The news on Friday that Blackwater Worldwide (now known as Xe Services) participated in clandestine CIA operations in Iraq and Afghanistan that included targeted killings, kidnapping and “extraordinary renditions” raised more questions than it answered.
After all, we already knew that the U.S. government has relied More…
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, one of the Obama administration’s most influential officials shaping Afghanistan-Pakistan policy, will give a talk on Monday at the American Enterprise Institute elaborating on President Obama’s speech and adjusted strategy. It’s hard not to read too much into this, but I’ll try More…
This weekend’s news that inmates at the part of the prison at the U.S. Air Base in Bagram, Afghanistan, run by Special Operations forces had suffered abuse sounded eerily reminiscent of the charges we’ve heard from previous prisoners victimized by interrogators at Guantanamo Bay. Joshua Partlow and Julie Tate at More…
Jeffrey Kaye at Truthout has a good piece today on the suicide — or murder? — of Yemeni Guantanamo Bay prisoner Mohammad Ahmed Abdullah Saleh al Hanashi in June. It’s a powerful reminder of why human rights advocates, as well as U.S. military leaders, think it’s important to close that More…
The Senate this afternoon defeated an amendment to an appropriations bill proposed by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.) that would have prevented the Pentagon from using funds to adapt or build any new facilities in the United States to house Guantanamo detainees. That would have included anyone charged, tried or More…
As former Vice President Dick Cheney and some Republican lawmakers continue to debate whether torture works and was a legitimate interrogation technique during the Bush administration, it’s almost jaw-dropping to read some of the memos that were written by the real experts on interrogation techniques in the U.S. government, warning More…
When I wrote my earlier post about the group of illustrious Americans urging the Obama administration to close Guantanamo and bring suspected terrorists to justice in U.S. federal courts, I neglected to mention that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), joined by Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jim More…
Great profile of Defense Secretary Robert Gates in the Christian Science Monitor. I’ve been writing for months now that Gates is the key swing vote in the Afghanistan debate within the Obama administration, and it’s good to see other reporters coming to a similar conclusion. But I particularly love this More…
Among other things in the Homeland Security appropriations bill President Obama signed into law yesterday is a provision that authorizes the Defense Department to continue to conceal photos of the torture and abuse of detainees by U.S. forces. The American Civil Liberties Union had More…
The National Defense Authorization Act, passed yesterday by the House of Representatives, includes a largely overlooked provision that modifies the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the government to try certain terror suspects — now called “unprivileged enemy belligerents” instead of the Bush-era term, “unlawful enemy combatants” More…
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