Immediately after a U.S. staff sergeant killed 16 Afghan civilians in the Kandahar Province yesterday American officials leapt to mitigate the damage done to the planned withdrawal of troops and the ongoing negotiations with Taliban leaders. Those talks, which had made significant, if slow progress in recent weeks, may have been set back irrevocably. According to Al Jazeera, the Taliban has vowed revenge against the "American savages" who committed a "blood-soaked and inhumane crime" against innocent Afghan men, women and children. more ›

Well, guess Leon Panetta was wrong: yesterday, there was chatter that the release of photos of a deceased Osama bin Laden was imminent, and CIA director Panetta added to it when he said, "I don't think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public." However, President Obama announced today that he has decided not to release photos of bin Laden's body. "That's not who we are. We don't trot this stuff out as trophies. We don't need to spike the football," he said during a 60 Minutes interview. more ›

CIA Director Leon Panetta said of a photograph showing the corpse of Osama bin Laden, "I don't think there was any question that ultimately a photograph would be presented to the public. Obviously, I've seen those photographs. We've analyzed them. And there's no question that it's bin Laden." more ›

CIA Director Leon Panetta gave a sobering interview with ABC's "This Week" yesterday, in which he said the US has had no solid intelligence on Osama bin Laden's whereabouts for years. While being interviewed on the program, Panetta summarized the difficulties with the war in Afghanistan, and with the hunt for bin Laden, saying that the last "precise information" US officials had on the terrorist leader was in "the early 2000s": "Since then, it's been very difficult to get any intelligence on his exact location. He is, as is obvious, in very deep hiding ... He's in an area of the tribal areas of Pakistan." But in that case, maybe the CIA should be outsourcing their intelligence to the Osama Hunter. more ›

The NY Times tantalizing leads off an article about President-elect Barack Obama’s pick to head the CIA by revealing Leon Panetta "plotted his first coup when he was in City Hall." Back when Panetta was an assistant to Mayor John Lindsay, he "embraced a radical regime change"—statehood for New York City, and the Times notes a 1971 memo he wrote: NYC “can no longer depend on a body of upstate legislators, who are out of touch with urban problems, to respond to the city’s crucial needs... Statehood [for NYC] — while initiated somewhat facetiously during the last campaign — is not an unrealistic possibility. Indeed, it may well be the only sensible approach to governing New York City.” Of course, we're still part of the Empire State, though secession comes up every now and then. And while there are complaints about Panetta's creds, Senator Dianne Feinstein says "all systems are go" for his confirmation. more ›