After years of delay, the CIA declassified a raft of documents Monday, with lots of detail about the Bush Administration’s harsh treatment of detainees following the September 11 attacks. The biggest document, with the most new detail, is a 2004 report by the CIA Inspector General (CIA IG) that is highly critical of the CIA’s …
Uncategorized
The CIA Says Good Riddance
TIME’s Bobby Ghosh contributes this post:
Good riddance! That’s the response of many in Langley to President Obama’s plan to take the interrogation of terrorist suspects away from the CIA. that task will now fall to a new interagency interrogation team announced by the White House today. The High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, or …
One Possible Reason For A Special Prosecutor: The Jack Bauer Rogue
The Department of Justice has announced today that Attorney General Eric Holder will assign a prosecutor to investigate whether crimes were committed in the CIA interrogation of detainees during the Bush Administration. White House aides say that President Obama did not sign off on the decision. Press Secretary Robert Gibbs released this …
Swedish Meatball
Speaking of published garbage, the Swedish newspaper story about Israeli soldiers harvesting organs from Palestinians is the sort of demented nonsense that has reinforced 2000 years of anti-semitism. The “journalist” who wrote the piece apparently linked urban legends he’d been told by Palestinians in the 1990s…to–this is really …
Abortion And Health Reform: A Real Issue
A few weeks ago, President Obama gave a rather bizarre answer to Katie Couric, of CBS, who asked if he supported a government insurance option–a so-called “public plan”–that would cover abortions. Though he has previously said he wants the new public insurance option to cover abortion, Obama dodged the question this time.
As you know,
…
Obama’s Summer Reading
The President packed a whole stack of books to take with him to Martha’s Vineyard this week, according to deputy press secretary Bill Burton, who dutifully read off the list of titles at a briefing this morning:
- The Way Home, by George Pelecanos
- Hot, Flat, and Crowded, by Tom Friedman
- Lush Life, by Richard Price
- Plainsong, by
…
Afghan Results
The Telegraph is reporting that Hamid Karzai seems to have “won” the election with “72%” of the vote. If so, a fix will be claimed by his opponents, which may lead to more and greater confusion. But there also have been reports that Karzai wants to bring two of his main opponents–Abdullah Abdullah and Ashraf Ghani–back into the …
Heather Podesta: It Girl
Commonsense rule #1 for influence peddlers: Don’t flaunt it.
The poster child for what happens when you do is Michael Deaver, who posed in the back of a limo for this magazine’s cover in 1986. It didn’t have quite the effect he might have hoped:
“Who’s This Man Calling?” the headline asked, then answered: “Influence Peddling in
…
Op-Ed Pages and Lying
Here’s how it should work: I’m a columnist and I have a right to my opinions but, in the words of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, I don’t have a right to my own facts. And so every column I write is checked assiduously by Time Magazine researchers. Occasionally, we screw up. Left-wing readers still haven’t let me forget the mistake I made on a …
The Republican Party’s “No” Line On Health Care
It is easy to imagine Rahm Emanuel chuckling when he read the Republican Party’s new statement of principles for health care reform, which were released Monday. Like Democrats who decided in 2005 to oppose President George W. Bush’s Social Security reforms without offering any real constructive counter-proposal, the Republican Party, …
What Tom Ridge Actually Says In His New Book
In the summer of 2004, the Bush White House asked its Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge to add three sentences to his announcement of an elevated terror threat alert for key U.S. cities. According to his new book, The Test of Our Times, Ridge did as he was asked, adding the following lines to his speech:
But we must understand that
…
Afghanistan is not Anbar
The latest news coming out of Afghanistan is not good. There is likely to be a second round of voting in the presidential race, which will keep the government in flux and U.S. troops preoccupied for at least another month–and the results of any election will be questioned because of the semi-successful Taliban suppression of the vote in …
Ramadan Kareem
TIME’s Elizabeth Dias chimes in with this post:
With Ramadan’s new crescent moon poised to rise, President Obama extended Muslims his warmest wishes for a holy month of renewal–and his intent to renew America’s relationship with Muslims around the world. His media-savvy YouTube message indicates that real renewal requires listening …