Osama bin Laden is dead and gone. Republicans and Democrats this week came together to rejoice and pass resolutions praising U.S. troops and the intelligence community. Even Donald Trump called a truce. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, Congress and the country remained unified for months – some might argue for years. In the [...]
More Bush administration officials associated with the program of compliance-inducing “enhanced interrogation techniques” are coming out of the woodwork to claim a measure of credit for Osama bin Laden’s death.
Pakistani ambassador denies complicity, chalks missing bin Laden up to “incompetence” or “overconfidence.” Panetta thinks if it wasn’t incompetence, it had to be complicity. Qualified defense of Pakistan begins on the Hill.
A former head of counterterrorism at the CIA, who was investigated last year by the Justice Department for the destruction of videos showing senior al-Qaeda officials being interrogated, says the harsh questioning of terrorism suspects produced the information that eventually led to Osama bin Laden’s death. Jose Rodriguez ran the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center from 2002 [...]
A senior U.S. military official Monday credited President Obama for having a prominent role in pushing and shaping the plan to get Osama bin Laden. “In the final weeks and really months of this, his personal interest and direction and attention pushed the case to a new level that enabled real action,” the official told [...]
The answers that came at the end of the decade-long manhunt for Osama bin Laden have unleashed almost as many questions of their own. Two in particular are likely to take center stage on Capitol Hill in the coming weeks.
So now that Osama bin Laden has gone on to his just desserts, what impact — if any — will his demise have on the war in Afghanistan next door? The military answer: none. The political answer: accelerate that troop pullout. Continue reading at Battleland.
–Putative Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney, commenting on the political implications of Osama bin Laden’s death.
I thought this column by Charles Krauthammer was a lazy piece of work last Friday, with “Bomber Boy”–as George W. Bush called him–flaying his dead horse of unipolarity:
The chain of clues that led to the Abbottabad compound where Osama bin Laden was killed by U.S. special forces early Monday began with human intelligence. Senior administration officials have said key members of bin Laden’s inner-circle were flagged by post-9/11 detainees under interrogation, and that has raised an inescapable question: Did the chain begin [...]
