Today's Headlines and Commentary

To nobody's surprise, U.S.-Pakistan talks have officially failed, according to the New York Times. The big enchilada was the issue of a formal U.S. apology for the airstrikes that killed 24 Pakistani soldiers last November. Apparently, the Obama administration was considering a formal apology--until the Haqqani network executed deadly attacks on April 15 in Afghanistan. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that the U.S. has resumed drone strikes in Pakistan, in clear defiance of the Pakistani government's public demands. The Times  also has the story. And on and on it goes. . . Speaking of drones, the Los Angeles Times tells us that the ones that patrol the border are not anything to write home about. An audit of the program by DHS's inspector general has revealed that "the border drones require an hour of maintenance for every hour they fly, cost more to operate than anticipated, and are frequently grounded by rain or other bad weather." Wired's Danger Room blog discusses the findings of Col. Erik Goepner, a military fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, about the mental health of Afghan forces. He believes that the high rates of trauma, depression, and PTSD will render the mission a failure. A three-year long congressional investigation into whether the CIA's enhanced interrogation techniques yielded useful information from suspected terrorists conluded that it, in fact, didn't. Reuters has the story. Jameel Jaffer and Nathan Freed Wessler of the ACLU argue in this op-ed in the Times for greater oversight of the CIA's targeted killing operations. General Mark Martins spoke at the Institute of World Politics about reforms made to military commissions. Watch the video here. We're not the only ones who think that Military Judge Col. James Pohl is a baller after the way he presided over the Nashiri hearings. The Miami Herald has this story on the judge who also heard Majid Khan's guilty plea earlier this year, and will preside over the KSM case starting on Saturday. From the Frenemy Press comes breaking news of Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani's response to the latest U.S. drone strike in the wake of failed bilateral negotations. Writing for Aaj (which means "Today" in Urdu) News, Zuhaeb Nazir summarizes the prime minister's comments. And writing in the Express Tribune, Kamran Yousaf reports that a "senior government official" says that Pakistan might boycott the NATO summitt in Chicago next month--a little nugget that interestingly has not made its way to our press yet. And Jose Rodriguez's discussion of the CIA's interrogation program unfortunately omitted discussion of its most controversial interrogation techniques--today's Moment of Zen: Is Using A Minotaur To Gore Detainees A Form Of Torture?