A Shinwari-sponsorship post-mortem in the Washington Post yesterday is really worth your time: Although military officials expected resistance from [Nangarhar Governor Gul Agha] Shirzai, they were surprised by the blowback from Afghan officials in Kabul and from the State Department, which had been informed about the effort prior to moving forward. “The big worry was [...]

So as we’re talking about the apparently radicalizing effect of Pakistani drone strikes on buffoonish, International M.A.L.E.-shopping Pakistani terrorists, it’s worth noting that the CIA just launched another, uh, drone strike in Pakistan, the sign of an intensifying air war that was already really intense: This second robotic strike in three days is the latest [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 376-10 May 10, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Christopher Rangel, 22, of San Antonio, Texas, died May 6 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 3rd Battalion, [...]

Over at my old stomping ground, Justin Elliott has an excellently framed piece about Faisal Shahzad. How well framed? So well framed that the key point arrives in before he gets to quoting anyone. What kind of terrorist training results in what was by all accounts an extremely crude bomb that not only failed to [...]

IMMEDIATE RELEASE No. 375-10 May 10, 2010 DOD Identifies Marine Casualty The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom. Lance Cpl. Joshua M. Davis, 19, of Perry, Iowa, died May 7 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, [...]

Could it be? Could it be that after wanting desperately to leave Guantanamo for the better part of last week, I’ve got some Guantanamo-based equivalent of post-partum blues and blahs? I can’t get into the swing of things today. So here’s an idea that I heard — I think? — one of the military commission [...]

I’ll be on Fresh Air with Terry Gross tomorrow talking about Guantanamo, Omar Khadr, military commissions, the ejections of Paul and Carol and Steve and Michelle, etc. We taped the segment today and I was nervous as hell — she’s Terry Gross, after all, and everything you’d heard about her unparalleled interviewing skills is true. [...]

Did my buddy Jeremy Scahill get a new Nation blog while I was at Guantanamo Bay? Huh, I guess so, which is all to the good. In this post, he catches Christine Fair of Georgetown making the absolutely unsupportable claim that drone strikes in Pakistan don’t kill civilians, a statement so untethered from reality I [...]

So I asked the CIA and the Justice Department to tell me why it’s legal to kill Anwar al-Awlaki or any other American citizen believed to be a member of al-Qaeda without due process of law. That was about a month ago. Today I heard back. This was an actual response from CIA: Our records [...]

I’m running out to tape a long radio interview about Guantanamo Bay — oh, hi, good morning to you there — and in that frame of mind I wrote nearly 900 words for the Washington Independent on Elena Kagan’s looming contributions to the forthcoming legal battle over terrorism detentions and executions. Skip to the end: [...]