A Tortured History

A Tortured History

NATO forces have refused to turn Afghan prisoners over to some local jails due to concerns about the torture committed in many of those detention centers. After a dozen years of U.S. efforts to export democracy to Afghanistan, that’s just one example of why this...
New World Disorder

New World Disorder

They were droning on about drones the other day in Washington. The Senate Intelligence (ha-ha) Committee was grilling CIA chief-designate John Brennan on the use of unmanned aircraft during his tenure as President Barack Obama’s adviser on terrorism. Drones are...
Zero Dark Thirty’s Losing Premise

Zero Dark Thirty’s Losing Premise

Zero Dark Thirty is a movie the CIA wants you to see. It tells a tale of the search for Osama bin Laden wherein the key lead comes from a man softened up by waterboarding, sleep deprivation, confinement in a coffin-like box and other forms of pain and humiliation. It...
Plain Old Murder

Plain Old Murder

Drones are President Barack Obama’s weapon of choice in the War on Terror. Since taking office, he has ordered over 280 drone strikes in Pakistan alone. That’s more than eight times as many as George W. Bush authorized and doesn’t even count the...
Justice Department Gives Torturers a Pass

Justice Department Gives Torturers a Pass

The Romans had an expression for it: “Nulla poena sine lege,” no punishment without a law. But people sometimes forget that the opposite is also true: Without punishment for offenders, a law itself can die. The Justice Department recently announced that,...