Flags lowered as Highlands Ranch GI killed in Afghanistan laid to rest

Across the state, flags flew at half staff by order of the governor to honor a Highlands Ranch man who died last week while serving in the National Guard in Afghanistan and was buried at Fort Logan National Cemetery in Denver on Friday. Sgt. Jonnie Stiles, 38, was killed on Nov. 13 when a bomb exploded near his vehicle during a patrol in Jalalabad.

CC prof: Meltdown puts ‘decisive constraints’ on Obama foreign policy

A Colorado College political science professor paints a grim picture of the economic crisis facing the Obama administration and the constraints it will put on any attempt to redirect foreign policy. In an interview published Wednesday on the Harper’s Magazine Web site, international politics expert David Hendrickson — who recently wrote “Cause for Depression,” a pictorial guide to the financial crisis — spoke to Ken Silverstein and offered some dire predictions and grim warnings.

Bye bye cowboy diplomacy

I would go listen to former Colorado Senator Gary Hart give a lecture on just about anything, even sea slugs, but I don’t think my editors would let me write about it. Luckily, today the Obama campaign hosted a “round table” with Hart and Congressman Ed Perlmutter on national security, a more palatable topic for a political column. Hart has become something of a well respected elder statesman and Perlmutter has quickly established himself as one of our delegations go-to guys on the issue, so you can imagine that as a former Military Legislative Assistant I really enjoyed this forum.

Read more of Jeff’s commentaries:
• My crystal ball: Obama ’08
• October surprose gets less surprising
• McCain hot foots it out of Michigan

‘Hot Winter’ of fighting expected in Afghanistan

Our Washington Independent colleague Spencer Ackerman is embedded with U.S. troops on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border through Sept. 19. We’ll reprint his dispatches from the field over the next eleven days.

KABUL, Afghanistan — Since Afghans took up arms against the Soviet occupation in 1979, insurgency in war-torn Afghanistan has followed a cyclical pattern. The spring and the summer are for fighting. The winter — which, particularly along the mountainous, porous eastern border with Pakistan, can feature six-foot snowbanks — is for regrouping. Until, perhaps, now.

YK: Iraq Vets Speak Truth to Power on the War

The implicit message from Sgt. Aaron Hughes’ superiors is to run down the children if they get in the way of the truck steaming from Kuwait to deliver supplies to war contractors in Iraq.

An impromptu YearlyKos panel was…