Is that your opening negotiation position, Mullah Omar?
From the BBC:
Taleban leader Mullah Omar has denied there are any talks under way to end the insurgency in Afghanistan, a statement from the organisation says.
He rejected reports he had written to the king of Saudi Arabia
Both of them are from an Agence France-Press write-up of an interview with Secretary of State and worst-national-security-adviser-of-all-time Condoleezza Rice. First:
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice acknowledged Monday that the Bush administration fell short of goals it had set for itself but maintained that history would prove it
In the interest of keeping you updated on the strange case of two detainees dying Dec. 18 in a Zabul Province prison — it’s unclear whether they were in the custody of U.S. troops or Afghan police — here’s a response I received early this morning from a spokesman More…
Remember about a month ago, when President-elect Barack Obama announced his foreign policy team, and it looked as if there was going to be a shift of emphasis from the military to the civilian agencies of government, in terms of money, attention and influence? Secretary of State-designee Hillary Rodham More…
After receiving a confusing press release about two detainees who died in mysterious circumstances in Afghanistan on Dec. 18, I emailed the U.S. military command there to ask about it, and received the following response:
Spencer,
We have read your query and provide the following response:
The five detainees were
My friend Jeff Stein at CQ asks:
I’ve got an idea: Why not get the Saudis to pony up, say, 20-30,000 troops for Afghanistan, about the same number that Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs, said Sunday might be added to the 30,000 we already have there?
Something that really shouldn’t be ignored in any debate about honoring the Status of Forces Agreement between the U.S. and Iraq: some of its most basic terms are tremendously unclear. F’r instance: in a war without a front line, what’s the difference between a combat troop and an adviser?
The Pentagon just announced one of the brigades it plans to send to Afghanistan next year. The 82nd Combat Airborne Brigade of the 82nd Airborne Division out of Ft. Bragg, N.C. is slated to deploy around 2800 additional soldiers to an as-yet-unannounced (as far as I’m aware) location in More…
So Dick Cheney takes to Fox News and reiterates the administration’s longstanding claim that the leaders of Congress knew all about the illegal surveillance and torture programs.
Just got off a conference call with Caroline Fredrickson, the director of the ACLU’s Washington office. Fredrickson and a number of civil-libertarian and national-security colleagues met yesterday with members of the Obama transition’s Justice and Pentagon agency review teams to discuss the modalities of closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. More…
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