War on Terror

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Brennan: Always Better to Capture, Not Kill, Terrorists

Dianne Feinstein has to clear the room as CIA nominee testifies on drones

(Newser) - John Brennan, President Obama's nominee to run the CIA, went to Capitol Hill today and defended the US drone strategy he helped engineer as Obama's top counterterror adviser. The drone strikes are necessary, he testified, because the US remains "at war" with al-Qaeda and other terrorists bent...

Obama's Memo on Killing US Citizens Is a Disgrace

Glenn Greenwald: No free society should sanction this

(Newser) - The Obama administration's rationale for when it's OK to kill US citizens is fundamentally un-American, writes Glenn Greenwald at the Guardian . For example, the Justice Department memo says the US is justified in going after terrorists—based on the assertions of US officials supposedly in the know about...

Feds Can Kill US Citizens: DOJ Memo

Leaked document has loose definition of requirements for drone strike

(Newser) - It is legal for the American government to order the killing of an American citizen if a "high-level" official decides that the person is a senior member of al-Qaeda or an associated group who poses "an imminent threat of violent attack" against the US, according to a Justice...

Terrorist Attacks Have Quadrupled Since 9/11

But deaths are falling: new study

(Newser) - Annual terrorist attacks have more than quadrupled since the September 11, 2001, attacks, a new study finds, with Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and Yemen most affected. But, after peaking in 2007, the number of deaths per year in such attacks has been decreasing, Reuters reports. Last year, there were 7,...

Pentagon Lawyer: US Near al-Qaeda 'Tipping Point'

Group someday won't be considered military adversary under law

(Newser) - Al-Qaeda may still view itself as America's No. 1 enemy, but the Pentagon has a different, ego-deflating assessment. The way things are going, the terror group soon won't qualify as an official adversary of the military, the Pentagon's top lawyer said in a speech at London's...

Milestone Near in US Counter-Terror Operations

Number killed in drone strikes will exceed those killed in 9/11 attacks

(Newser) - The Washington Post notes that a milestone is near in post-9/11 counter-terror operations: The number of militants and civilians killed in the US drone campaign is about to tick over 3,000 and surpass the number of victims in the 2001 attacks. The nugget is part of a larger story...

It&#39;s Not About a Lousy Movie
 It's Not About a Lousy Movie 
OPINION
Sep 19, 2012 1:47 PM CDT

It's Not About a Lousy Movie

Seumas Milne says it's a wonder we haven't seen more anti-American violence

(Newser) - "Why do they hate us?" That's what many Americans asked after 9/11, "oblivious to their country's role in decades of coups, tyranny, sanctions, regimes, and occupations across the Middle East," writes Seumas Milne in the Guardian . Now, they're asking the same about the protests...

US May Send Jets to Yemen
 US May Send Jets to Yemen 
Jun 21, 2012 9:37 AM CDT

US May Send Jets to Yemen

But some are worried about a backlash

(Newser) - The US military is considering sending military aircraft, vehicles, and other supplies to Yemen to help the government in its fight against terrorists. Yemen currently relies on beat-up Soviet-era helicopters and trucks, and some commanders tell the LA Times that upgrading those capabilities will allow them to capitalize on recent...

Who Cares About Leaks? Problem Is Drone Policy Itself

Katrina vanden Heuvel: Obama shouldn't have this much power

(Newser) - There's lot of outrage these days about President Obama's "kill list" and his manner of personally giving the go-ahead for drones to kill suspected terrorists. But why on earth, wonders Katrina vanden Heuvel in the Washington Post , is all the outrage directed at the media leaks that...

Why Not Assassinate Bashar al-Assad?
 Why Not Assassinate 
 Bashar al-Assad? 
OPINION
Jun 11, 2012 1:24 PM CDT

Why Not Assassinate Bashar al-Assad?

Peter Beinart points out that it would fit with current US policy

(Newser) - Is there a logical reason the US hasn't assassinated Bashar al-Assad? It's a pretty unsavory idea, but "given how far we appear willing to go in prioritizing American security interests, it doesn't seem very radical," argues Peter Beinart of the Daily Beast . You might argue...

