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Are the CIA torture tapes next? | New questions raised about prosecutor who cleared Bush officials in U.S. Attorney firings ASK THIS Four days before Nora Dannehy was appointed to investigate the Bush administration’s U.S. attorney firing scandal, a team of lawyers she led was found to have illegally suppressed evidence in a major political corruption case. Andrew Kreig writes that this previously unreported fact calls her entire investigation into question as well as that of a similar investigation by her colleague John Durham of DOJ and CIA decision-making involving torture. 
What's the mission? | Possibly seeking the impossible ASK THIS| July 201, 2010 The American effort in Afghanistan is doomed if the Afghans don’t share our goals, and if the Taliban have a sanctuary in Pakistan. Are we prepared to stay there as long as it takes?
Letter from Des Moines | Which is more bizarre: The Iowa GOP platform or the failure of the press to report it? ASK THIS The platform, claiming to promote moderation, would allow concealed guns in schools, end minimum wage and abortion laws, teach creationism, and impeach ‘activist judges.’ Anybody paying attention? The Iowa press sure doesn't seem to be.
Cui bono? | Afghanistan’s mineral wealth won’t help Afghanistan or the U.S. -- but it might help China ASK THIS The Chinese won’t hesitate to pay off the people who need to get paid off in order to get access to Afghanistan's natural resources, says author and professor Michael Klare. But the Afghan people and the American people have nothing to celebrate.
Obama's Afghan strategy | A war that only the War Machine could love ASK THIS President Obama's Afghanistan war strategy is failing everyone except his enemies and the profiteers. Author Ann Jones writes that the war is generating immense sums of money for relatively small numbers of people, along with immense debt for our nation, immense sacrifice from our combat soldiers, and intense despair for ordinary Afghans.
'Regulatory capture' | The BP disaster underscores government as the problem, not the solution ASK THIS After decades of planned neglect, mismanagement and ideological attack, the American government, across the board, has gotten out of the way of corporate America – and the country is paying a heavy price. Obama promised to make government service “cool” again. Ask him to show where he's doing that.
| Keep asking: Why did the BP spill happen, and what’s next? ASK THIS Questions for scientists, for the Obama administration, and for BP. There’s a lot the experts just don’t know. For example, how adaptive is the fish life cycle? And, based on past spills, how likely is it to recover?
George Wilson’s column | Suppose a terrorist succeeds in setting off a nuclear attack. What then? ASK THIS President Obama has put the unthinkable into words, saying there is “no greater or more urgent danger than a terrorist attack with a nuclear weapon.” Now isn’t it up to Congress to follow up and try to ensure that there would be a thought-out response to such a disaster?
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