Adam Weinstein

Engagement Editor

I'm Mother Jones' engagement editor and Tumblrizer, specializing in explanatory journalism and new-media reporting. As a Navy vet and ex-Iraq contractor, I'm also committed to articulating all things martial—good, bad, and weird—to new audiences.

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Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' engagement editor, having previously served the magazine as its national security reporter and copy editor. Before that, he worked at the Wall Street Journal, the Village Voice, and the Tallahassee Democrat. He's written for the New York Times, New York magazine, GQ, and Newsweek. A Navy veteran, two-day Jeopardy champion and ex-political scientist, he also did a recession-fueled stint as a military contractor in Iraq. For more about Adam and his writing, click here.

A Reader's Guide to the Foreign Policy Debate

From Benghazi to bin Laden and beyond, here's everything you need to know for tonight's presidential showdown.

—By Adam Weinstein

| Mon Oct. 22, 2012 11:21 AM PDT

DonkeyHotey/Flickr

The last presidential debate of 2012, which is scheduled for Monday evening, is focused on America's big international concerns. Here's your topic-by-topic primer.

General Foreign Policy

Behind closed doors in that "47 percent" fundraiser caught on video, Mitt Romney said he hoped for an Obama foreign policy crisis to exploit in the election: "…in the Jimmy Carter election, the fact that we have hostages in Iran, I mean, that was all we talked about. And we had the two helicopters crash in the desert, I mean that was the focus, and so [Reagan] solving that made all the difference in the world…by the way, if something of that nature presents itself, I will work to find a way to take advantage of the opportunity."

[Read the full article]

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Charts: Meet Romney's Pork-Friendly Military Entourage

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Oct. 19, 2012 8:54 AM PDT

Wikimedia/Matthew Reichbach

Mitt Romney recently released the names of more than 300 retired senior military officers who have endorsed his candidacy for president. The list includes prominent fans of the Iraq War and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But what can we glean from the names more generally? A whole lot—and I've enlisted Mother Jones' crack data visualization team to help.

If you were to look at the composition of today's American military by branch, it would look like this:

This makes sense: The Army's got the most personnel—more than a million soldiers—and bears the heaviest burden in our overseas wars. But Romney's generals and admirals don't break down like this at all:

They include far fewer ground-war veterans—soldiers and Marines—and come predominantly from the Air Force and Navy. What could explain the disparity? Well, a lot of things. For one, the Navy has a lot of hidebound conservative-friendly hierarchical traditions. For another, the Air Force has long enjoyed a reputation as the most socially conservative of the services.

But beyond that, there could be another factor at play in the composition of Romney's military support: money. Here's another chart, showing the relative sizes of the budget each service got in fiscal 2012 for "procurement," i.e., how much they could spend on contractor-built toys like planes, ships, and weapons:

Check out the resemblance between the second and third pie charts: While Romney's military advisory council may not resemble the armed forces' overall composition, it closely mirrors how much each respective service spends to buy stuff.

Despite the fact that it's the largest branch of service by body count, the Army can't come close to the Navy and Air Force when it comes to big-ticket tech and coveted pork projects. After all, ships don't sail in deserts and soldiers don't fly jets. Retired flag officers are likelier than civilians to work as "Beltway bandits"—lobbyists and contractors trying to grab military cash for often-bloated and wasteful priorities—and ex-Air Force generals and ex-Navy admirals are the best folks to cajole Congress into buying a new behind-schedule fighter jet or bankrolling an extra Virginia-class submarine.

These monied veterans no doubt hear a nightingale's song when Romney complains about the size of the Navy, rails against the age of US military tanker aircraft, and pledges to spend 4 percent of GDP on defense (a move that could cost Americans another $2.1 trillion dollars). Just last week in a foreign policy speech carefully designed to boost his credibility as a possible commander in chief, Romney vowed that he would "restore our Navy to the size needed to fulfill our missions by building 15 ships per year." That's a nearly 70 percent boost over current shipbuilding levels—hardly the hallmark of a fiscal conservative.

It's unclear exactly what effect all these promises will have on national security, but one thing seems clear: They should keep defense contractors safe from attacks for the next four years.

