Robert Chesney had an interesting observation about the inter-agency group Dafna Linzer reports is working on some kind of statement with regards to Congress’ restrictions on Obama’s ability to move detainees from Gitmo to the US: the apparent non-participation of DOD in the group. Second, and perhaps relatedly, note that the story also describes the interagency [...]

I chuckled to myself when I read Steven Aftergood’s post on our efforts to instill rule of law in Afghanistan. Not that I don’t support the goal, mind you. But I question whether the United States is in a position anymore to be teaching others about rule of law. Consider this quote from the DOD [...]

We’ve discussed US negotiations with Europe over the SWIFT database at length here. Basically, after the Lisbon Treaty went into effect last year, the EU Parliament balked at giving Americans free run of the SWIFT database. The EU and US put an interim agreement in place. Which the EU Parliament then overturned in February. The [...]

Barack Obama is in Korea lecturing Americans to suck it up and embrace the catfood at the same time Biden was left to represent the WH at the Arlington National Cemetery ceremony to honor America’s Veterans; all so Obama could sell out American labor via a Korean free trade agreement. Dumbest politics ever.

One more boy got dragged into the horror of our country’s war on terror today: Tanner Speer, the 8 or 9 year old son of Christopher Speer, whose death Omar Khadr confessed to. Tanner’s mother read a note the boy wrote for (I think) Memorial Day. “Omar Khadr should go to jail because of the [...]

Nine years ago today, George W Bush was informed that “Al Qaeda [was] determined to strike in US.” And then he went out to clear more brush at his pig farm in Crawford. Obama is showing no such presidential manliness in the second year of his term. Yesterday, his Justice Department actually indicted 14 of [...]

There’s a lot that’s interesting in this tick-tock of General McChrystal’s firing. It’s a finely crafted narrative, down to the foregrounding of Joe Biden, in spite of the way that the chronology appears to belie that narrative (that is, the chronology appears to start when the White House Press Office learns about the article). And [...]

Mark Hosenball has a post elaborating on something reported elsewhere–that the High Value Detainee Interrogation Group (HIG) is only marginally involved in Faisal Shahzad’s interrogation. Given a point I tried to make here–namely, that one of the first things that happened after Shahzad’s arrest and seemingly in conjunction with him waiving a number of his [...]

One of the most telling anecdotes in this must-read Edward Luce skewer of the way a small circle of Obama advisors (Rahm, David Axelrod, Valerie Jarrett, and Robert Gibbs) dominates his Administration is this story about his trip to China. On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel [...]

Jim Haynes appears to have followed precisely the same method that Addington did when trying to avoid answering questions about the Bybee Two memo.