senior security correspondent at the daily beast and author of the book at war and david, author of national insecurity: american leadership in an age of fear. shane on that point that richard was just talking about, i found the pushback from the cia very interesting because what they do want to talk about is this context of what the atmosphere was like after 9/11. they also want to talk about whether or not we actually got actionable intelligence from the techniques. but i don t see a lot of pushback on the actual specific, gruesome details that we get in this report. as an example, you know, the wall street journal published an op-ed from several former cia directors and the only pushback they have on those allegations to say there were another study to determine there were no prosecutable offenses committed. to me that seems weak. that s the part that i think is
we are learning details about bowe bergdahl. the washington post obtained his handwritten journal and other writings. the associated press found his facebook page. both show a young man who wrote about a struggle to maintain a kind of mental equilibrium. clearly, what was going on in his life and going on at war was disturbing to him and we also learned that before joining the army he was discharged from the coast guard uncharacterized, but discharged from the coast guard and they would not confirm whether it was related to any psychological reasons. did these details bring up any larger issues for you, if nothing else, about recruiting someone who left the coast guard and then went into the army in a war zone? we do know in 2008 recruiters were taking people that historically would be not fit for military service. people who had criminal records because there was such a need because of the volunteer military service that we took people who were willing to come
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the invasion of iraq i think is still with us and lingers. it s overwhelming. it is overwhelming and the fact that case was so flawed, so false, and the american people have become so cynical about any case for war in that region or case for action, because this is not iraq. let s be honest. this is a lot more like the case like kosovo in the 1990s than iraq. however, the distorting effect of iraq and the dampening effect it s had on americans since adventurism and not want to go get involved in these conflicts is overwhelming. and i think this was always going to be a hard sell. as was kosovo, by the way. indeed. john, even the coalition of those in favor of strikes appears to be fraying a little bit. john kerry today said the strikes would be an unbelievably small, limited kind of effort, his words. and comes senator john mccain comes out and didn t like that characterization. he tweeted, kerry says syria s strike would be unbelievably small. that is unbelievably unhelpful.
and i reflected today on bill keller s column in the new york times, our new isolationism. that frankly, people are more concerned about domestic issues than they are the implications of foreign policy. i think you re right about that. frankly, i am hearing it from many more quarters than we ve ever heard it before. you ve got people on the right and the left talking about what we need to do here domestically. they re looking at the calamity unfolding on the streets of our cities today. they re looking at our unemployment rate. they re looking at, you know, needing jobs, needing meaningful wages. and so people are really sort of closing ranks around what s happening here at home. and we haven t really drawn the connect between why we would be so interested, so heavily vested in what happens in syria and why this particular red line holding up this particular global norm is the right thing to do. and why we ve got the money for this war, the money for this strike, but say we don t h