The Train Wreck That Didn’t Have to Be | Newsweek Politics

An Inconvenient Truth Teller
Holly Bailey 10/10/2009 12:00:00 AM
Joe Biden had a question. During a long Sunday meeting with President Obama and top national-security advisers on Sept. 13, the VP interjected, "Can I just clarify a factual point? How much will we spend this year on Afghanistan?" Someone provided the figure: $65 billion. "And how much will we spend on Pakistan?" Another figure was supplied: $2.25 billion. "Well, by my calculations that's a 30-to-1 ratio in favor of Afghanistan. So I have a question. Al Qaeda is almost all in Pakistan, and Pakistan has nuclear weapons. And yet for every dollar we're spending in Pakistan, we're spending $30 in Afghanistan. Does that make strategic sense?" The White House Situation Room fell silent. But the questions had their desired effect: those gathered began putting more thought into Pakistan as the key theater in the region.
‘Indispensable And Imperfect’
Andrew Bast 7/15/2009 12:00:00 AM
Since the United States invaded Iraq in 2003 without U.N. support, the country's engagement with the world body has wavered between grudging participation and downright hostility. When he assumed office, President Obama signaled an immediate change in tone by appointing Susan Rice, a national-security expert who worked on terrorism and Africa during the Clinton administration, as the American U.N. ambassador. She has now held the post for nearly six months; Rice spoke to NEWSWEEK's Andrew Bast recently about Washington's new position and what it means for the world's most threatening challenges. Excerpts:
Biden’s New Brief
Holly Bailey 6/26/2009 12:00:00 AM
Vice President Joe Biden's official portfolio is expanding. NEWSWEEK has learned that President Obama has asked Biden to take the lead role on Iraq as the U.S. begins its scheduled drawdown of combat troops, a move that comes as administration officials are expressing concerns about the uptick in violence and political instability in the region.
Friendly Fire at the White House
Michael Isikoff 5/21/2009 12:00:00 AM
Fending off criticism from human-rights and civil-rights groups at a private White House meeting Wednesday, a frustrated President Obama complained about the "mess" he'd been left by his predecessor.
JUSTICE
The Lawyer and The Caterpillar
Michael Isikoff 4/18/2009 12:00:00 AM
In the real world of a democracy facing the threat of terrorism, torture is a much more complicated business. After 9/11 the CIA was under relentless pressure to break terror suspects in time to head off a second attack. In March 2002, the CIA captured Abu Zubaydah, believed then to be a high-level Qaeda mastermind. Abu Zubaydah apparently feared insects. Someone at the CIA came up with the idea—right out of "1984," it would seem—of putting him in a small, dark box and letting an insect crawl on him. But since this was America, and not Orwell's fantasy police state, the CIA first had to get permission from a lawyer at the Department of Justice. Parsing statutes against torture, the lawyer (Jay Bybee, then chief of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel) ruled that Abu Zubaydah's interrogators could not tell the suspect that the insect was venomous because, under the law, prisoners could not be threatened with imminent death. However, Abu Zubaydah could be placed in a "confinement box" with a harmless insect as long as he was told nothing about it. The CIA had proposed using a caterpillar.
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2/28/2009 12:00:00 AM