Baltimore Sun’s Loss, Politics Daily’s Gain
SWJ has been a long time fan of the reporting and analysis of David Wood, most recently of the Baltimore Sun. Via Politico:
Seasoned military writer David Wood, who left the Baltimore Sun during the paper’s massive layoffs in April, has joined AOL’s new site, Politics Daily…
Previous to working at the Sun, Wood has covered national security and reported extensively overseas for Time Magazine and the Los Angeles Times. A Pulitzer-finalist, Wood won the Headliner Award for his Iraq coverage last year…
Via The Baltimore Sun and The Morning Call:
Wood has accompanied US troops in the field many times, both on domestic and overseas training maneuvers and in Desert Storm, the Persian Gulf tanker war, the operations in Panama, Somalia and Haiti, peacekeeping missions in the Balkans and combat operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He was embedded with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit in Somalia and the 10th Mountain and 101st Airborne Division units for Operation Anaconda in Afghanistan. In four trips to Iraq he has embedded with numerous units including the 2d Armored Cavalry Regiment’s 2nd Squadron in East Baghdad, the 1st Battalion, 2nd Marines in al-Anbar and the 386th Air Expeditionary Wing.
With that – here’s David’s inaugural post at Politics Daily – Moving Target: The Pitfalls Facing US Air Power in Afghanistan.
… In Iraq, the war against insurgents was largely fought on city streets, by infantrymen, and the role of air power was limited. In Afghanistan, there are fewer US troops and a lot more territory to cover — perfect conditions, it would seem, in which to use America’s formidable power to strike from the air. But it is more difficult than it seems.
This is bad news for the US war effort in Afghanistan. It’s not something easy to fix, like tweaking strategy, inventing a new target sensor, or selecting a 250-pound bomb instead of the 2,000-pounder. The problem is that the United States doesn’t know who, exactly, it is fighting in Afghanistan, and it doesn’t know where they are…
Much more at Politics Daily.