President Obama spent weeks in 2009 developing an Afghan battle plan that could win consensus from his senior generals. The centerpiece was a pledge to begin drawing down troops in July 2011. But it was never clear that Obama would be able to keep the consensus as that date approached. From the beginning, many in the Pentagon, including …
Mark Thompson
Welcome, Mark Thompson!
Swamplanders may have noticed a post from a new name this afternoon, TIME’s National Security correspondent extraordinaire Mark Thompson.
Mark is a Pulitzer Prize winner for his 1985 Fort Worth Star-Telegram five-part story about a design flaw in Bell helicopters that went uncorrected for a decade and claimed 250 lives during that …