Outside the Beltway

I must confess to having only paid peripheral attention at first, but it is clear that there is a major story here that requires attention.

Our good ally Pakistan has publicly ordered us to leave a base used for “covert” CIA drone attacks.

The government in northern Sudan is engaging in military attacks against the people of Southern Kordofan.

Our patience with those who repeatedly hijack the discussion thread to detract from the topic at hand has ended, effective immediately.

The United States is pressuring the Netanyahu government to move off its hard line.

American drone strikes in Yemen are intensifying. Is this a new war. or just the same one we’ve been fighting since October 2001?

A passenger started a fight over a reclined airplane seat, causing fighter planes to scramble.

Glenn Greenwald asks two questions about the cases of Osama bin Laden and Ratko Mladic. Helpfully, the second answers the first.

Kentucky Senator Rand Paul wants a full debate on the PATRIOT Act. What’s Congress so afraid of?

Frank R. Lindh, father of Abu Sulayman al-Irlandi (aka Sulayman al-Faris, Abdul Hamid, and John Walker Lindh) has an op-ed in the NYT asking “Bin Laden’s Gone. Can My Son Come Home?” The answer is, sure: In another 8 to 11 years.

Marc Thiessen claims Khalid Sheikh Mohammad mocked the CIA interrogators who waterboarded him.

President Obama’s approval numbers shot up after Osama bin Laden was killed two weeks ago. They’ve already settled back to where they were

Texas Congressman Ron Paul, who will enter the Presidential race tomorrow, says he wouldn’t have tried to have Osama bin Laden killed.

John McCain thoroughly dismantles the argument that Osama bin Laden’s capture vindicates the use of so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”

Not surprisingly, having ordered a successful mission to kill Osama bin Laden is being highlighted on President Obama’s re-election tour.

Did a deal between the U.S. and Pakistan during the infancy of the war against al Qaeda play a role in the raid against Osama bin Laden?

Pakistan is trying to explain how the world’s most wanted man was able to hide in plain sight for six years, and failing badly.

One U.S. Senator wants to bring elements of the TSA’s security theater to America’s rail system.

In a move sure to satisfy Deathers as much as a contemporaneous newspaper story satisfied Birthers, al Qaeda has released a statement confirming that Osama bin Laden is dead.

The free world rallied around the United States after the 9/11 attacks–but not all back the killing of the man who ordered it.

The defense of torture as an extreme measure for extraordinary circumstances has evolved.tortu

Safia bin Laden says that her infamous father was caught alive by U.S. forces and murdered in cold blood.

Congress is getting complaints that calling the Osama raid “Geronimo” is offensive to Indians.