“The former military psychologists who designed the CIA’s torture program are now describing it in their own words for the first time, reopening one of the grimmest chapters in Washington’s war on terror and providing disturbing details about what was done to detainees in the name of US national security.” More …
Military
Peter Thiel & Palantir Go from Pentagon Outsider to Mattis’ Inner Circle
“At least three members of the Defense secretary’s inner circle worked, lobbied or consulted for the Silicon Valley company… It represents a sharp rise in prominence for the company, which just months ago could barely get a meeting in the Pentagon. Last year, Palantir even had to go to court to force its way into a competition for a lucrative Army contract.” More …
General McMaster, Step Down—and Let Trump Be Trump
Thomas Ricks pens an open letter to General McMaster: “Save your reputation while you still can… I no longer believe in the ‘adults in the room’ theory of containing President Trump and the similarly erratic and ignorant people around him.” More …
U.S. Intelligence Officials Reportedly Warn Israeli Counterparts Against Sharing Info With Trump Administration
“Shared information could be leaked to Russia and onward to Iran, American officials implied to Israelis in closed meeting, saying Kremlin has ‘leverages of pressure’ over Trump.” More…
Flynn Stopped U.S. Military Plan Turkey Opposed – After Being Paid as Turkey’s Agent
“One of the Trump administration’s first decisions about the fight against the Islamic State was made by Michael Flynn weeks before he was fired – and it conformed to the wishes of Turkey, whose interests, unbeknownst to anyone in Washington, he’d been paid more than $500,000 to represent. The decision came 10 days before Donald Trump had been sworn in as president, in a conversation with President Barack Obama’s national security adviser, Susan Rice, who had explained the Pentagon’s plan to retake the Islamic State’s de facto capital of Raqqa with Syrian Kurdish forces whom the Pentagon considered the U.S.’s most effective military partners. Obama’s national security team had decided to ask for Trump’s sign-off, since the plan would all but certainly be executed after Trump had become president.” More…
Trump’s Dangerous Expansion of Executive War Powers
“For decades, Congress has relinquished its constitutional role in declaring war. But Trump is taking it to new extremes.” More.
Wag the Dog: Trump Lavished with Media and Bipartisan Praise for Bombing Syria
“In every type of government, nothing unites people behind the leader more quickly, reflexively or reliably than war. Donald Trump now sees how true that is, as the same establishment leaders in U.S. politics and media who have spent months denouncing him as a mentally unstable and inept authoritarian and unprecedented threat to democracy are standing and applauding him as he launches bombs at Syrian government targets.” More.