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Maggie Ybarra

Maggie Ybarra

mybarra@washingtontimes.com

Maggie Ybarra is a former military affairs and Pentagon correspondent for The Washington Times.

Articles by Maggie Ybarra

Young targets: Hospital security guards carried out the dead and wounded after the Taliban launched one of the most deadly terrorist attacks ever in Pakistan. Gunmen stormed an army-run school that teaches children in grades one through 10. (Associated Press)

Pakistan school massacre counters assertions Taliban crippled by U.S. drone strikes

Taliban militants killed 141 people — the vast majority of them children — in a sophisticated and brazen daylight attack on a military school in Peshawar that directly countered recent Pakistani government assertions that the terrorist group had been crippled by an ongoing military offensive and a series of U.S. drone strikes.

December 16, 2014
Afghan and foreign security forces inspect the site of a suicide attack in Kabul, Afghanistan, Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2014. A least four people were killed in a suicide attack in Kabul early Tuesday, the latest in a series of fatal blasts to hit the Afghan capital. In what appears to have been a complex attack, a small truck packed with explosives rammed the gate of a compound housing foreigners on the city's eastern outskirts soon after sunrise, said Interior Ministry spokesman Sediq Sediqqi. (AP Photo/Rahmat Gul)

Doubts about Afghanistan’s military on rise

A Taliban attack in Afghanistan's fortified capital Tuesday triggered fresh concerns about the ability of U.S.-trained Afghan security forces to secure Kabul as international combat troops withdraw from the war-torn nation.

November 18, 2014
A group of selected Marines representing Camp Pendleton listen as Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel answers their questions during his short visit to the base Tuesday Aug. 12, 2014. Hagel announced the deployment of another 130 U.S. troops to Iraq in remarks to Marines at this Southern California base on the final stop of a weeklong, around-the-world trip that also took him to India, Germany and Australia. (AP Photo/The Orange County Register, Paul Rodriguez)

Obama deploys 1,500 more U.S. troops to Iraq

President Obama is sending up to 1,500 more U.S. military personnel to Iraq to serve as non-combat advisers in the fight against Islamic State terrorists, the White House said Friday.

November 7, 2014
Organizers of Portland's Hempstalk Festival have been told they can't hold the 2015 event on city property. (Associated Press)

Marijuana presents dilemma for military as more states legalize

Two years after Colorado and Washington legalized marijuana for recreational use, the military community is struggling to reconcile the state laws with its outright ban while falling short of its own standards for drug testing in some areas where pot is now freely available.

November 6, 2014
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel speaks at the sixth annual "Washington Ideas Forum" in Washington, Wednesday, Oct. 29, 2014. Hagel has approved a recommendation by military leaders that all U.S. troops returning from Ebola response missions in West Africa be kept in supervised isolation for 21 days. The move goes beyond precautions recommended by the Obama administration for civilians, although President Barack Obama has made clear he feels the military's situation is different from that of civilians, in part because troops are not in West Africa by choice. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

Hagel OKs three-week quarantine for troops in Ebola fight

Going beyond the White House's recommendation for civilians, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel Wednesday approved a mandatory 21-day quarantine for all military members who return to U.S. military bases after participating in an anti-Ebola operation in West Africa.

October 29, 2014
An F-16 Fighting Falcon aircraft takes off for a night mission at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev., Oct. 30, 2012. (U.S. Air Force photo by Val Gempis) ** FILE **

Vladimir Putin emboldened by weak U.S. response to Russian aggression

Russian military provocations have increased so much over the seven months since Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine that Washington and its allies are scrambling defense assets on a nearly daily basis in response to air, sea and land incursions by Vladimir Putin's forces.

October 23, 2014
In this image made available by 331/332 Squadron of the Norwegian Air Force a Russian TU-95 Bear H flies over International waters off the coast of Norway on Friday Aug. 17, 2007. Eleven Russian military planes exercised West of Norway on Friday in the biggest show of Russian air power in the Norwegian Sea since the early 1990s, a military official said. The planes included strategic bombers, airborne early warning aircraft, fighter jets and refueling planes, said Brig. Gen. Ole Asak, chief of the Norwegian Joint Air Operations Center. (AP Photo by 331/332-Squadron of the Norwegian Air Force/Scanpix, HO) ** NORWAY OUT **

Russian spy plane encroaches on NATO-patrolled airspace

A Russian spy plane briefly entered NATO airspace Tuesday, the first reported incident of a Russian military aircraft encroaching on territory patrolled by the alliance since the Ukraine crisis began.

October 22, 2014
John F. Sopko, Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR), testifies on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, June 10, 2014, before the House Foreign Affairs subcommittee on the Middle East and North Africa hearing on Examining U.S. Reconstruction Efforts in Afghanistan. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak)

Afghanistan anti-corruption task force shuttered amid U.S. troop drawdown

The Pentagon this month will terminate a critical task force responsible for combating corruption in Afghanistan as it tries to reach President Obama's target force of 9,800 U.S. troops in the country — adding to concerns about oversight and accountability in a government rife with waste, fraud and abuse.

October 20, 2014