Slate magazine publishes author Dave Cullen’s fascinating portrait of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who murdered 12 classmates and a teacher before committing suicide at Columbine High School, five years ago today. “At last,” writes Cullen, “we know why the Columbine killers did it.”

Harris and Klebold would have been dismayed that Columbine was dubbed the “worst school shooting in American history.” They set their sights on eclipsing the world’s greatest mass murderers, but the media never saw past the choice of venue. The school setting drove analysis in the wrong direction.

Employing the work of University of British Columbia psychology professor Robert Hare — who was consulted by the FBI about Columbine, as well as by Cullen for his Slate story — Harris was deemed to be a psychopath. “Unlike psychotic individuals, psychopaths are rational and aware of what they are doing and why,” writes Hare. Diagnosing Harris as a psychopath was not a simple matter. But once the diagnosis was made, new light was shed on the thought process that drove him to mass murder.
You can read more over at Cullen’s blog, Conclusive Evidence.

At hearings being held in Washington D.C. today and Wednesday, the Senate and House armed services committees are being provided information about current Iraq operations from U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Richard Myers and State Department Undersecretary Marc Grossman. During one of the worst months of the yearlong campaign in Iraq, members of Congress are finding themselves with more questions and fewer answers.
With the rising death toll and increasing fear that the U.S. lacks an effective plan for success in Iraq, lawmakers intend to address the question of how America got into the dangerous predicament in Iraq, and how it will get out.
Meanwhile (with thanks to Debra Galant for pointing us towards this story), published in a scores of newspapers belonging to the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies (including The Boston Phoenix, The Village Voice and Seattle Weekly), investigative reporter Jason Vest’s story on Iraq, Fables of the Reconstruction, reports on a Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) memo written in early March which reveals that even those who support the current U.S. role in Iraq believe that the conditions are present which will sew the seeds of a coming civil war in the occupation of Iraq.
The memo describes corruption within the Iraqi Governing Council, resentments about the centralization of power in Baghdad, insufficient security in the Green Zone where CPA officials stay, and black-market sales of U.S.-supplied weapons by Iraqi police. As a CPA official writes, “Baghdadis have an uneasy sense that they are heading towards civil war.”