I felt like they were experimenting and trying out techniques to be used later on other people. — Abu Zubaydah to the Red Cross Physicians for Human Rights just released a report documenting what Jeff Kaye and more recently Jason Leopold have been discussing for years: America’s torturers were conducting a kind of human experimentation [...]

As I’ve said before, one of the best ways to see the absurd nature of the relationship between our government and BP as they partner to try to fix BP’s disaster is to remember that fifty-some years ago, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected government of Iran because it had nationalized BP’s facilities. I invite [...]

I linked to this Jeremy Scahill post already, but I wanted to point out a few things about Scahill’s elaboration on the WaPo’s covert ops story of the other day. First, Scahill provides a list of locations where Obama’s expanded special operations war has deployed: The Nation has learned from well-placed special operations sources that [...]

Obama has suddenly announced his determination to have an empathy fest with the family and friends of the deceased victims of the criminally negligent BP Deepwater Horizon disaster. they deserve much better, and more, than that.

A couple of interesting, tangentially related things happened today. First, in a bid to wall off the PR disaster of the Gulf spill from the rest of the company, BP has assigned someone–an American BP employee–to take charge of cleanup efforts. BP is to hive off its Gulf of Mexico oil spill operation to a [...]

BabyDick has struck again, this time in criticizing Obama’s response to the Israeli attack on a humanitarian flotilla–as well as the killing of an American citizen. Liz Cheney is basically arguing Obama must stand with Israel even when it kills American citizens or it stands with the “Turkish-Syrian-Iranian axis.” Yesterday, President Obama said the Israeli [...]

I think there’s more to America’s defense of Israel’s attack on the Free Gaza flotilla than simply more blind support for Israel. By defending Israel’s attack, members of the US elite are also defending a problematic legal stance–one that the US has adopted in its own counterterrorist efforts. Let’s start with this premise: the only [...]

The WaPo has an important story today–apparently following up on the NYT’s JUnc-WTF story from last week–describing the way Obama has expanded the scope of the use of special operations forces. Some key details are: Obama has deployed JSOC in 15 new countries since taking over as President, for a total of 75 JSOC has [...]

Onscreen, Ed Koch’s stupidest statement in this interview was when he responded to Jeremy Scahill’s question about how a goat or a horse or a children’s toy would be used as rocket to hit Israel by saying only, “that’s nonsense.” Or maybe when Koch said, in response to Scahill’s question whether Hamas’ refusal to recognize [...]

After the Israelis attacked a flotilla carrying humanitarian aid the other night, and particularly after the US quietly stated it would wait to learn all the details of the attack, I knew the US and Israel would claim to have had intelligence about the flotilla that would somehow “justify” violations of international law. Sure enough, [...]