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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (41115)	2/11/2010 7:39:31 AM
From: DuckTapeSunroof	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

Pakistan Believes Taliban Chief Is Dead FEBRUARY 10, 2010, 3:35 P.M. ET By ZAHID HUSSAIN Wall Street Journal online.wsj.com ISLAMABAD -- A senior Pakistani official said Wednesday there was credible information that Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Pakistan Taliban, died of wounds inflicted by a U.S. missile strike last month in the first official statement about the fate of the militant leader. Still, the statement stopped short of being sure. "I have credible information that he's dead, but I don't have any confirmation," Rehman Malik, the federal interior minister told reporters in Islamabad as the speculation intensified about whether Mr. Mehsud, 30 years old, was dead. He was seriously wounded when missiles fired by a U.S. pilotless drone struck his hideout in the area between South and North Waziristan in January near the Afghan border. A Pakistani intelligence official said Mr. Mehsud was hit in the legs and abdomen. Last week, Pakistani television for the first time reported his death and that he was buried in the Orakzai tribal region. But a Talban spokesman denied the report. A senior Pakistani army official said there was some credence to the report about Mr. Mehsud's death but he added that the absence of any ground intelligence from the area has made it more difficult to gather information. U.S. officials couldn't confirm that Mr. Mehsud is dead. "The onus is really on the Pakistani Taliban at this point to produce this guy," said a U.S. counterterrorism official. "Hakimullah certainly hasn't shied away from the terrorist limelight before, so why would he do so now when there's so much speculation about his demise?" Mr. Malik said that security agencies were also investigating reports that Qari Hussain, a Mehsud deputy, also had been killed. Mr. Hussain was in charge of training suicide bombers and had close ties to other militant networks. More than 30,000 troops backed by air force jets have been engaged in fighting in the region along the Afghan border which Pakistani and Western intelligence officials believe have become the main hub of Taliban and al Qaeda activities. Also Wednesday, a suicide bomber struck a police patrol in the Khyber tribal region, killing at least 10 policemen, a local government official said. All the victims were in the vehicle which was hit. Another 15 civilians were injured in the attack. —Siobhan Gorman in Washington contributed to this article.

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (41115)	2/13/2010 3:10:00 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71588

Where the U.S. went wrong on the Christmas Day bomber By Michael B. Mukasey Friday, February 12, 2010 It seems to me unlikely that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab will be known to future generations of lawyers for generating any groundbreaking legal principle or issue. But when it comes to illuminating our public discourse about the "global war on terror," he is right up there with Clarence Earl Gideon, Ernesto Miranda or even Jose Padilla. His case presents in one tidy package virtually all the issues that arise from the role intelligence plays in this struggle and compels us to examine what the law requires and what it doesn't. When Abdulmutallab tried to detonate a bomb concealed in his undershorts, he committed a crime; no doubt about that. He could not have acted alone; no doubt about that either. The bomb was not the sort of infernal device readily produced by someone of his background, and he quickly confirmed that he had been trained and sent by al-Qaeda in Yemen. What to do and who should do it? It was entirely reasonable for the FBI to be contacted and for that agency to take him into custody. But contrary to what some in government have suggested, that Abdulmutallab was taken into custody by the FBI did not mean, legally or as a matter of policy, that he had to be treated as a criminal defendant at any point. Consider: In 1942, German saboteurs landed on Long Island and in Florida. That they were eventually captured by the FBI did not stop President Franklin Roosevelt from directing that they be treated as unlawful enemy combatants. They were ultimately tried before a military commission in Washington and executed. Their status had nothing to do with who held them, and their treatment was upheld in all respects by the Supreme Court. If possible, FBI custody is even less relevant today in determining someone's status. In 1942 the FBI was exclusively a crime-fighting organization. After Sept. 11, 2001, the agency's mission was expanded beyond detection of crime and apprehension of criminals to include gathering intelligence, helping to prevent and combat threats to national security, and furthering U.S. foreign policy goals. Guidelines put in place in 2003 and revised in September 2008 "do not require that the FBI's information gathering activities be differentially labeled as 'criminal investigations,' 'national security investigations,' or 'foreign intelligence collections,' or that the categories of FBI personnel who carry out investigations be segregated from each other based on the subject areas in which they operate. Rather, all of the FBI's legal authorities are available for deployment in all cases to which they apply to protect the public from crimes and threats to the national security and to further the United States' foreign intelligence objectives." "As with criminal investigations generally, detecting and solving the crimes, and eventually arresting and prosecuting the perpetrators, are likely to be among the objectives of investigations relating to threats to the national security. But . . . other measures needed to protect the national security . . . may include . . . providing threat information and warnings to other federal . . . agencies and entities; diplomatic or military actions; and actions by other intelligence agencies to counter international terrorism or other national security threats." Contrary to what the White House homeland security adviser and the attorney general have suggested, if not said outright, not only was there no authority or policy in place under the Bush administration requiring that all those detained in the United States be treated as criminal defendants, but relevant authority was and is the opposite. The Supreme Court held in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld that "indefinite detention for the purpose of interrogation is not authorized" but also said in the same case that detention for the purpose of neutralizing an unlawful enemy combatant is permissible and that the only right of such a combatant -- even if he is a citizen, and Abdulmutallab is not -- is to challenge his classification as such a combatant in a habeas corpus proceeding. This does not include the right to remain silent or the right to a lawyer, but only such legal assistance as may be necessary to file a habeas corpus petition within a reasonable time. That was the basis for my ruling in Padilla v. Rumsfeld that, as a convenience to the court and not for any constitutionally based reason, he had to consult with a lawyer for the limited purpose of filing a habeas petition, but that interrogation need not stop. What of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber," who was warned of his Miranda rights and prosecuted in a civilian court? He was arrested in December 2001, before procedures were put in place that would have allowed for an outcome that might have included not only conviction but also exploitation of his intelligence value, if possible. His case does not recommend the same procedure in Abdulmutallab's. The struggle against Islamist extremists is unlike any other war we have fought. Osama bin Laden and those like-minded intend to make plain that our government cannot keep us safe, and have sought our retreat from the Islamic world and our relinquishment of the idea that human rather than their version of divine law must control our activities. This movement is not driven by finite grievances or by poverty. The enemy does not occupy a particular location or have an infrastructure that can be identified and attacked but, rather, lives in many places and purposely hides among civilian populations. The only way to prevail is to gather intelligence on who is doing what where and to take the initiative to stop it. There was thus no legal or policy compulsion to treat Abdulmutallab as a criminal defendant, at least initially, and every reason to treat him as an intelligence asset to be exploited promptly. The way to do that was not simply to have locally available field agents question him but, rather, to get in the room people who knew about al-Qaeda in Yemen, people who could obtain information, check that information against other available data and perhaps get feedback from others in the field before going back to Abdulmutallab to follow up where necessary, all the while keeping secret the fact of his cooperation. Once his former cohorts know he is providing information, they can act to make that information useless. Nor is it an answer to say that Abdulmutallab resumed his cooperation even after he was warned of his rights. He did that after five weeks, when his family was flown here from Nigeria. The time was lost, and with it possibly useful information. Disclosing that he had resumed talking only compounded the problem by letting his former cohorts know that they had better cover their tracks. The writer was U.S. attorney general from 2007 to 2009 and the presiding judge at initial proceedings against Jose Padilla in 2002. washingtonpost.com

