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U.S. CITIES:
Anger Over CIA Plans Is Misplaced
by Jonah Goldberg
Anger Over CIA Flap Is Misplaced
Where's the outrage?
If this country had its head on straight, there would be nothing but white-hot popular fury over the latest Bush-era CIA scandal broken by the
CIA director
Now, here's where it gets confusing.
The Democrats and much of the press insist the scandal is that Cheney never briefed
Frankly, I don't get it.
Democratic leaders in
Call me crazy, but I just assumed that the CIA was out there trying to kill as many senior members of al-Qaida as it could.
It's as if, years after
Yet the
And it's worse than that.
But in the fall of 2001, Bush issued an executive finding authorizing covert counterterrorism measures.
All Cheney is being accused of is that he may have told the CIA not to brief
And, again, the main scandal is that the CIA couldn't ever get its act together enough to have anything concrete to report.
Now, one plausible defense of the Bush administration is that it determined that "targeted killings" via unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as Predator drones were a safer and more cost-effective way of killing the bad guys. Presumably
But there's an additional problem.
It's bad enough to learn that our intelligence operatives haven't been able to kill our enemies. But it compounds the outrage when you broadcast that fact to the world.
It's an intelligence boon to al-Qaida's senior leaders when we inform them that America's spooks can't, or won't, get close enough to kill them.
It's hard to know what Panetta's motives are in all of this. But it's hard not to conclude that his agenda is political. Last month, in a seeming effort to appease Pelosi after he contradicted her slanderous claim that the CIA routinely lied to
Now Democrats are clamoring yet again for an investigation into Bush-era policies at precisely the moment their agenda is starting to unravel. The stimulus is looking more like a dud every day, Obama's health-care and cap-and-trade schemes are acquiring an increasingly bad odor politically, and suddenly Democrats, Panetta included, are looking to offer up a big, distracting spectacle by turning the CIA into a partisan cudgel.
Again, Where's the outrage?
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Obama Doctrine: Spread Freedom? Not so Much
by Jonah Goldberg
The Obama Administration has made it clear that spreading freedom is so much ideological foolishness. Before the inauguration, he told The Washington Post that he was concerned with "actually delivering a better life for people on the ground and less obsessed with form, more concerned with substance." There's merit to this view in principle, though Obama seems to be thinking about "economic justice" more than a free society. But in practice, when American presidents say they don't care about democracy, tyrants rejoice.
Plans to Assassinate al-Qaida Leaders
by Jules Witcover
The disclosure that the George W. Bush administration had plans to assassinate al-Qaida leaders and never told Congress about them must certainly come as no surprise to anybody by now. The credibility of Bush and Co. had long since been shot full of holes by the time the Obama administration's new CIA director, Leon Panetta, learned of the scheme, killed it and spilled the beans to Congress.
War By Other Means
International Politics & World Affairs
by Robert C. Koehler
We live in a world where arrogance and power are concentrated to an unbelievably fine point, while responsibility is diffused into a global mist. A few fanatics can plot and wage a war, stirring up consequences infinitely beyond what they are capable of imagining, then retire, when things go bad, into a luxury tinged with disgrace.
Les Gelb on How America Muddles Its Power
by Andrew Burt
Leslie H. Gelb's résumé is all about power. But Gelb, currently president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, thinks American politicians have forgotten how to use it. He recently spoke about how his new book, Power Rules: How Common Sense Can Rescue American Foreign Policy, offers lessons on navigating the challenges confronting the United States.
Obama's Honduras Predicament
by Cal Thomas
A Hegemon's Coming of Age
Walter Russell Mead
The Pentagon's Wasting Assets
by Andrew F. Krepinevich, Jr.
Defining American Interests in Afghanistan
Steven Simon
Thuggery 101
World's Thugs do not Appreciate Obama's Goodwill
Victor Davis Hanson
President Obama: The Too Usable Past
Paul Greenberg
Violence Spikes as U.S. Troops Withdraw From Iraq's Cities
by Alex Kingsbury
Attacks on U.S. Soldiers Show Iraq Is Not Yet Safe
Obama's Iran Policy Is a Bomb
by Jonah Goldberg
Obama's Choice Is Not to Choose on Iran
Stop measuring the success of your diplomacy with Iran by the degree to which the grinning, hate-filled stooge of a clerical junta will "temper" his rhetoric about the pressing need to destroy Israel and slow his ineluctable pursuit of nuclear weapons.
Events in Middle East & Central Asia Challenge U.S's Conventional Assumptions
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