Chickenhawks, while trying to score quick political points with anti-Muslim fearmongering, are playing right into the “trap” Evan Kohlmann described on Monday’s Countdown — fueling the next round of terorist recruitment while destroying the ideals of our country.

On March 13, 2004, Jack Goldsmith and Patrick Philbin went to Jim Comey’s house on a Saturday to alert him of something. The military had contacted Goldsmith, wanting to use a more extreme form of torture against a detainee–something like isolation, waterboarding, water dousing, or death threats.* But, as Goldsmith had told DOD General Counsel Jim Haynes the previous December, the March 2003 opinion Yoo wrote that authorized DOD’s use of such techniques was hopelessly flawed. Goldsmith wanted to explain the flaws of the memo to Comey to get his support for withdrawing the memo. Comey, who was then acting Attorney General (since John Ashcroft was in the ICU with pancreatitis), agreed with Goldsmith’s judgment and–the OPR Report explains–later got John Ashcroft to agree that “any problems with the analysis should be corrected.”

First President Obama said he would agree to the release of 21 photos of abuse of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel (and 23 additional photos “identified as responsive”), as ordered by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in a suit by the ACLU for release of the photos. Then Obama changed his mind, and on Thursday, went to back to the Circuit Court and asked it, according to the Washington