Category Archive

Just take a moment to digest this press briefing with WH spokesperson Dana Perino yesterday. A reporter asked whether the questioning of Abu Zubaydah was in line with “the interrogation program approved by President Bush.” Perino responded by saying, “All have been done within the legal framework that was set out after September 11th…. The entire program has been legal….", … Read More

Kevin Drum: Let me get this straight. The White House had been in the loop for two years. The CIA had received letters from both the Justice Department and congressional leaders arguing that the tapes shouldn’t be destroyed. The CIA’s top lawyer had been involved for the entire time. And yet we’re supposed to believe that, in 2005, a mid-ranking … Read More

We live in a banana republic: What defines such a republic? How about an executive that ignores the rule of law, commits war-crimes and then destroys the actual evidence? Today’s bombshell is that the CIA has done just that with respect to tapes  made recording the torture of enemy combatants. Read the whole story. We live in a country where … Read More

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

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

… 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

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

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

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?

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

…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