An important problem with the narrative line of “Zero Dark Thirty,” Kathryn Bigelow’s film about the Central Intelligence Agency’s quest for Usama Bin Laden, is not just that it comes across as pro-torture but that it ignores the elephant in the room: Bad intelligence elicited by torture almost derailed that quest to put down al-Qaeda […]
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al-Qaeda
Polish PM Reveals that US Tortured at Black Sites in his Country
Poland’s Prime Minister Donald Tusk is now more or less admitting what has long been suspected: The Bush administration established a secret CIA prison in Poland and had Polish security officials help torture al-Qaeda suspects there. These steps were unconstitutional in Poland on two grounds: first, high Polish officials surrendered sovereignty over Polish territory to […]
Top 7 Ways Bin Laden Underestimated Joe Biden
Captured documents from Usamah Bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout show that the terrorist leader urged an associate to attempt to assassinate President Barack Obama so that Vice President Joe Biden would come to power. “Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make (Vice President Joe) Biden take over the presidency. Biden is […]
Ballen: Terrorism Can’t be Taken out and Shot
Ken Ballen, author of Terrorists in Love: The Real Lives of Islamic Radicals, writes in a guest column for Informed Comment : The policy of targeted assassinations and drone strikes as the cornerstone of an evolving U.S. counterterrorism policy carries some short-term tactical benefits but little in the way of lasting strategic success. Rather, the […]
Palin was Right About those Government Death Panels
Well, the death panel has nothing to do with universal health care. But apparently it does exist, sited in the National Security Council. I discussed the assassination of Anwar al-`Awlaqi last Saturday, just trying to reason through the moral, legal and constitutional issues as a layperson. When I got to the end of the posting, […]
Al-`Awlaqi Should have been Tried in Absentia
A CIA drone operator killed the notorious proponent of radical terrorism against the United States, Anwar al-`Awlaqi, on Friday. The killing has provoked some controversy because al-`Awlaqi was a US citizen and was simply assassinated without any due process. Ron Paul has protested, as has the American Civil Liberties Union. Being a terrorism expert myself […]
Al-Qaeda Brands Ahmadinejad a Conspiracy Theorist!
The al-Qaeda-linked magazine “Inspire” has reprimanded Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for indulging in “stupid” “conspiracy theories” because of his stance, repeated at the recent United Nations meeting, that 9/11 was a Bush administration inside job. When al-Qaeda accuses you of being a conspiracy theorist, you’re really a space cadet. Incidentally, a far rightwing Muslim fundamentalist […]
Cole on the 9/11 Aftermath at AskM
I cover questions about Iraq, Afghanistan, al-Qaeda and the Arab Spring in this recent interview at AskM (a program of the University of Michigan News and Information Service)
Ten Years after 9/11, Do the Arabs value Democracy more than We do?
The September 11 attacks have been revealed as a last gasp of a fading, cult-like twentieth-century vision, not as the wave of the future. They were the equivalent of the frenetic dashing to and fro of a chicken already beheaded. Al-Qaeda’s core assumptions have been refuted by subsequent events and above all in 2011 by […]
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