The high-level White House

by twit

According to Newsweek on April 21, 2009:

The report, an advanced copy of which was provided to several news organizations, draws on newly declassified documents that Levin says bolsters his principal message: That the abuses at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison and Guantanamo were not caused by “a few bad apples,” as Bush administration officials repeatedly asserted.

Instead, Levin said in a statement Tuesday, it was the product of high-level White House decisions to utilize a controversial series of “enhanced” and coercive interrogation techniques despite vociferous warnings by U.S. military lawyers and FBI officials that they could subject U.S. officials to prosecutions for torture and war crimes.

High-level White House decisions?  Whatever could that mean?

According to Fox News on April 20, 2009:

The former vice president says the biggest task he had was to protect the nation’s security following 9/11 and to ensure such devastation would never happen again.  He says many of the policies he set up are currently being dismantled by the Obama administration.

“Strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”

by lestro

Apparently, the US and UK have decided to cancel scheduled war games with the Russians in light of their recent attacks on Georgia:

A senior US defense official, speaking on condition of anonymity Tuesday, said that the August 15-23 exercises involving Russian, French, British and US warships in the Sea of Japan “have been scrapped.” The exercises were to involve an onshore component in the Russian port of Vladivostok.

“In the wake of this conflict, there is no way that we can proceed with this joint exercise at this time,” the official said.

I believe Russia’s response was something to the effect of “That’s okay with us, we don’t need the games anymore as we found a real war to practice in…”

Besides, the only good War Games are the ones that involve Matthew Broderick and the WOPR that just wants to play a nice game of chess.

However, given that Russia and the West are once again viewing each other suspiciously through figurative and literal gun sights, maybe we should not have canceled. It does always help to get a close-up view of what your enemy is up to…