No Comment

I continue to think that Syria might yet offer a platform for some fairly modest foreign policy advances for the Obama Administration in the Middle East. But that’s far from…

Read more

The American political landscape is heavily populated with fake debates—hot-button issues designed to rile people up, but which are not likely to have any real impact on policy. One of…

Read more

Location: Center for American Progress, Washington, D.C. Event Date: February 11, 2010 Event Time: 5:30–7:30 p.m. Speakers: Matthew Alexander, Richard Cizik, Elizabeth MacKenzie Biedell, Morton H. Halperin, Scott Horton Navigating…

Read more

Rachid Mesli is the legal director of Alkarama, a Geneva-based organization that documents human rights abuses throughout the Arab world. After Ahmed Ali Al-Salami died at Guantánamo Naval Base in…

Read more

This segment from CBS’s The Agency dramatizes the crossed wires that result from “stovepiping” national security operations, in which undercover agents from multiple agencies work to identify potential terrorists:…

Read more

Three developments last week show the growing gap between the Obama Administration and its NATO allies with respect to the legacy of torture from the Bush era. They also demonstrate…

Read more

Non havea Febo ancora recato al mondo il dì ch’una donzella fuora del proprio albergo uscì. Sul pallidetto volto scorgease il suo dolor, spesso gli venia sciolto un gran sospir…

Read more

Io non posso negare che la fortuna e la milizia non fossero cagioni dell’imperio romano; ma e’ mi pare bene, che costoro non si avegghino, che, dove è buona milizia,…

Read more

In February 2004, David J. Evans, a marine biologist and photographer, was engaged as part of a team working on the Pentagon’s Legacy Program, which documents the cultural and environmental…

Read more

Secretary of Defense Gates’s detentions-policy advisors see Guantánamo as old policy. The all-new, streamlined detentions policy goes by the name of Bagram. Looking over the new policies, there’s no doubt…

Read more

In the United States, we’re all supposed to have forgotten that the narrative leading to the Iraq War was propelled by false facts and arguments, often in circumstances where the…

Read more

In December 2007, John Kiriakou, a former senior CIA operative, made a series of public comments about the agency’s use of Bush-era torture techniques. In one interview, he described in…

Read more

Stephen J. Rapp was a U.S. attorney in Iowa from 1999 to 2001. He served as a senior war crimes prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and then…

Read more

A democratically elected president was confronted with a severe terrorist challenge. The peace and stability of his nation were threatened by terrorists, he argued, and extraordinary measures were justified. He…

Read more

Last week, the Department of Justice’s Inspector General issued a new report (PDF) looking at the FBI’s improper use of Exigent Letters to unlawfully secure phone records—prominently in connection with…

Read more

Barbed wire enclosed an arbitrary spot Where bored officials lounged (one cracked a joke) And sentries sweated for the day was hot: A crowd of ordinary decent folk Watched from…

Read more

Do not depend on the hope of results. When you are doing the sort of work you have taken on, essentially an apostolic work, you may have to face the…

Read more

Former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen has a new mission: to convince the American electorate that we are less safe and secure today because Barack Obama won’t use the torture techniques,…

Read more

The shorter Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission: Held, 5-4: The guarantee of a “Republican form of Government” contained in Article IV of the Constitution must be construed to guarantee…

Read more

Citing the Seton Hall report on the June 9, 2006 deaths, as well as “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides,’” the St. Louis Post Dispatch assesses the situation perfectly and draws exactly the…

Read more

When a cover-up is exposed, nothing is more telling than the first reactions from those who are involved. Do they maintain their stories and face potentially aggravated consequences? Or do…

Read more

[For the full text of Scott Horton’s “The Guantánamo ‘Suicides,’ ” please visit http://harpers.org/archive/2010/03/the-guantanamo-suicides.]…

Read more

You know my friends, there comes a time when people get tired of being trampled by the iron feet of oppression… If we are wrong, the Supreme Court of this…

Read more

Watching the G.O.P. spin machine attack the Obama Administration over its decision to bring a group of serious terrorist leaders, led by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, to trial in New York,…

Read more

The New York Times calls the situation just the way it is: A federal judge in Washington, Ricardo Urbina, has provided another compelling argument against the outsourcing of war to…

Read more

This weekend we learned that Freya von Moltke died at the beginning of the year at her home in Norwich, Vermont. A lion of the resistance to Hitler and the…

Read more

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and the powerful, and to despise, or, at least, to neglect persons of poor and mean condition, though necessary both…

Read more

Judge Ricardo Urbina dismissed all charges against five former Blackwater employees stemming from the September 2007 killing of seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad’s Nisoor Square. I discuss the decision with…

Read more