So, a pretentious group of musicians is upset that their music is being used to torment America’s most dangerous enemies?
And now they want the U.S. government to release an official song list?
I can’t imagine that such a document actually exists. Are we supposed to believe that CIA and Pentagon interrogators around the world were issued [...]

A U.S. combat outpost in the endless mountains of Afghanistan
President Obama said in his campaign that he would shift U.S. attention to the war in Afghanistan and rethink American strategy there.  It’s clear he intends to do just that.  But according to a New York Times story sourced to “senior administration officials,” in a somewhat [...]

He continues to deliver shock and awe.

I honestly don’t think he meant to say that because the administration said time and time again that al Qaeda was in Iraq and that they had operational ties to Saddam and since they were the group responsible for 9/11, well, we could go there.
Because remember…what if Saddam [...]

This is Lagan from ANP,
We sat down with James Risen, the New York Times national security corespondent who broke the domestic wiretapping stories, to talk about the dilemmas Obama faces with the unparalleled executive power he will inherit.
Dick Cheney recently said that Obama would appreciate all of the power they are handing over, but Obama [...]

A new report from the Senate Armed Services Committee places significant blame for abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay on former Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
The report’s executive summary, made public by the committee’s Democratic chairman Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan and its top Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, said Rumsfeld contributed [...]

I’m sure Mark Halperin and right wingers don’t want this kind of ally in their “pro Obama media bias” campaign, and I want to be clear that this post in no way discounts their claims (although I think it’s bunk). Still, the following “support” has to sting…
From Counterterrorism Blog:
Global reactions to Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri’s controversial [...]

Al Qaeda has purportedly released a new message addressing President-elect Barack Obama:
In the video, Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda’s No. 2, castigated Obama’s foreign policy stances on Afghanistan and Israel and ridiculed the president-elect’s worldview. Al-Zawahiri compared Obama unfavorably to the late Malcolm X, an African-American militant who adopted Islam. [...]
Al-Zawahiri can be heard saying, “In [...]

I agree with everything Chris has to say here. If Afghanistan has any hope of recovering, it’ll have to be via standard of living improvements, and nobody can make a living if we destroy their only cash crop. Especially when we could be buying it to produce legal pain killers.

In other news, it sounds like [...]

This podcast discusses the proposed legislation to bailout Wall Street, McCain suspending his campaign to return to Washington and his call to postpone this Friday’s debate, a debate preview and a discussion of foreign policy issues (both obvious and not so obvious), and more…
[Listen Online] or [Download]
[Subscribe to 2008Central.net's Presidential Election Podcast]
Feel free to email [...]

This is not good news…

Surprisingly enough, Christopher Hitchens thinks Obama has the right plan when it comes to Pakistan…
Sen. Barack Obama has, if anything, been the more militant of the two presidential candidates in stressing the danger here and the need to act without too much sentiment about our so-called Islamabad ally. He began [...]

In this podcast we discuss (1) the shake up in the McCain Campaign, (2) Obama’s statement on revising his Iraq strategy, (3) Obama and his history with low income housing subsidies for private developers and (4) rumors about McCain’s VP announcement timetable…
[Listen Online] or [Download]
[Subscribe to 2008Central.net's Presidential Election Podcast]
Feel free to email us questions/suggestions [...]

I’m sure you’ve heard the reports of what this process actually feels like (a slow drowning), so I’ll spare you Hitchens’ explanation.
Instead, let’s look at the aftermath…
The interrogators would hardly have had time to ask me any questions, and I knew that I would quite readily have agreed to supply any answer. I still feel [...]

Given our lack of attention to this region, is it much of a surprise that the former regime is getting stronger?
A new Pentagon report says the Taliban has regrouped after its initial fall from power in Afghanistan. The new report offers a rather dim view of progress in the nearly 7-year-old war, declaring that the [...]

And considering we have about 26,000 troops in Afghanistan, the overall percentage proves that Afghanistan has been a much, much deadlier place for quite some time.
Not surprisingly, I found this news in a story about an attack by the Taliban that freed hundreds of inmates from an Afghan prison:
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan – U.S. and NATO troops [...]

This is very good news, but what about the billions we continue to spend over there with no discernible gain? Remember, lowered troop deaths doesn’t mean political progress, it just means there’s more security and fewer families devastated stateside.
From Reuters:
U.S. troop deaths in Iraq fell to their lowest level last month since the 2003 invasion [...]

As if this any surprise, but seriously…how many of these stories will we have to endure? And I have to think that even more will be coming out after Bush and company leave office.
From Reuters:
The former chief prosecutor for the Guantanamo war crimes tribunals testified on Monday that the tribunals were tainted by political influence [...]

An interesting moment from yesterday’s testimony with Biden, Petraeus and Crocker.

And while some on the left and the right have been trying to make hay out of this, the segment does have my wondering why, if our highest priority targets are in Afghanistan, that we’re not trying to destroy them.
I understand we think we [...]

The more that comes out about the Iraqi government’s clash with the Mahdi Army, the more convinced I become that we should NOT have been involved in any way, shape or form. Not only that, our continued presence there will increasingly be used as a craven political tool instead of a force to fight terrorism.
From [...]