Our Dirty Drone War Must End

 Our Dirty Drone War Must End 
OPINION
Feb 20, 2012 1:13 PM CST

Our Dirty Drone War Must End

It may be creating more terrorists than it's killing: Gary Kamiya

(Newser) - Before 9/11, if the US president had announced that the government was going to "play God, reaching down from our high-tech heaven to kill whoever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want"—including US citizens, without a trial—the news would have been met with uproar. But...

US Restarts Drone Attacks, Kills 4 in Pakistan Strike

Officials insist there was no moratorium

(Newser) - The US' drone war in Pakistan is back on. The US launched its first strike last night since a November attack that killed 28 Pakistani soldiers and ratcheted the already fraught tensions between the two nations to a new high. The attack hit a North Waziristan home just before midnight,...

Obama Signs Defense Bill Despite 'Reservations'

President questions provisions about treatment of suspected terrorists

(Newser) - President Barack Obama signed a wide-ranging defense bill into law today despite having "serious reservations" about provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists. The bill also applies penalties against Iran's central bank in an effort to hamper Tehran's ability to fund its nuclear...

Obama Throws Away Civil Liberties With Defense Bill

President to sign bill allowing indefinite detention of Americans

(Newser) - President Obama is taking a lot of heat today for dropping his threat to veto a controversial defense bill that could allow the military to capture and indefinitely detain American citizens on US soil. In a fiery editorial, the New York Times today called it "a complete political cave-in,...

NATO Accused of Killing 28 Pakistani Soldiers
Angry Pakistan Orders US
to Vacate Air Base
updated
Nov 26, 2011 5:03 PM CST

Angry Pakistan Orders US to Vacate Air Base

Pakistan furious over killings, violation of sovereignty

(Newser) - Pakistan reacted to a NATO airstrike that killed up to 28 Pakistani soldiers today by telling the US to evacuate an air base it uses to stage military operations, MSNBC reports. Fuming over the violation of sovereignty, Pakistan also halted convoys of fuel and equipment headed to NATO bases in...

Commando-Style DEA Squads Fight Cartels Abroad

Squads train local authorities, but sometimes things get ugly

(Newser) - The war on drugs meets the war on terror: In 2008, George W. Bush started a DEA program called FAST (Foreign-deployed Advisory Support Team), meant to investigate Afghanistan drug traffickers linked to the Taliban. The program continued under President Obama, and now includes five military-trained squads of special agents that...

Amnesty International to Canada: Bust Bush

Canada to Amnesty: No way, eh

(Newser) - George W. Bush is visiting Canada next week and international law requires the country to arrest him for torture and war crimes ... according to Amnesty International. The group has sent a thousand-page memorandum to Canadian authorities explaining why the former president should be behind bars, Politico reports. Bush's own...

US to Build Huge New Prison in Afghanistan
 US to Build Huge New 
 Prison in Afghanistan 
Glenn Greenwald
Sep 20, 2011 12:30 PM CDT

US to Build Huge New Prison in Afghanistan

And never mind prison overcrowding at home

(Newser) - The Obama administration is supposedly determined to cut hundreds of billions in spending, so it struck Glenn Greenwald of Salon as ironic when he noticed that the military last week started soliciting bids for the construction of a massive prison in Bagram, Afghanistan. The facility is to hold approximately 2,...

US Did Not &#39;Overreact&#39; to 9/11
 US Did Not 
 'Overreact' to 9/11 
charles krauthammer
Sep 9, 2011 11:18 AM CDT

US Did Not 'Overreact' to 9/11

Our response has kept us safe for 10 years: Charles Krauthammer

(Newser) - Charles Krauthammer issues an emphatic rebuttal to what he calls the "new conventional wisdom" about 9/11—that the US overreacted and brought upon itself a ruinous decade of war and financial misery. "Rubbish," he writes in the Washington Post . Al-Qaeda is on the brink of failure and...

CIA Heavily Edits FBI Agent's 9/11 Book

Cuts are due to criticism of CIA, author says

(Newser) - After the FBI submitted a former agent's 600-page memoir about the 9/11 attacks and their aftermath to the CIA, the agency responded with a 181-page list of cuts it wanted to make. Author Ali Soufan—an Arabic-speaking counterterrorism agent who played a central role in many investigations—says the...

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