So now we find out from GQ that Bush told Chirac that the Iraq war was foretold by the Old Testament story of the apocalyptic creatures Gog and Magog.  Pappy Bush's Skull and Bones handle was also Magog.

Could we please never have anyone this moronic be President of the USA ever again?

Brian Beutler, in a May 25th post points out that Senator Feingold has written to President  Obama saying that he feels preventive detention is unconstitutional.  Beutler comments:

"Obama now seeks, as Feingold describes it, a statutory basis for indefinite preventive detention, but as Glenn Greenwald reminds us, his own counsel, Greg Craig, said 'It's possible but hard to imagine Barack Obama as the first President of the United States to introduce a preventive-detention law,' just three months ago."

Isn't this dangerously close to what Bush/Cheney did when they had the lawyers draw up the torture memos so it could later be claimed that "enhanced interrogation techniques" were legal.  This is a bit different in that the object is a new law not a convoluted memo that tries to justify the unjustifiable.  However, it seems like a slide down the same slippery slope to me.

Ok, Josh asks the question:

"It comes back to the same question: how critical is it whether terrorist capos can hide out, with the passive approval of the government, in caves in Afghanistan? And should this be the center-piece of our counter-terrorism effort or even our whole foreign policy?"


So let's have a go at it, especially since Obama is making it, perhaps, the center-piece of our foreign policy. Were we correct to say attacking Iraq made no sense, but attacking Afghanistan did?  In my opinion, we were.  Is it still correct given what has happened in Afghanistan, given the corruption in the Afghan government, given the number of civilians being killed, given the Vietnam-like quagmire we could be headed for, given the state of our economy, etc.

Is there a smarter way of dealing with the situation in Afghanistan?