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Tara McKelvey

Tara McKelvey, a senior editor at the Prospect, is a research fellow at NYU School of Law's Center on Law and Security and the author of Monstering: Inside America’s Policy on Secret Interrogations and Torture in the Terror War.

Recent Articles

THE REAL HURT LOCKER.

Tara McKelveyJul 22, 2009

Two homemade bombs went off near a sidewalk in Sadr City, reports The Times, in a series of explosions that killed at least 15 people in Iraq and engulfed one vehicle traveling in a U.S. military convoy in flames. The attack serves as a reminder that the IED, or improvised explosive devise, is one of the most horrific aspects of the war.

TRUTH-TELLING IN MOSCOW AND GROZNY.

Tara McKelveyJul 20, 2009

Reporting on human-rights and corruption can be a treacherous business: Anna Politkovskaya, a Moscow-based journalist who wrote about Chechnya, was murdered in 2006, and last week human-rights worker Natalia Estemirova’s body was found by the side of a highway in Ingushetia.

<i>The Hurt Locker</i> as Propaganda

For a supposedly anti-war film, Kathryn Bigelow's Hurt Locker serves as a remarkably effective military recruiting tool.

Tara McKelveyJul 17, 2009

An Iraqi butcher holds a cell phone as he stands near the site of a bomb -- or an improvised explosive devise (IED), as it is known in The Hurt Locker, the critically acclaimed new movie about soldiers in Iraq. The Americans shout at the butcher to put the phone down and point their guns; he smiles and waves back, nodding his head reassuringly to show them everything is fine. Then he presses a button on the cell phone and detonates a bomb, killing one of the soldiers.

THE CIA AND AL QAEDA.

Tara McKelveyJul 14, 2009

So the CIA was planning to assassinate Qaeda leaders, as we have learned in The New York Times (and in The Wall Street Journal, too). It was an ambitious program, and it seems to confirm the spirit, if not the actual findings, of a new book called Guidance on the Ruling of the Muslim Spy, written by an Al Qaeda field commander in Afghanistan and described on Secrecy News.

OBAMA IN MOSCOW.

Tara McKelveyJul 07, 2009

Russians and Americans can get along, President Obama cogently explained at the graduation ceremony for students at the New Economic School in Moscow: "The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game."

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