I’m pretty fascinated by this attempt by one of John Cole’s readers to defend the Administration’s stance on assassinating US citizens. It’s fascinating and not a little disturbing, but it deserves a response, if only to clarify precisely what the problem with the Administration’s filing last Friday is. The reader starts with this: On Al-Awlaki, [...]

As I noted yesterday (and Glenn has examined at more length), in addition to asserting that the government can target Anwar al-Awlaki … because they said so, the Obama Administration also invoked state secrets in its motion to dismiss the ACLU/CCR suit challenging targeted killings. The Obama Administration has officially positioned itself to the right [...]

Back in January, Dana Priest first revealed that Anwar al-Awlaki was on a JSOC kill list and was being considered for a CIA kill list. Now, eight months later, DOJ is considering charging him. The Obama administration is considering filing the first criminal charges against radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki in case the CIA fails to [...]

In 30 days, changes to Part II (Rules) and IV (Punitive Articles) of the Courts Martial Manual will go into effect. Only, we don’t know what those changes are because the annex that describes them appears to be classified. All we get is this Executive Order noting the change–and explaining that nothing in yesterday’s order [...]

I trust you will all read Dana Priest and William Arkin’s story on the unwieldiness of our Intelligence Industrial Complex. It is good, insofar as it focuses needed attention on a huge problem. But boy is it itself unwieldy. Today’s overview appears to want to be two stories: one on the problem with out-of-control contracting, [...]

There’s actually what I think is a big scoop in this weird David Ignatius column on debates over whether we can target Anwar al-Awlaki. The scoop? The Yemeni government approached the US in October asking for help targeting al-Awlaki. Last October, the Yemeni government came to the CIA with a request: Could the agency collect [...]

How is it that the government has enough detail to put Anwar al-Awlaki onto the assassination list, but didn’t have enough to anticipate at least the Underwear Bomber attempted attack?

The White House has released its summary of the intelligence review on the Christmas Crotch Bomber (and here is Obama’s order for corrective action). The big take-away is: The US Government had sufficient information prior to the attempted December 25 attack to have potentially disrupted the AGAP attack. But, the summary says, the Watch List [...]

As interesting as the news that FBI has asked William Webster to review the analysis of Nidal Hasan before the Ft. Hood killing are some other details from the story.

Ho hum. Now I’m catching Crazy Pete in lies he told two years ago.