Good NY Times review of two new books: DEAD CERTAIN: The Presidency of George W. Bush, by Robert Draper and THE TERROR PRESIDENCY: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration by Jack Goldsmith. The first book, "Dead Certain" is probably the more interesting in that the author, Robert Draper, had a lot of access to President Bush and his aides, … Read More
Flashback: DOJ Official Undertook Waterboarding, Thought It Was Torture, And Got Fired
From ABC News: A senior Justice Department official, charged with reworking the administration’s legal position on torture in 2004 became so concerned about the controversial interrogation technique of waterboarding that he decided to experience it firsthand, sources told ABC News. Daniel Levin, then acting assistant attorney general, went to a military base near Washington and underwent the procedure to inform … Read More
On Mukasey
Look, I know I have biased political views, but I like to think I can at least understand both sides of any debate, even if I agree with only one side. But I just don’t understand how there can be any doubt on this very simple question: Is waterboarding torture? You can engage me in a debate about whether the … Read More
Not To Military-Bash…
… but I don’t have a lot of confidence in our military sometimes. First, there was the incident in late August when a B-52 flew over America accidentally carrying nuclear warheads in what has been described as "one of the worst known breaches of nuclear weapons handling procedures in decades." "Yeah", you may say. "But it’s not like those warheads … Read More
Hell No They Won’t Go
Can the State Department force its employees to go to Iraq? Uneasy U.S. diplomats yesterday challenged senior State Department officials in unusually blunt terms over a decision to order some of them to serve at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad or risk losing their jobs. At a town hall meeting in the department’s main auditorium attended by hundreds of Foreign … Read More
Investigations Into Blackwater
A TPM tally: * The Nisour Square shootings: An Iraqi investigation concluded that the Blackwater guards were not under attack when they opened fire. As a result, the Iraqis asked the State Department to pull Blackwater out of Iraq. The FBI is leading the most active American-led investigation of the shootings. The FBI investigation superseded a preliminary State Department investigation … Read More
Training The Iraqi Army
Methinks we have a ways to go. Yes, that’s an actual clip of American troops leading Iraqi troops in jumping jacks.
Krugman: On Fearmongering
From the NYTimes: For one thing, there isn’t actually any such thing as Islamofascism — it’s not an ideology; it’s a figment of the neocon imagination. The term came into vogue only because it was a way for Iraq hawks to gloss over the awkward transition from pursuing Osama bin Laden, who attacked America, to Saddam Hussein, who didn’t. And … Read More
California Boy Is Al Qaeda, Apparently
Fox News and conservative blogs have been falling all over themselves trying to — forgive the pun — fan the flames of fear by suggesting that the California wildfires were intentionally set by (cue dramatic music) al Qaeda. Read here and here and here and here and here and… all these. While evidence suggested arson, nothing other than paranoia suggested … Read More
Bush: A Case Study In “How He Works”
April 2006 — a question to the President from a student at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies: Student: "I was hoping your answer might be a little more specific. (Laughter.) Mr. Rumsfeld answered that Iraq has its own domestic laws which he assumed applied to those private military contractors. However, Iraq is clearly not currently capable of … Read More
Suburban Housewife Counterterrorist Does What The FBI Can’t
Interesting story in Wired about a woman in Montana who spends her free time infiltrating Jihadist online chats: Rossmiller developed her remarkable talent for chatting up terrorists after September 11, when she started going into online forums and cajoling valuable information from other visitors. She has passed along numerous case files to federal authorities. Her information has led US forces … Read More
Nose. Face. Spite.
Pennsylvania won’t release its list of polling places to the public. The reason? So that terrorists won’t disrupt the election process. I’m just spitballin’ here, but keeping the polling places a secret from the public? Won’t that disrupt the election process?
War vs. Children’s Health
A day after the White House through Dana Perino said they weren’t concerned about the newest CBO estimates that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars will cost the treasury over $2 trillion dollars, Perino this morning says that Bush will veto the newest SCHIP bill coming from Congress this week. The reason? Because Congress hasn’t justified why $35 billion more over … Read More
Over 750,000 Names On Terrorist Watch List
Wired reports on a GAO Report (full version, summary) that says the nation’s centralized watch list has grown to include 755,000 names suspected of having terrorist ties, resulting in nearly 20,000 positive matches of persons against the list in 2006, according to a new report from Congress’s investigative reporting arm. Since the list is now used in nearly all routine … Read More
Maybe If Bush’s DOJ Didn’t Spend Time Trying To Prosecute Democrats….
…they might be as good as Clinton was at convicting terrorists. The New York Times reports, "From 1993 to 2001, prosecutors in Manhattan convicted some three dozen terrorists through guilty pleas and in six major trials." But since "the Sept. 11 attacks, the government’s track record has been decidedly spottier, and its failure to obtain a single conviction on Monday … Read More