Romney Enlists General Behind Iraq Debacle as Key Military Adviser

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Oct. 19, 2012 3:03 AM PDT

General Tommy Franks with Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld in 2003 Department of Defense

If you're a presidential candidate looking to establish your national security cred with a war-weary American public, who might be the worst frontman you could choose for your cause? How about the guy who oversaw the campaign that lost Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora, then bungled planning for war in Iraq? In a news release Wednesday night, Mitt Romney announced the 300-plus members of his "Military Advisory Council," and that man led the list of endorsements:

"I'm proud to be supporting Mitt Romney in this critical election about our nation’s future," said General Tommy Franks, USA (Ret.), Past Commander, U.S. Central Command. "Governor Romney is committed to restoring America's leadership role in the world. Instead of playing politics with our military, he will strengthen our defense posture by reversing the President's devastating defense cuts. The fact of the matter is that we cannot afford another four years of feckless foreign policy. We need level-headed leadership which will protect our interests and defend our values with clarity and without apology."

Few living Americans can speak with as much authority about "years of feckless foreign policy" as can Tommy "Rumsfeld's water boy" Franks, who comes in at No. 4 on a Foreign Policy list of worst US generals ever. As readers of our lie-by-lie Iraq timeline will recall, Franks oversaw CENTCOM from 2000 to 2003 and scripted the initial conduct of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Franks:

Deliberately concealed from the American public how in 2001, at Bush White House's request, he was planning an Iraq invasion—while we were still trying to topple the Taliban and find bin Laden in Afghanistan.

Lost track of bin Laden at Tora Bora in late 2001, then claimed he hadn't, then was proven wrong.

Perpetuated the bogus "weapons of mass destruction" myth about Iraq.

Ignored warnings from his CENTCOM predecessor that Iraq wouldn't be a walk in the park, and disregarded an earlier series of US war games, titled Desert Crossing, that predicted many of the difficulties of an Iraq occupation.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]

Romney Speech Raised Red Flags for Military School, Documents Show

When Romney's campaign pushed to politicize his appearance at Virginia Military Institute, the school's leaders pushed back.

—By Adam Weinstein

| Wed Oct. 17, 2012 3:03 AM PDT

Mitt Romney addresses approximately 200 cadets at Virginia Military Institute on Oct. 8. VMI

When Mitt Romney addressed a crowd of cadets at Virginia Military Institute on October 8, he was supposed to give a major foreign policy speech that steered clear of partisan politics. That's because VMI personnel observe the US military's tradition of political neutrality when in uniform. But internal emails obtained by Mother Jones show that Romney's campaign pushed to burnish his commander-in-chief credentials by maximizing military optics around the event. Members of Romney's staff sought to use the VMI logo in their campaign materials, requested that uniformed cadets be let out of class early to attend Romney's speech, and asked VMI "to select a few cadet veterans and give them a place of honor" standing behind Romney during his address.

As the campaign pushed for these requests, VMI officials pushed back, concerned that they were for partisan purposes. Each request was denied by the state-run institution, whose students serve in the US military's Reserve Officers Training Corps, so that VMI would not be seen as endorsing Romney's candidacy. The Romney campaign also pressured VMI to play host to "15 to 20" retired admirals and generals at the school who traveled there to endorse Romney; VMI eventually relented to that request.

[Read the full article]

Ryan and Romney's Small-Businesses "Malarkey," Explained

—By Adam Weinstein

| Fri Oct. 12, 2012 3:02 PM PDT

At last night's vice presidential debate, Paul Ryan repeated a persistent conservative saw about the Obama administration's plan to let Bush-era tax cuts expire for the rich. "Two-thirds of our jobs come from small businesses," he said. "This one tax would actually tax about 53 percent of small-business income." In the first presidential debate, Mitt Romney struck the same chord, saying that Obama's plan to make wealthy individuals pay Clinton-era taxes was in fact an attack on "the people who work in small business."

The rhetorical appeal is clear: Americans love small businesses. My dad runs one; I do, too. But Ryan and Romney aren't talking about my family, or really any of the mom-and-pops across the country. They're talking mainly about corporate bigwigs and investment firms hiding behind the same tax structures my dad and I use to start a nest egg. They're redefining hedge fund managers, Fortune 500 corporations, and multinational beer empires as small businesses. That's a load of malarkey—and it hits close to home for me.

How does the conservative argument work? Here's a history.

[Read more in the MoJo blog]