(Saudi King Abdullah greets Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr) I’m about to get on a plane — and I have no idea what this news alert I just received from MSNBC entails: Explosion, gunfire reported at oil refinery in eastern Saudi Arabia. Details soon.
(John Poindexter and Ronald Reagan) National Journal‘s Shane Harris has discovered that the “Total Information Awareness” program conceived in part under the direction of Iran-Contra tainted former Reagan National Security Advisor John Poindexter was not terminated. Only the name was.
I have several posts going up tonight in quick succession on different topics. Have been delayed because of travel gremlins but arrived in snow-covered Casper, Wyoming a short bit ago. A herd of antelope were waiting for me at the airport. Seriously, they were.
When I first heard about www.ScooterLibby.com, I thought that John Aravosis had bought the URL address and done something fun with it. But, it’s genuine Scooter — and it’s good for some laughs.
(German citizen Khaled El-Masri who was a victim of mistaken identity and kidnapped and ‘rendered’ by American intelligent agents to a foreign secret interrrogation and detention center) TWN had a productive adventure in London, where I had been asked to give a talk and then invited to participate in meetings with a number of Arab…
The Washington Note just arrived in London a short while ago and will be connecting with Al Jazeera London Bureau Chief and senior terrorism investigative correspondent Yosri Fouda tonight.
My colleagues Nir Rosen and Peter Bergen — both fellows in foreign policy at the New America Foundation (where I also work) — are leading American interpreters and chroniclers of the world’s two most dangerous and intriguing personalities — Osama bin Laden in Bergen’s case and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Rosen’s.
Though he has low favorability ratings and an increasingly large chorus of critics, President Bush has established a template for bold and decisive executive power that seems monarchially ill-disposed to the checks-and-balances of a healthy democracy.
TWN has just been sent some very interesting material posted at OutragedModerates.org. A blogger’s FOIA request has yielded Steven Cambone’s handwritten notes of Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld’s instructions to General Myers at 2:40 pm on September 11, 2001. Some of the lines are fascinating: “Go massive. . .Sweep it all up.
I had to pause between a set of non-stop meetings today after briefly seeing an email from the Council on Foreign Relations highlighting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s complaint about the “globally hostile media environment.” He lamented that today’s terrorist arsenal includes “e-mail, Blackberries, instant messaging, digital cameras and Web logs, or blogs.
