Well, we knew it was coming. And here it is.

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Prosecutors are now preparing to close the anthrax investigation case.
You do realize we’re about to attribute all this to a lone gunman.
Just sayin’.

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The letters were sent a week after 9/11, and as Glenn Greenwald notes here, played a crucial role in helping to convince a country already terrified and numb that Something Must Be Done:
The letter sent to Leahy contained this message:
We have anthrax.You die now.
Are you afraid?
Death to America.
Death to Israel.
Allah is great.
By design, those attacks […]

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In a fascinating piece, Christpher Hitchens lets himself be waterboarded and comes to the conclusion:
if waterboarding does not constitute torture, then there is no such thing as torture.
But as part of his piece, he provides a very good summation of the argument for waterboarding; or at least the view of those who would dismiss the […]

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Gotta love wingnuts. Or not.
Today on his radio show, CNN host Glenn Beck expressed his disdain of the recent Supreme Court ruling granting terror suspects the right to challenge their detention in civilian courts, exclaiming that if he were President, he would do away with detaining and prosecuting terrorism suspects altogether. Instead, a President Beck […]

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Hm, but I thought you had to be swarthy and brown to be Teh Terrorist. Apparently not:
A fourth person is under arrest in what KDKA has learned was an undercover investigation into a ring of domestic terrorists.
Bradley Kahle, of Troutville, Clearfield County, is charged with firearms violations and possession of illegal explosives.
Kahle joins Marvin Hall […]

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Tempted to pile on re: McCain advisor Charlie Black’s comments that a terror attack before November would be “Certainly it would be a big advantage” for McCain; it indeed comes perilously close to actively pining for a terrorist attack, but I doubt that’s what Black really thinks. Rather, I think he has the usual knee-jerk assumption […]

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More like this, please:
A defiant Barack Obama said Tuesday he would take no lectures from Republicans on which candidate would keep the U.S. safer, a sharp rebuke to John McCain’s aides who said the Democrat had a naive, Sept. 10 mind-set toward terrorism.
“These are the same guys who helped to engineer the distraction of the […]

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Glenn Greenwald notes the debate going on now in Great Britain, where a plan to expand the government’s authority to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days without bothering to charge them with any crime had run into stiff opposition - from conservatives:
The official position of the British Conservative Party is to oppose the legislation, and […]

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See, you gotta love this:
Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday he fears that al Qaeda or another extremist group might attempt spectacular attacks in Iraq to try to tilt the U.S. election against him.
So any “spectacular attacks” are because the Teh Terrorists don’t want McCain to win, meaning Americans should vote for him; but the […]

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First, of course, it was about WMDs. That didn’t pan out, so it was all about Saddam playing footsie with Osama bin Laden.
That doesn’t pan out, either:
An exhaustive review of more than 600,000 Iraqi documents that were captured after the 2003 U.S. invasion has found no evidence that Saddam Hussein’s regime had any operational links […]

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Brought to you by - who else - Fox News. Call Old Glory!

via videosift.com

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Hillary’s new ad getting some play, with some folks thinking its effective - and Atrios suggesting it needs more wolves.
(I got a fever… and the only prescription is… MORE WOLVES!!!)
In any case, I suppose it’s effective - if you’re of the opinion that the weak and vulnerable United States is surrounded by dastardly enemies and […]

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Excellent post by Matt Yglesias on the fearmongering of the right, especially in the wake of the FISA business, and the apparent Republican belief that a terrorist attack would help the GOP politically:
In essence, the Republicans are placing a heavy political bet on the idea of a terrorist attack happening some time while their “danger” […]

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Glenn Greenwald calls out the neoconservative armchair would-be saviors of civilization so you don’t have to:
They are society’s freedom fighters, the Progeny of Churchill, Patton and Napoleon, bravely and tenaciously manning the barricades of Civilization itself. They’ll find a powerful and protective Warrior who leads them; advocate all sorts of fascinating technologies and complex spying […]

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So the FISA extension expires Saturday and House Democrats are about to let it, because they’re still fighting over whether the telecoms should get retroactive immunity for, you know, breaking the law when the government told them to. But as usual, we’re getting the usual hysterical mendacity from our friends on the right - such […]

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And can you imagine if it had been a former Democratic legislator who had gotten caught up in this?
A former congressman and delegate to the United Nations was indicted Wednesday as part of a terrorist fundraising ring that allegedly sent more than $130,000 to an al-Qaida and Taliban supporter who has threatened U.S. and international […]

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… or maybe a fighter jet?:
Tens of thousands of airline passengers will soon be flying on jets outfitted with anti-missile systems as part of a new government test aimed at thwarting terrorists armed with shoulder-fired projectiles.
Three American Airlines Boeing 767-200s that fly daily round-trip routes between New York and California will receive the anti-missile laser […]

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Great piece by Fareed Zakaria in Newsweek, which actually ties into what Noonan wrote in today’s WSJ, below:
Then came 9/11. Ever since the attacks, the United States has felt threatened and under siege and determined to carve out maximum room to maneuver. But where Americans have seen defensive behavior, the rest of the world has […]

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Might explain a lot:
Instead, when confronted by his “Saudi” interrogators, Zubaydah showed no fear. Instead, according to the two U.S. intelligence sources that provided me the details, he seemed relieved. The man who had been reluctant to even confirm his identity to his U.S. captors, suddenly talked animatedly. He was happy to see them, he […]

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