Here are a few recommended good reads to add to your afternoon reading list:
- Yesterday on the tenth anniversary of the first drone strike in Pakistan, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism published this interactive timeline of the ten-year drone campaign in the country. <<read more>>
- And in a bizarre, but true, story from The Washington Post, Adam Goldman reports that in 2005 the CIA started a short-lived program to make “a custom-made Osama bin Laden action figure . . . The faces of the figures were painted with a heat-dissolving material, designed to peel off and reveal a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a demon, with piercing green eyes and black facial markings.” The purpose of this toy story? To “spook children.” <<read more>>
- On the New America Foundation’s Weekly Wonk, six experts were asked to weigh in on “What should the United States do – if anything – to counter the growing influence of ISIS in Iraq and Syria?” Almost all the responses call for a refocus of U.S. foreign policy toward the crisis. For example, Paul Salem (VP for Policy and Research, Middle East Institute) argues that “the President must reclassify the crisis in Syria and Iraq as one of his top foreign policy priorities.” <<read more>>