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Published: 08/2/10

Steve Coll: Stop Blaming Afghans for the Mess in Afghanistan

By  Paul Wachter - AOL News
Steve Coll: Stop Blaming Afghans for the Mess in Afghanistan

(Aug. 2) -- Though Steve Coll's Pulitzer Prize-winning "Ghost Wars" ends its narrative on Sept. 10, 2001, there's still no better book for understanding the American war in Afghanistan today. The book chronicles U.S. involvement in the country beginning with the Soviet invasion until 9/11, reporting in much detail the policy twists, turf wars and on-the-ground decisions by U.S. intelligence and diplomatic officers. What's remarkable in hindsight is how reliably the policymakers mucked these decisions up. As Washington went about undermining the Soviet occupation, it reached out to ...

Published: 01/8/09

It's Torture, Stupid: Why Obama Picked Leon Panetta to Head the CIA

By  David Knowles - Politics Daily
It's Torture, Stupid: Why Obama Picked Leon Panetta to Head the CIA

Fred Kaplan has a good piece at Slate today laying out a theory as to the calculus Barack Obama used to pick former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta as his nominee to head up the CIA:This has been Obama's persistent dilemma on the matter of picking a CIA chief (and the reason it has taken him so long to do so); finding someone who is a) up on the issues and the workings of the intelligence bureaucracy but b) not tainted by the Bush administration's record on renditions, torture, or extralegal surveillance.Panetta's pick suggests that no such person exists--and that, if forced to make ...

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