Top Stories Boston

Archive for the ‘Al Qaeda’ Category

On the front lines of Obama's campaign in Afghanistan
Major Jim Contreras was awaiting his marching orders. Literally.

Major Jim Contreras was awaiting his marching orders. Literally. Stuck in Lashkar Gah, the capital of the Afghan province of Helmand, he was supposed to take his troops, along with a unit of an elite Afghan police force known as ANCOP, to secure the area around Nawa, so the people there could vote. It was part of the past year's biggest US offensive against the Taliban. But he couldn't leave, because his Afghan counterparts hadn't gotten their official order from the Ministry of Interior. The order had been signed five days earlier, but it had to be delivered to the commander, Colonel Gulam Sakhi Gahfori, by courier, with its seal intact. Then again, Colonel Sakhi had also not gotten basic supplies like fuel, ammunition, and radios. Contreras and Sakhi spent a fair amount of time discussing how the Afghans were to refuel at Nawa. Nobody knew if there were any gas stations there.

Contreras is a small man with a big grin who served in Bosnia, Haiti, and the first Gulf War. He was excited about his work in Afghanistan. He believed he was fighting to protect the American way of life. His wife had been working near the Pentagon when it was hit on 9/11. "This is in its infancy," he said. "We're beginning to see the military might that we as a nation can bring."

Read more

Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.

WHAT MAKES NICK TICK? Flynn’s memoir, unflinchingly honest, takes a hard look at the dark and dangerous world.

In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.

My first child will be born in January, I told Amir. A girl. He narrowed his eyes and smiled, as if I had just come into focus.

You don’t realize it, but you know who “Amir” (not his real name) is. Or at least, almost certainly, you’ve seen a photograph of him. He’s the man — naked, cowering, his face a twisted mask of pain — being dragged on a leash across the concrete floor of Abu Ghraib prison by US Army Private Lynndie England. In the moments just before and after that photo was taken, his face was rubbed into a puddle of urine and he was sodomized with a broom.

Flynn met Amir in Istanbul, in 2007, interviewing him in a hotel room, alongside lawyers and human-rights workers. He was drawn there, despite the considerable travel expense — and the fact that his partner was pregnant with their first child — by a powerful, almost primal urge to meet and speak with the men abused at that infamous Iraqi jail.

The journey to Turkey, Flynn — who reads at Berklee’s Café 939 on Wednesday — tells the Phoenix, was “about my own wrestling . . . breaking down my own unacknowledged stereotypes.” And, he says of his interview, he was “surprised that I was surprised” to find that “sitting across from this man and hearing him talk in this way that was measured and reasonable, and even humorous at times” provided “much more of a human interaction than I’d anticipated.”

Read more

Obsessed with the wrongs of Abu Ghraib, local author Nick Flynn traveled across the globe to meet its victims
In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.

WHAT MAKES NICK TICK? Flynn’s memoir, unflinchingly honest, takes a hard look at the dark and dangerous world.

In his powerful new memoir, The Ticking Is the Bomb (W.W. Norton), Scituate native Nick Flynn recounts a conversation he had with a man in Turkey.

My first child will be born in January, I told Amir. A girl. He narrowed his eyes and smiled, as if I had just come into focus.

You don't realize it, but you know who "Amir" (not his real name) is. Or at least, almost certainly, you've seen a photograph of him. He's the man — naked, cowering, his face a twisted mask of pain — being dragged on a leash across the concrete floor of Abu Ghraib prison by US Army Private Lynndie England. In the moments just before and after that photo was taken, his face was rubbed into a puddle of urine and he was sodomized with a broom.

Flynn met Amir in Istanbul, in 2007, interviewing him in a hotel room, alongside lawyers and human-rights workers. He was drawn there, despite the considerable travel expense — and the fact that his partner was pregnant with their first child — by a powerful, almost primal urge to meet and speak with the men abused at that infamous Iraqi jail.

The journey to Turkey, Flynn — who reads at Berklee's Café 939 on Wednesday — tells the Phoenix, was "about my own wrestling . . . breaking down my own unacknowledged stereotypes." And, he says of his interview, he was "surprised that I was surprised" to find that "sitting across from this man and hearing him talk in this way that was measured and reasonable, and even humorous at times" provided "much more of a human interaction than I'd anticipated."

Read more