CIA Director Michael Hayden cast doubt on the legality of waterboarding on Thursday, a day after the White House said the harsh interrogation tactic has saved American lives and could be used in the future. Hayden told the House Intelligence Committee that he officially prohibited CIA operatives from using waterboarding in 2006 in the wake of a Supreme Court decision and new laws on the treatment of U.S. detainees. Iraqi and U.N. officials
toured a bomb-damaged Shiite shrine in northern Iraq on Wednesday as workers took the first steps in a long-delayed reconstruction – nearly two years after the attack on the famed golden dome became a rallying point for Shiite rage. Crews picked through mounds of rubble spilling from the mosque in Samarra, about 60 miles north of Baghdad, which became the spark for a vicious cycle of sectarian violence after the Feb. 22, 2006, blast blamed on al-Qaida in Iraq.
U.S. and Italian authorities arrested dozens of people Thursday in a takedown of the remnants of New York’s Gambino crime family also meant to cripple a trans-Atlantic drug trafficking operation run by the Mafia. As part of one of law enforcement’s biggest moves against the mob in recent memory, a federal grand jury in New York accused 62 people of ties to the Gambinos and murders, drug trafficking and other crimes dating back to the 1970s.
The U.S. and Britain, the nations with the most troops fighting in Afghanistan, made a renewed push Thursday to portray the war as winnable and worthy of international support despite a so-far-unsuccessful struggle to get more allies to commit frontline forces. On a visit to Kabul with her British counterpart, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice emphasized the improvements that Afghanistan has seen since the U.S.-led invasion in 2001 toppled the radical Taliban regime.
