Today’s links: torture, technowar,
and talking points.
New York Times: Election
to Decide Future Interrogation Methods in Terrorism Cases (by Charlie
Savage)
Key passage: “In one of his first acts, President Obama issued an executive order restricting interrogators to a list of nonabusive tactics approved in the Army Field Manual. Even as he embraced a hawkish approach to other counterterrorism issues — like drone strikes, military commissions, indefinite detention and the Patriot Act — Mr. Obama has stuck to that strict no-torture policy.
Key passage: “In one of his first acts, President Obama issued an executive order restricting interrogators to a list of nonabusive tactics approved in the Army Field Manual. Even as he embraced a hawkish approach to other counterterrorism issues — like drone strikes, military commissions, indefinite detention and the Patriot Act — Mr. Obama has stuck to that strict no-torture policy.
By contrast, Mr. Romney’s
advisers have privately urged him to “rescind and replace President Obama’s
executive order” and permit secret “enhanced interrogation techniques against
high-value detainees that are safe, legal and effective in generating
intelligence to save American lives,” according to an internal Romney campaign
memorandum.”
New York Times: Cyberwarfare
Emerges From Shadows for Public Discussion by U.S. Officials (by Scott
Shane)
Key passage: “Next month the Pentagon’s research arm will host contractors who want to propose “revolutionary technologies for understanding, planning and managing cyberwarfare.” It is an ambitious program that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, calls Plan X, and the public description talks about “understanding the cyber battlespace,” quantifying “battle damage” and working in Darpa’s “cyberwar laboratory.””
Key passage: “Next month the Pentagon’s research arm will host contractors who want to propose “revolutionary technologies for understanding, planning and managing cyberwarfare.” It is an ambitious program that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, calls Plan X, and the public description talks about “understanding the cyber battlespace,” quantifying “battle damage” and working in Darpa’s “cyberwar laboratory.””
GQ: They
Retort, You Decide! (by Robert Draper)
Key passage: “If you look at history and talk to the experts of the art and science of presidential debates, you find that, during these ninety-minute proto-reality shows, some vital information we can't seem to get anywhere else is exchanged—even if the candidates screw up or if we take the wrong message from their screwups. You'll also find, if you talk to people who have directly advised Obama and Romney, either currently or in the past, that this year's verbal cage fight is anybody's game.”
Key passage: “If you look at history and talk to the experts of the art and science of presidential debates, you find that, during these ninety-minute proto-reality shows, some vital information we can't seem to get anywhere else is exchanged—even if the candidates screw up or if we take the wrong message from their screwups. You'll also find, if you talk to people who have directly advised Obama and Romney, either currently or in the past, that this year's verbal cage fight is anybody's game.”
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