America’s Secret Army at War
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on September 4th, 2011 4:31 am by HL
America’s Secret Army at War
Priest & Arkin, Washington Post
The CIA’s armed drones and paramilitary forces have killed dozens of al-Qaeda leaders and thousands of its foot soldiers. But there is another mysterious organization that has killed even more of America’s enemies in the decade since the 9/11 attacks.CIA operatives have imprisoned and interrogated nearly 100 suspected terrorists in their former secret prisons around the world, but troops from this other secret organization have imprisoned and interrogated 10 times as many, holding them in jails that it alone controls in Iraq and Afghanistan.
A Candidate’s Religion Should Be Off Limits
Colbert King, Wash Post
One of the more regressive proposals in this still-young presidential election season comes not from a candidate but, rather, from a journalist, specifically Bill Keller, the departing executive editor of the New York Times. In a recent column, Keller asserted that candidates should be subjected to questions about their religious faith.“I do want to know,” Keller wrote, “if a candidate places fealty to the Bible, the Book of Mormon . . . or some other authority higher than the Constitution and laws of this country.”
The Great Recession & Government Failure
Gary Becker, Wall St. Journal
The origins of the financial crisis and the Great Recession are widely attributed to “market failure.” This refers primarily to the bad loans and excessive risks taken on by banks in the quest to expand their profits. The “Chicago School of Economics” came under sustained attacks from the media and the academy for its analysis of the efficacy of competitive markets. Capitalism itself as a way to organize an economy was widely criticized and said to be in need of radical alteration.Although many banks did perform poorly, government behavior also contributed to and prolonged…
