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Independence Day

So today begins Iraqi sovereignty. Apparently they are exercising their right not to go along with the US already. So we have Paul Bremer, Lakhdar Brahimi and the former IGC trying to figure out who is NOT in charge. So now the question is who’s taking care of our people?

Reading a Video

Ali Eteraz has a highly speculative piece up on the latest OBL video. I’m actually with him until he gets to the Bollywood part. I hope that there are professionals watching these videos and trying to figure out next moves, but even in the popular media and quick deconstruction like this would take a lot of air from AQ’s mission. Imagine instead of the headline “OBL loves him some martyrs, run for your lives,” we got headlines like “Latest OBL video give further proof that he’s dead, AQ clueless.” Of course, the second headline shouldn’t be read to minimize the…

More on our #torture policies

If you haven’t already seen it, read this article in Harper’s entitled “We Still Torture.” Then go listen to “Blackout Beach” by the Kominas. Now we have entered what we may wish to call the post-torture era, except that it is not. Indeed, we cannot even revert to the easy hypocrisy of the Cold War. We have returned to our traditional practice of torturing and pretending not to, but the old routine is no longer convincing. We know too much. We know that we are still imprisoning men who very likely are completely innocent. We know that we still beat…