Is It Possible 20 Were Killed at Panjwai, 3 by Another Soldier?
Update: See this post, which gives DOD's latest update on the lack of military operations during the attack.
According to Amy Davidson, the explanation that Robert Bales' 17th victim was an unborn child, which I noted here, has been debunked.…
Time to Start Rethinking How We Define "Insurgent"
I was struck by this passage in the WSJ's description of the three green on blue killings yesterday.
Since the year began, more coalition service members have been gunned down by Afghan troops than by insurgents. A total of 16 members of the…
Obama, Gilani Meet in Seoul While Allen Undermines Talks
ISAF Commander John Allen
In Seoul today for an international nuclear security summit, President Obama met with Pakistan's Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani. The meeting was viewed by many as an opportunity to bring the two nations closer together…
NYT: "Impartial" ... "Impartial" but Anti-Iran
Jill Abramson repeats the word "impartial" several times in this interview on the NYT's Israel-Iran coverage, almost explicitly invoking what Jay Rosen calls the View from Nowhere.
Q: Do you think there have been articles the Times has published…
Is the "Roger" Profile Yet Another InfoOp in Support of Signature Strikes?
Greg Miller got a lot of buzz this weekend for his profile of the head of CTC, whom he calls "Roger." The article is in no way unbalanced--Miller makes it clear that Roger is an asshole and suggests he might bear some responsibility for the…
ObamaCare Week Is a Great TIme to Support Pro-Choice Trevor Thomas
Last week, for its 2-year anniversary, Democrats rightly celebrated that ObamaCare has made preventative health care--things like mammograms--accessible for free to 45 million women.
And this week, as the ObamaCare hearing represents the…
Latest "Isolated Incident" Raises Death Toll to 15 NATO Troops Killed by Afghan Troops This Year
Reacting to the killing of two senior NATO officers inside the previously secure Interior Ministry building in Kabul, Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney on February 27 continued to insist that the ongoing killing of NATO troops by Afghan…
ACA at SCOTUS: Some Thoughts On The Mandate
As you likely know by now, we stand on the cusp of historic oral arguments this week in the Supreme Court on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise popularly known as "Obamacare". The arguments will occur over three…
Abdulelah Haider Shaye and Anwar al-Awlaki's Emails
Al-Jazeera did another long piece on the imprisonment of Abdulelah Haider Shaye, whose story Jeremy Scahill first covered here. There are two details worth note. First, just after 15:40, AJE describes the White House's non-denial denial…
Michael Leiter Went Skiing ... And All We Got Were Vast Expansions of Data-Sharing and No T-Shirt
In its short summary of the new NCTC data sharing guidelines, Lawfare said this:
The White House has passed new ”Guidelines for Access, Retention, Use, and Dissemination. . . of Information in Datasets Containing Non-Terrorism Information.”…
Was Mohammed Wazir's 2-Year Old, Palwasha, the Victim of a Revenge Killing?
The Wall Street Journal has the story on the Panjwai killing that should have been written on Monday, not Friday. It tells the story of the massacre from the perspectives of Mohammed Wazir, Mullah Baran, and Syed Jaan, Afghan men who lost…
The "Oversight" over NCTC's Not-Terrorist-Terrorist Database
Back when John Negroponte appointed him to be the Director of National Intelligence's Civil Liberties Protection Officer, Alexander Joel admitted he had no problem with Cheney's illegal domestic wiretap program.
When the NSA wiretapping program…
Does NCTC Have the Minimal Data Security to Guard Its New Not-Terrorist-Terrorist Database?
As I noted here and here, yesterday the Director of National Intelligence and DOJ rolled out new Guidelines allowing the National Counterterrrorism Center to acquire non-terrorist datasets from federal agencies--including US person data--so…
Whitewater Rafting? New Orleans Film Festivals? What Boondoggles Will NYPD's Cops Go on Next?
Remember that NYPD officer who scammed a whitewater rafting trip by claiming he needed to count how many times a day some college students prayed while on vacation? He wasn't the only one scamming such vacations. As the AP reports in its latest…
"Stand Your Ground" Just Tip of Iceberg for Baxley's Racism, Religious Intolerance and Gun Fetish
Dennis Baxley
The tragic murder of Trayvon Martin has focused attention on Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law sponsored originally by Representative Dennis Baxley, who is serving for a second time in a district just south of the one in which…
The National Counterterrorism Center Just Declared All of Us Domestic Terrorists
I'm going to have a series of posts on the new National Counterterrorism Center data sharing guidelines. As a reminder, the whole point of these guidelines is to allow the NCTC to obtain information on US persons, dump it into their datamining,…
Three Men Plead Guilty to Federal Hate Crimes for Brutal Murder of African American Man
The three men who committed the grisly, senseless murder depicted in this video just plead guilty to Federal hate crimes.
The Justice Department announced today that Deryl Paul Dedmon, 19, John Aaron Rice, 19, and Dylan Wade Butler, 20,…
5 Years of Data Not Collected by NSA
Just days after General Keith Alexander successfully dodged questions about the NSA's massive new data storage facility by disclaiming any responsibility for collecting US person data, the National Counterterrorism Center is preparing to extend…
Homeland Security Twitter Monitoring in Action?
A month ago, EPIC liberated documents pertaining to the Department of Homeland Security's web monitoring program, including a list of terms (starting on page 20) that DHS' contractors search for in an effort to monitor threats. The domestic…
McCain, Lieberman and Graham Attempt to Revive Mass Delusion on Afghan "Success"
In yesterday's post, I pointed out the craven political decision to delay a strategic reassessment of the war strategy in Afghanistan until after the election in November. Just in case that was not enough stupidity already emanating out…
