Everything changed on September 11, 2001. It’s become an American truism. And for many, it’s also absolutely true. It certainly was the case for Tom Engelhardt. He was roughly seven miles north of the World Trade Center that morning and that’s about the furthest he’s been from it since.

The New York Times sued the Justice Department over their reticence to turn over a memo from the Office of Legal Counsel detailing the argument for how the US government can legally assassinate an American citizen.

Pfc. Bradley Manning’s Article 32 hearing, also being referred to as his pre-trial hearing, will begin on December 16 at Ft. Meade, Maryland. The hearing could potentially last until Friday, December 23.

An Article 32 hearing, according to the Defense Department, is “closely akin to the civilian grand jury investigation.” When the hearing closes, the “Article 32 officer” will make “a recommendation” on “the disposition of the charges.” Or, as David Dishneau of AP clearly and concisely puts it, “The proceeding is to determine whether the Army intelligence analyst will be court-martialed for allegedly leaking government secrets.”

The incident in Pakistan over the weekend, where NATO forces shot and killed two dozen Pakistani military forces, is an example of why the notion of a “successful” foreign policy from the Obama Administration leaves a lot out.

In July 2010, as Washington Post journalists Dana Priest and William Arkin were getting ready to publish the first article in their Top Secret America series, they got an unusual request from the office of the United States’ intelligence director: Please don’t publish a key part of your research.

The Manning Support Network’s focus will now be on ensuring his trial is not secret. They believe the public has a right to decide for themselves based on evidence presented whether he is guilty or not, as the trial unfolds.

There is still bipartisanship in Washington when something like depriving civil liberties in the name of Terror has to get done. We may have killed Osama bin Laden, but we have yet to slay the Boogeyman.

I’ve gone back and forth on this. Given the existence of Photoshop in this day and age, it’s impossible to have such a thing as photographic evidence for at least some set of people. And I think the counterfactual is useful here. You’ll remember that George Bush released pretty grisly photos of Uday and Qusay Hussein, which were summarily splashed across front pages, and they definitely gave me a queasy feeling at the time. The word “trophy” came to my mind as well.

And yet, these are public records.

US policy is unlikely to change. The White House background briefing did state that “the death of bin Laden puts al-Qaida on a path of decline that will be difficult to reverse,” and I think that’s true. Terrorism expert Peter Bergen last night called it “the end of the war on terror.” But this event fragments and decentralizes something that was already fragmented and decentralized. And notice that it didn’t take long for the official warnings and calls for vigilance against a terrorist threat to ensue. I can’t envision any serious policy change that will spring from the death of Osama bin Laden. We’re still going to have a substantial force in Afghanistan. We’re still going to undertake covert operations in Pakistan. We’re still going to try to stick around in Iraq. We’re still going to make everyone in America take off their shoes and belts and have their bodies X-ray scanned before they get on a plane. We’re still going to see executives assert grand powers to keep America safe, perhaps even more so now that secret, covert counter-terrorism actions have proven successful.

After pausing for a day to placate another bleating billionaire, President Obama stepped to the first microphone Thursday to announce that Leon Panetta would soon sit where Bob Gates now sits, and that David Patraeus would sit in Panetta’s old chair, and that John Allen would grab King David’s throne, and so on and so forth until someone pulled the needle off the record. At which point we were told that the president had re-tooled his national security team for the challenges that lie ahead.

But if that sounds less like re-tooling and more like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, well, that’s because it should.