Information activist Julian Assange shocked his fans and gave more grist to his haters last week by announcing he would flee Swedish extradition orders to seek asylum from the South American nation of Ecuador.

Army Pfc. Bradley Manning — the man accused of blowing a whistle so loud it’s still reverberating through the world two years after the fact — will return before a judge for his court-martial proceedings this month.

“Dismounted complex blast injuries” caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) in Afghanistan are felling our soldiers and Marines so frequently today that men are routinely banking their sperm as another item on the checklist before they deploy for the war.

Former Army medic Robert Tesh remembers the moment he really began to mistrust the system. It was when he carried the funeral coffin for Sgt. Michael Ingram, who died on April 17, 2010 from an IED blast in Kandahar, Afghanistan. Tesh says his view of the war, and of the government that wages it, was never the same.

(This article originally appeared in The American Conservative--AK.) <span style="color: #000000; font-family: arial, helvetica, sans-serif; line-height

Nearly two years ago on Feb. 8, 2010, Rep. Jack Murtha, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, who was also a Marine Corps Vietnam Veteran, died of complications from gall bladder surgery.

This is the third profile in an occasional series about individuals taking on the Goliaths of war from inside the belly of the beast — Washington, D.C.

The year 2011 marked a critical confluence of militarism and revolution, not only in places like Libya and Egypt, but also here at home, where massive demonstrations in cities and towns throughout the country were met with a well-oiled law enforcement machine deployed in camouflage and Kevlar, lobbing tear gas grenades and packing rifles with rubber bullets.

How many times have we heard that the United States cannot abandon Afghanistan to the mercy of armed militias and thugs like we did in 1989?

So, why, pray tell, are we doing it?