To: Peter Dierks who wrote (41115)	2/16/2010 10:42:28 AM
From: Peter Dierks	Respond to of 71588

Unpacking Obama's Rationale on Terrorists Mona Charen Tuesday, February 16, 2010 Is there an organizing principle behind the Obama administration's decisions on dealing with accused terrorists? Announcing that Khalid Sheik Mohammad, mastermind of 9/11, and four co-conspirators, would be granted a civilian trial in Manhattan while the U.S.S. Cole bombers would receive a military tribunal, Attorney General Eric Holder was bombastic but opaque. "For over two hundred years," he intoned, "our nation has relied on a faithful adherence to the rule of law to bring criminals to justice ..." How did he decide who got a federal civilian court with its lavish legal protections and who got a military tribunal? It was a case-by-case determination, he explained, depending upon "the nature of the offense, the location in which the offense occurred, the identity of the victims, and the manner in which the case was investigated." Not a legal principle to found in there anywhere. When critics observed that this amounted to an engraved invitation to al-Qaida to attack our civilians in preference to our warships, the attorney general countered that he had chosen the venue most likely to "maximize our chances for success." Really? At a Senate hearing, Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., shot down that fatuity by noting that KSM had already pleaded guilty at the military tribunal in Guantanamo. (He had also welcomed martyrdom -- one wish that ought to have been promptly granted.) At the same hearing, General Holder could not say whether, if U.S. forces captured Osama bin Laden tomorrow, he would be read his Miranda rights. Do you sense that they have not thought this through? Now that New York City has declined the KSM trial, the administration seems embarrassed and bereft of ideas. An Internet dating service perhaps? "ISO: venue for terror trial, hanging juries a must." Yes, the death penalty has been invoked by an attorney general who claims simultaneously a) that the civilian trial for a terrorist will showcase America's devotion to the rule of law; and b) no matter what the outcome, KSM will not walk free. To be fair to Holder, his boss suffers from the same incoherence. While daintily reading rights to terrorists we nab here, the U.S. government is attacking suspected terrorists in the wild removes of Pakistan with Hellfire missiles. As the National Journal reports: Hidden behind walls of top-secret classification, senior U.S. government officials meet in what is essentially a star chamber to decide which enemies of the state to target for assassination. There is no single master list, but all names pass through an elaborate, multi-agency vetting process that ends at the level of the National Security Council and ultimately requires presidential approval. That approval has apparently been readily forthcoming. President Obama approved 50 drone strikes in Pakistan since January 2009, compared with 33 in the last year of the Bush administration. The strikes have reportedly killed dozens of suspected terrorists (along with some civilians). So sitting in the Pentagon in Virginia, the U.S. military tracks suspected terrorists nearly 7,000 miles away and blasts them with Predator drones when they get a clear shot. Former CIA officer Robert Baer adds, "And typically there is no independent verification from many of these ungoverned places to even confirm whether they pulled the trigger on the right guy. There are no questions asked." Nor do they read them their rights. No trials. No process at all, just an intelligence report and a Hellfire missile. That is the way the Obama administration treats rumored terrorists in the border areas of Pakistan. In fact, ABC News has reported that the administration may even have targeted Anwar al-Awlaki, the American-born imam believed to have been a "spiritual guide" to the Fort Hood terrorist and the underwear bomber. For the record, this is fine with me. But how do they reconcile the contradiction? When the administration apprehends an incontrovertible, still-bleeding terrorist who just attempted to blow up an airliner over Detroit, what to do they do? They read him his rights, assign him a lawyer, and invite him to remain silent. When they have the architect of 9/11 in Guantanamo Bay, awaiting trial in a military court, they announce that they will whisk him to New York and supply him with all the rights of an American citizen. There are no principles at work here, just the vain and misguided pursuit of international respectability. Obama may well receive applause from Norwegian committees and Sorbonne students -- but not from wiser observers -- and not from those he is responsible for protecting. townhall.com