done in Iraq, or why we have done it.

I’m a professor of education and history, and wrote a book examining conflicts over history in American public schools. But for me, this probe is more than theoretical: My daughter is an 11th grader in a suburban public high school, where she takes Advanced Placement U.S. History.

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Bowen admits that the amount of "outright" waste probably far tops the $8 billion estimate. As Ackerman notes:

We couldn’t look at every project — that’s impossible — but our audits show a lack of accountability,” Bowen says. “We are not well structured to carry out stability and reconstruction operations.” That isn’t nearly the whole story of the Iraq War’s expense. Bowen is only looking at reconstruction money, not the cost of military operations in Iraq, which totaled over $800 billion.

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CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — The very phrase “world peace” has become something of a synonym for naiveté. Yet in recent years, compelling evidence has emerged to suggest that at least one important aspect of world peace, the absence or rarity of war between countries, may in fact be close to a reality.

Scholarly work on what might be called the “decline-in-violence” phenomenon emerged following the conclusion of a surprisingly peaceful Cold War, but it has lately drawn greater popular and scholarly attention.

In a world replete with dangers, the decline-in-violence proposition is often treated with skepticism. But it is time for the international security community to think seriously about preparing for a durable world peace instead of the constant threat of world war.

To be clear, we cannot expect a violence-free world any time soon. Instead, the data suggest that certain kinds of violence, most notably inter-state warfare such as the two world wars, are becoming less common even as other forms of conflict increase.

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Before our newfound popularity, most of our followers came from photography and NGO circles; most of our “likers” and “commenters” were people I knew or knew of. They commented with things like “great portrait,” shared their own African memory, or remarked on technical aspects of the pictures. Now, our followers are complete strangers of a demographic I can only guess at, with handles like “bieber_fever_2000” and “cuteeeelinda91.” The comments now have words (if we can call them that) like “OMG” and “adorbs.”

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You can be sure of one other thing: Hagel’s military service in Vietnam will be mentioned -- and praised. It’s likely, however, to be in a separate and distinct category, unrelated to the pointed questions about current issues like defense priorities, his beliefs on the use of force abroad, or the Defense Department’s role in counterterrorism operations. You can also be sure of this: no senator will ask Chuck Hagel about his presence during the machine-gunning of an orphanage in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta or the lessons he might have drawn from that incident.

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A round up featuring the very best of the very worst.

Heather Mac Donald of the National Review

The Pentagon must think we are done fighting "real wars." Why else would they let women play army?

We have apparently arrived at the Golden Age, free from strife and the threat of foreign enemies. Little else can explain so gratuitous a decision as to place women in combat units.

And there will be so much military sex happening! (As we know, things are uncomfortable enough with the gays hanging around.)

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"He doesn’t have the brain to know there is a war here,” the spokesman told the Guardian in response to questions about comments from Capt. Wales' (Harry's military title).

Harry admitted publicly to killing people while he was a co-pilot in an Apache helicopter and, somewhat callously, chalked his skills up to practice with video games. "It’s a joy for me because I’m one of those people who loves playing PlayStation and Xbox, so with my thumbs I like to think I’m probably quite useful," he said.

“I think he has a mental problem; that’s why he is saying it is a game,” the Mujahid said, expressing disbelief that the prince had engaged in real warfare. “I don’t believe that he participated in the fighting,” said the spokesman. “Maybe he has seen the mujahideen in a movie, but that’s it.”

The prince's comments were made during a recently completed 20-week deployment as a gunner in a British Apache helicopter:

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In Washington, it is widely assumed that a showdown with Iran over its nuclear ambitions will be the first major crisis to engulf the next secretary of defense -- whether it be former Senator Chuck Hagel, as President Obama desires, or someone else if he fails to win Senate confirmation.  With few signs of an imminent breakthrough in talks aimed at peacefully resolving the Iranian nuclear issue, many analysts believe that military action -- if not by Israel, than by the United States -- could be on this year’s agenda.

