It occurs to me that we cannot even really have a Pentagon Papers event in this country anymore. Sure, Wikileaks releases gained a decent amount of attention, but the real evidence for this comes in the past week. Lt. Colonel Daniel Davis wrote an 84-page report detailing his experiences in Afghanistan, which are at odds with the official narrative. Much like the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam, Davis’ report claims that the top military brass has been lying to the public about the state of the war.

Some US contractors are getting a lesson in the new Iraq. The Iraqi government has detained hundreds of contractors, including some who work for the State Department at the US embassy, on a variety of charges. For some reason security contractors aren’t popular there.

The release of Fazl and other Taliban may just be a Hail Mary pass, however. Talks have been suspended at the request of Hamid Karzai, the Afghan President. Though asking for a prisoner release previously , Karzai doesn’t favor it now. We may get the establishment of a Taliban office in a neutral third country, with talks continuing there on a reconciliation. But Karzai stopped the talks when he found out that the US was negotiating directly with Taliban officers to use Qatar as the third country, recalling the Afghan ambassador there.

The row between Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and Vice President Tareq al-Hashemi has grown. Maliki issued a warrant for Hashemi’s arrest on terrorism charges, accusing him of operating pro-Sunni death squads. Hashemi denied the charges, and his supporters compared Maliki’s actions to that of Saddam Hussein. Maliki is now ordering a handover of Hashemi, who has fled to the Kurdistan region.

The war ended in Iraq last night, and within moments, it seems, chaos has reigned in the Iraqi Parliament. But while this is almost sure to be used as evidence that the military should never have left Iraq, the events here would have played out at some point, in absence of perpetual occupation.

In a ceremony known as “Casing the Colors,” the US military formally ended their mission in Iraq, with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on hand to make things official. The location of the ceremony gives away exactly how this war is ending, and it doesn’t read “triumphantly.”

Joe Biden wrapped up his two-day trip to Iraq today, promoting a new phase in US-Iraqi relations. But that phase, contrary to popular myth, will include US military troops on the ground throughout the country.

We knew that Joe Biden was scheduled to visit Turkey and Greece this week, but while he was in the region, he swung over to Iraq, apparently to renew discussions about a “continued American presence in the country.”

This needless drive to place little army men around the globe like it’s a Risk board, regardless of the expense, only serves a purpose for the little megalomaniacs in the Pentagon who think we have to stretch our military might everywhere. For the rest of us, it just flushes our tax dollars down the drain.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta suggested that with the draw down of US forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the US can now deploy more military resources to confront the Chinese military buildup. Because we really need another land war in Asia.