Later On

I wonder how long it will be before it occurs to someone with the power to make it happen, that a pesky reporter or investigator or whistle-blower could be put on that Presidential Hit Lis, not subject to outside review, …  hmmm.

Obama really doesn’t like whistle-blowers. Torturers, murderers—that’s okay. But exposing the government’s own misdeeds and ineptitude: scorched-earth. Scott Shane reports in the NY Times:

On his second yearlong deployment to Afghanistan, Lt. Col. Daniel L. Davis traveled 9,000 miles, patrolled with American troops in eight provinces and returned in October of last year with a fervent conviction that the war was going disastrously and that senior military leaders had not leveled with the American public.

Since enlisting in the Army in 1985, he said, he had repeatedly seen top commanders falsely dress up a dismal situation. But this time, he would not let it rest. So he consulted with his pastor at McLean Bible Church in Virginia, where he sings in the choir. He watched his favorite movie, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington,” one more time, drawing inspiration from Jimmy Stewart’s role as the extraordinary ordinary man who takes on a corrupt establishment.

And then, late last month, Colonel Davis, 48, began an unusual one-man campaign of military truth-telling. He wrote two reports, one unclassified and the other classified, summarizing his observations on the candor gap with respect to Afghanistan. He briefed four members of Congress and a dozen staff members, spoke with a reporter for The New York Times, sent his reports to the Defense Department’s inspector general — and only then informed his chain of command that he had done so.

“How many more men must die in support of a mission that is not succeeding?“ Colonel Davis asks in an article summarizing his views titled “Truth, Lies and Afghanistan: How Military Leaders Have Let Us Down.” It was published online Sunday in The Armed Forces Journal, the nation’s oldest independent periodical on military affairs. “No one expects our leaders to always have a successful plan,” he says in the article. “But we do expect — and the men who do the living, fighting and dying deserve — to have our leaders tell us the truth about what’s going on.”

Colonel Davis says his experience has caused him to doubt reports of progress in the war from numerous military leaders, including David H. Petraeus, who commanded the troops in Afghanistan before becoming the director of the Central Intelligence Agency in June.

Last March, for example, Mr. Petraeus, then an Army general, testified before the Senate that . . .

Continue reading.

Good column by Doyle McManus in the LA Times:

When it comes to national security, Michael V. Haydenis no shrinking violet. As CIA director, he ran the Bush administration’s program of warrantless wiretaps against suspected terrorists.

But the retired air force general admits to being a little squeamish about the Obama administration’s expanding use of pilotless drones to kill suspected terrorists around the world — including, occasionally, U.S. citizens.

“Right now, there isn’t a government on the planet that agrees with our legal rationale for these operations, except for Afghanistan and maybe Israel,” Hayden told me recently.

As an example of the problem, he cites the example of Anwar Awlaki, the New Mexico-born member of Al Qaeda who was killed by a U.S. drone in Yemen last September. “We needed a court order to eavesdrop on him,” Hayden notes, “but we didn’t need a court order to kill him. Isn’t that something?”

Hayden isn’t the only one who has qualms about the “targeted killing” program. The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), has been pressing the administration to explain its rules for months.

In a written statement, Feinstein said she thinks Awlaki was “a lawful target” but added that she still thinks the administration should explain its reasoning more openly “to maintain public support of secret operations.”

As Hayden puts it: “This program rests on the personal legitimacy of the president, and that’s dangerous.”

There has been remarkably little . . .

Continue reading.

It just occurred to me: It could not be, could it, that the president thought that the details would never emerge? If that’s what he’s relying on, he’s living in a fantasy.

Productivity plunges with Vicodin, I see. I’m watching Page Eight, quite a good movie, in a kind of stupor. Eye indeed is better with vision rapidly returning. Perhaps no Vicodin tomorrow.

You doubtless recall those “Altoids Survival Kits“? Various life-saving devices of greater or lesser plausibility, packed into an Altoids tin.

Last night, I had an inspiration, and I’ve already bought the Altoids tin (and thrown out the curiously disgusting mints): the Altoids Tin Emergency Food Supply. I realized I have one of those teeny little bottles of Tabasco sauce, and that fits quite handily, so I started thinking of other things: 10 kernels dried corn, 10 dried kidney beans (making a complete protein, note), a bouillon cube, 2 miniature marshmallows, a paper packet of salt and one of pepper,…  I enjoy the thought of carefully chosen foods that will keep, stored in an Altoids tin. It’s quite in the spirit of the others. If I do pull it together, I’ll photograph it.