And don’t forget that the same guys who put Allen West in Congress have already started working on his behalf.

Thank you Michael and Ambassador, both for your discussion here today and for your dedication to truth.

Uhm. Obama did fire McChrystal.

Speaking of COIN, another point that Davis made pretty convincingly was that what reduced violence in Iraq wasn’t COIN nearly so much as it was the spread of the Anbar Awakening. What drove that, Davis said, was the fact that AQI became so disgustingly violent that the Sunnis were driven into alliance with us to rid themselves of AQI. I found Davis’ pointing to that as the reason COIN is not working in Afghanistan (since there is no equivalent force driving Afghans to cooperate with us) to be very convincing. What do you think of that argument?

Michael, how differently do you think your interactions with the McChrystal team would have gone if the volcano hadn’t blown, trapping you guys together for an extended time and disrupting the previous schedule? Do you think that situation had something to do with them letting down their guard just a bit?

Another document leaked recently was the one that BBC and The Times obtained recently where we learned, not so surprisingly, that the Taliban are convinced that they will take over very soon after we are gone. Do both of you agree with that assessment, and do you believe that this particular leak will have any additional role in moving the Afghanistan discussion more toward reality, since it comes into an environment with Michael’s book and the Davis document?

One thing that Davis did a really good job of pointing out about the media’s fawning attitude toward the military was in how tightly the military controls access to high level officers, so that those in the press are afraid to write anything that isn’t flattering because that would mean they would lose access for the next story.

That’s what makes the unique conditions of your access so important. Was it primarily the “operator” mentality that really wanted that Rolling Stone cover story that got you in? And was it sloppiness borne of the habits of the other subservient members of the press who made them so careless around you? In other words, have you heard from others that they also were exposed to careless, rowdy behavior but did not report on it?

Thank you Michael and Peter for being with us today, and as always, thank you Bev for your uncanny timing in scheduling.

This question is for both Peter and Michael. I was always dubious of McChrystal’s sincerity in the “protect the population” aspect of his COIN public persona. From my point of view, this is a man who got his start with Camp NAMA and hiding prisoners from the ICRC and whose primary tool was night raids that were notoriously inaccurate but still disappeared many innocent people for a very long time, often with torture occurring. And as Michael points out in the book, the key measure is that under McChrystal’s COIN strategy, civilian deaths actually went up.

Question for each of you: How sincere do you believe McChrystal was when he said he wanted to protect civilians?

Jay and Jeffrey, thanks so much for a tremendous discussion and for the work that you do. Wishing you all the best in your future endeavors.

Yes, that stood out to me, as well. I was especially disturbed by some of their setting factions against one another that lead to several killings.

Jay, in the book you highlight a number of cases where various government agencies manufactured evidence against those whom they wished to silence or detain. Which instance stands out to you as the most disgusting, and why?

One bit of history that stood out for me in the book was the point that one of the articles of impeachment against Nixon was based on his giving the go-ahead to the Houston Plan that would have given much broader surveillance of citizens. It is very interesting that Nixon later withdrew this authority but the intelligence agencies implemented many of them anyway without providing notification to Nixon. Do you think that if Nixon hadn’t resigned and the impeachment actually went forward, more attention would have been given to abusive surveillance? In other words, would a Nixon impeachment process have focused more attention on this issue than the subsequent Church Commission hearings did?

Thanks so much for that, it helps a lot.

Given your extensive research on the WWII internments, do you see parallels between that program and the indefinite detention aspects of the new NDAA that Obama signed on New Years Eve?

Thanks so much for being here, Jay I found your book nearly impossible to put down. Thanks, Jeffrey for hosting, and, as always, thanks Bev for organizing.

As Jeffrey points out above, the book does an outstanding job of walking us through the sad history of the last hundred years of civil rights abuses by our government. I admit that I alternate between pessimism and resigned determination as I contemplate that history. It seems no matter how many times the reactionaries are shown to be profoundly wrong, they always manage to ascend to power yet again. Do we celebrate the fact that they haven’t yet destroyed our country and the world (and continue to fight them), or do we just give up, realizing that their ability to play to the basest of instincts always trumps reality and rights? Jay, did any thoughts like these cross your mind while writing? And if so, how did you find the resolve to carry on?

Face it, tbogg, this dude is preordained. You cannot fight it.

Resistance is futile.

Teborg

Hmmm. That’s as close to Tebow as it is to tbogg.

Yay! Bloomin’ Rich Mike backed down:
UPDATE: Order to Clear the Park Rescinded! — #OccupyWallStreet LiveStreams from Zuccotti Park