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It has been well-established in reports (like those from the Washington Post's Greg Miller) that the Obama administration has set up a national security apparatus ensuring, contra the president's words Monday, a perpetual war. Obama's speech may have been referring to the withdrawal of troops form Iraq or the winding down of U.S. military leadership in Afghanistan, but an increasingly militarized CIA and the perpetuation of shadow wars in Yemen and Somalia, to name just two, let alone the U.S. funds and arms sent around the world to bolster or undermine regimes as U.S. interests dictate, make talk of ending war a semantic gamble at best.

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Added to the site in 2007, the so-called Bicholim Conflict of 1640-41 was a fictitious war between the Portuguese rulers of Goa and India's imperial Maratha empire. The fabricated entry was uncovered by another user in December. "After careful consideration and some research, I have come to the conclusion that this article is a hoax — a clever and elaborate hoax," wrote user "ShelfSkewed."

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In a one-hour speech to the nation in which he appeared confident and relaxed, Assad ignored international demands for him to step down and said he is ready to hold a dialogue but only with those "who have not betrayed Syria." He offered a national reconciliation conference, elections and a new constitution but demanded regional and Western countries stop funding and arming rebels trying to overthrow him first.

The proposal, however, is unlikely to win acceptance from Syria's opposition forces, including rebels on the ground, who have repeatedly said they will accept nothing less than the president's departure, dismissing any kind of settlement that leaves him in the picture. On top of that, Assad's new initiative is reminiscent of symbolic changes and concessions that his government made earlier in the uprising, which were rejected at the time as too little too late.

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The AP count is the same as the Defense Department’s tally, last updated Wednesday at 10 a.m. EST.

At least 1,703 military service members have died in Afghanistan as a result of hostile action, according to the military’s numbers.

Outside of Afghanistan, the department reports at least 119 more members of the U.S. military died in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Of those, 11 were the result of hostile action.

The AP count of total OEF casualties outside of Afghanistan is four more than the department’s tally.

The Defense Department also counts three military civilian deaths.

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Will a reelected Obama simply hold down the fort, protecting the domestic achievements of his first term and working to block the excesses of an activist Republican Congress? Or will he be in Grand Bargain legacy-establishing mode, desperate to cut bipartisan deals on as many issues as possible? If his foreign anti-terror campaigns are shown to be inspiring the sorts of attitudes that cause people to become terrorists in the first place will he reconsider his strategy or will we continue to act as though we can kill each terrorist (and only each terrorist) in the world one by one until there aren't any anymore? Will Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton finally switch jobs?

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Wired notes some particularly vague "Risk Factors for Radicalization" among soldiers:

“Youth,” which might be a difficult thing to mitigate against, unless the military wants to take former Pentagon official Rosa Brooks’ unorthodox recruitment advice. “Social Networks” is another, and it’s probably alarmingly coterminous with Youth. Still others: “Emotional Vulnerability,” “Personal Connection to a Grievance” and “Conflict at Work or at Home.”

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Hobsbawm's ideas will long survive him, especially through his major works, "The Age of Revolution," "The Age of Capital," "The Age of Empire," "History of the 20th Century," "The Age of Extremes," which has been translated into 40 languages since its 1994 publication. Despite shifting trends in the academy, Hobsbawm stuck by his Marxist guns throughout. Here are a few of his thoughts on war, capital and nationhood:

On war and capitalism:

"War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernization and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable. What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy when left to itself." (The Observer Review, 1968.)

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The toll has climbed steadily in recent months with a spate of attacks by Afghan army and police — supposed allies — against American and NATO troops. That has raised troubling questions about whether countries in the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan will achieve their aim of helping the government in Kabul and its forces stand on their own after most foreign troops depart in little more than two years.

On Sunday, a U.S. official confirmed the latest death, saying that an international service member killed in an apparent insider attack by Afghan forces in the east of the country late Saturday was American. A civilian contractor with NATO and at least two Afghan soldiers also died in the attack, according to a coalition statement and Afghan provincial officials. The U.S. official spoke on condition of anonymity because the nationality of those killed had not been formally released. Names of the dead are usually released after their families or next-of-kin are notified, a process that can take several days. The nationality of the civilian was also not disclosed.

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