“I’ve updated leaders of Congress in both parties, and we reaffirmed that on days like this there are no Republicans or Democrats — we are Americans, united in concern for our fellow citizens.”

— President Obama, speaking on the Boston bombings.

Former Rep. Jean Schmidt (R-OH) had just finished the Boston Marathon when she heard an explosion and turned around to see several people “without limbs,” the Cincinnati Enquirer reports.

Said Schmidt: “I’ve never been so close to death or witnessed it.”

An independent review of interrogation and detention
programs in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks
concludes that “it is indisputable that the United States engaged in the
practice of torture” and that the nation’s highest officials bore
ultimate responsibility for it, the New York Times reports.

President Obama’s decision “to step before cameras despite sketchy information about what happened in Boston just over three hours earlier, clearly reflected lessons learned from the series of terrorist attacks early in his administration: the potential cost of keeping a low profile and waiting is greater than the risk of speaking too soon,” Politico reports.

“However, the content of his three-and-a-half-minute speech Monday–in particular his notable aversion to labeling the incident as ‘terror’ or ‘terrorism’–seemed to reflect a continuing desire not to stoke fears or make premature public judgments even as he made sure to offer the public presence that he’d initially avoided during his first experiences managing terrorist attacks as president.”

President Obama “urged North Korea to end its brazen nuclear threats against the U.S. and its allies, warning the unpredictable communist regime that his administration would ‘take all necessary steps’ to protect American citizens,” the Washington Post reports.

“Obama’s stern comments came as new U.S. intelligence was made public showing North Korea probably has advanced its nuclear knowhow to the point that it could arm a ballistic missile with a nuclear warhead, though the weapon wouldn’t be very reliable.”

New York Times: “It is unclear whether other American intelligence agencies agree with the assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, which has primary responsibility for monitoring the missile capabilities of adversary nations. In the case of Iraq, a decade ago, the agency was among those that argued most vociferously that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons.”

Wearing a cowboy hat, former Vice President Dick Cheney gave Republican leaders a dire warning on the ongoing crisis in North Korea, CNN reports.

Said Cheney: “We’re in deep doo doo.”

However, the former veep “didn’t give any specific policy recommendations or critiques of how the
Obama administration is handling the situation in North Korea.”

Just published: The Way of the Knife by Mark Mazzetti.

Washington Post: “Since the 9/11 attacks, a dramatic shift has occurred in the way the United States deploys its military and intelligence forces.”

FBI agents interviewed former CIA Director David Petraeus at his home in Virginia on Friday, two government officials have confirmed to USA Today.

The interview was part of an ongoing investigation into whether his former mistress, Paula Broadwell, “had received classified information or whether those documents were kept in an unauthorized place… That investigation is taking considerable time to complete, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to speak publicly.”

A member of the secretive SEAL Team 6, which executed raid to kill Osama bin Laden raid in 2011, tells CNN that the story of who shot the terrorist leader as described in last month’s Esquire magazine is false.

He says the story is “complete B-S.”

National Journal:
“No Americans are currently marked for death on the U.S. government’s
terrorist strike list, according to the chairman of the House
Intelligence Committee. The White House has wrapped its kill list in
secrecy and already the United States has killed four Americans in drone
strikes. Only one of them, senior al-Qaida operative Anwar al-Awlaki,
was the intended target, according to U.S. officials. The
others–including Awlaki’s teenage son–were collateral damage, killed
because they were too near a person being targeted.”

“A panel of White House advisers warned President Obama in a secret report that U.S. spy agencies were paying inadequate attention to China, the Middle East and other national security flash points because they had become too focused on military operations and drone strikes,” the Washington Post reports.

The panel was led by new Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel and former senator David Boren (D-OK) and concluded that “the roles of the CIA, the National Security Agency and other spy services had been distorted by more than a decade of conflict.”

The New York Times reports the issue of Iran will top President Obama’s agenda when he meets with
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Public disagreements between Mr. Obama and
Mr. Netanyahu over how to deal with Iran have waned in recent months.
This comes from a combination of the president’s repeated warnings to
Tehran; Iran’s strategy of not crossing Israel’s red lines while
continuing to build its nuclear program; and changes in Israel’s
political landscape, which have weakened Mr. Netanyahu and made a
unilateral military strike less likely.”

A new HuffPost/YouGov poll finds that just 12% of Americans said that they or someone they know was wounded in the Iraq war and only 6% said they know someone who was killed in the Iraq War.

While 52% of Americans said they at least know someone who served in combat in Iraq, 44% reported no personal connection at all to those who did the fighting and dying there.

“A dozen car bombs and suicide blasts tore into Shi’ite districts in Baghdad and south of the Iraqi capital on Tuesday, killing more than 50 people on the 10th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion that ousted Saddam Hussein,” Reuters reports.

Washington Post: “Haunted by the ghosts of its brutal past, Iraq is teetering between
progress and chaos, a country threatened by local and regional conflicts
that could drag it back into the sustained bloodshed its citizens know
so well.”

British and U.S. intelligence agencies “were informed by top sources months before the invasion that Iraq had no active WMD programme, and that the information was not passed to subsequent inquiries,” according to the Guardian.

First Read notes the effect of the Iraq war on American politics “can’t be understated, even 10 years later.”

“Without Iraq, there would be no President Obama. He rode Iraq to the nomination, making it the most important distinction he had with Hillary Clinton. Shoot, John Kerry isn’t the nominee in 2004 were it not for Iraq and the Democrats’ urgency at the time to find someone with war credentials as their standard-bearer. Iraq changed a lot in American politics. And that’s why the anniversary is important.”

A new Gallup poll finds that 53% of Americans believe the United States “made a mistake sending troops to fight in Iraq” while 42% say it was not a mistake.

Ten years after the start of the Iraq war, a new Washington Post-ABC News poll finds nearly six in 10 Americans say the war was not worth fighting. Nearly as many say the same about the war in Afghanistan.

A key reason: “A substantial sense that neither war did much to achieve their goals of enhancing U.S. security. Only about half of Americans say either war contributed to the long-term security of the United States, and just two in 10 say either contributed “a great deal” to U.S. security – clearly insufficient, in the minds of most, to justify their costs in lives and lucre.”