A Year of Terror Plots

As terrorist plots against the United States have piled up in recent months, politicians and the news media have sounded the alarm with a riveting message for Americans: Be afraid. Al Qaeda is on the march again, targeting the country from within and without, and your hapless government cannot protect you.
It used to be the commies that we needed to fear, because they were getting closer to our shores every time a domino was predicted to fall.


But the politically charged clamor has lumped together disparate cases and obscured the fact that the enemies on American soil in 2009, rather than a single powerful and sophisticated juggernaut, were a scattered, uncoordinated group of amateurs who displayed more fervor than skill.

China and the Soviet Union and Viet Nam and all the other commies were lumped into the world-wide Communist conspiracy.

Analysts urge a calmer, more strategic assessment of the recent rash of violent schemes insist that the country is far safer than it was in 2001. They also argue that since the goal of terrorism is to spread terror, hyperbole about threats only does the extremists’ work for them.

 As did talk of the Red terror.


Charles E. Allen, a 40-year C.I.A. veteran served as the top intelligence official at the Department of Homeland Security from 2007 to early last year. Exaggerated news coverage and commentary, he said, “creates an atmosphere of tension and fear, and to me that’s exactly the wrong way to go.” Mr. Allen said the United States needed “resilience” in the face of the terrorist threat. He noted with admiration that public transportation barely paused in London in 2005 when 52 people were killed by four suicide bombers attacking the subway and a bus. “I believe in heightened attention to security; I just don’t believe hysteria is useful,” Mr. Allen said.

Unless used by a politician to score points.


The term “Al Qaeda,” used as a catchall in many of the plots, blurs important distinctions. By most accounts, apart from possibly the Zazi case, none of the 2009 cases appears to be directly tied to “Al Qaeda central,” as experts refer to the Pakistan-based group led by Mr. bin Laden. Others involved ersatz “Qaeda” agents who actually worked for the F.B.I. Still others, including the Christmas Day attempt, had links to Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a loosely linked affiliate of Mr. bin Laden’s group in Yemen and Saudi Arabia.

Blurring  distinctions is important for the right wing crowd.


In 2008, in his book “Leaderless Jihad,” Marc Sageman, a psychiatrist and former C.I.A. officer who has long studied terrorism networks, wrote that Al Qaeda was in decline, to be replaced by dispersed terrorists for whom it provided mostly inspiration. The new generation of extremists, he believed, would be less skilled and would likely pose less of a threat than the network responsible for the Sept. 11 attacks.

Dr. Sageman said he saw no reason to revise that judgment today. The plots of the last year should be carefully analyzed and the findings used to improve counterterrorism, not turned into fuel for thoughtless anti-Muslim panic and discrimination, he said. “If we overreact and upset 1.5 billion Muslims,” Dr. Sageman said, referring to the global total, “then we’ll have a lot bigger problem on our hands.”



A memorial for the 13 people shot at Fort Hood in Texas in November. It was the deadliest domestic terrorism attack of the year

The new Know Nothings

This woman writes for UK's The Guardian. She makes some interesting points, to say the least.

In their quest to convince voters that America is in danger, Republicans are lying about 9/11 and baldly denying history


Megan Carpentier

More than 150 years ago, a disparate group of anti-immigrant, conspiracy-minded Americans became sick of traditional politicians and started a grassroots movement to take political power from the hands of those they no longer trusted. When asked by outsiders what their movement was called, they were ordered to answer, "I know nothing," leading others to call them the  Know Nothing party. The movement, however, was co-opted by the traditional parties and undermined by policy disagreements, and many members eventually folded into the Republican party. Some things, apparently, don't change as much as we'd like to believe.

Republican leaders, and the 20-somethings crafting their made-for-television talking points, are apparently counting on the fact that their base still knows nothing, or is at least willing to forget what they do know. Not content to blame the Bush-led Wall Street bailouts on President Obama, or the shoe-bomber reprise on Obama's security and intelligence policies that were nonetheless instituted by his predecessors, Republican thought-leaders like Mary Matalin, former White House press secretary Dana Perino and former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani have decided that there is one big thing that just couldn't have happened on the Republicans' watch: 9/11.

Perino started the re-write of history in November, baldly stating: "We did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush's term." Matalin picked up the torch shortly after Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab set his crotch on fire, claiming that Bush "inherited the most tragic attack on our own soil in our nation's history."

Who buys this stuff?

Most astonishingly, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani – who made his national political reputation on the tragedy of the 2,752 people who died from a terrorist attack in the city he led – told Americans on Friday: "We had no domestic attacks under Bush." In the wake of widespread disbelief that Giuliani would repudiate the deaths in his own city in an effort to defend an unpopular former president who presided over not one by two attacks by foreign terrorists on American soil – not including the anthrax attacks – Giuliani was forced to admit he did, indeed, remember September 11th. That is, undoubtedly, a relief to both his wife and his political advisers, if small solace to the families of those whose deaths he seems happy to use as a political weapon against the opposing party.

Repeat something, even a lie, long enough, and some people will believe it. And Guiliani, thrice-divorced, will say anything.

In the end, though, the brain trust – such as it is – of the Republican party wouldn't be attempting to re-write recent history if their focus groups and polls didn't show that  truthiness pays political dividends. Shortly after Perino's comments, polls showed voters trust Republicans more than Democrats on issues of national security and that 63% of voters think that "political correctness" – a refusal to disobey laws prohibiting racial profiling – was the root cause of the failure to prevent one soldier's attack on his colleagues at Fort Hood.

Republicans have apparently decided that they can improve their standings with Americans if they can convince them, despite all evidence to the contrary, that terrorist attacks only happen when Democrats are in power. Republicans seem perfectly and increasingly happy to slough off all responsibility for the things that happened and that they caused during their watch, as long as it brings them back to power. The question for Americans ought to be what they'll do with that power when they get it back. Last year, they weren't so keen on keeping Republicans in power. This year, many of them seemingly know nothing about that.


George Santayana once said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." In this country, Republicans are trying hard to make sure Americans cannot remember the past in which a Republican president ignored a security assessment warning of the attacks of 11 September, in which he chose to prosecute a war against a country that wasn't, at the time, harbouring the terrorists that attacked us, or in which a terrorist without a Muslim name or Islamic appearance boarded a plane and attempted to detonate his feet. And they certainly don't want us to remember anything about a Republican president who told Americans that he didn't know nothing about the location of the person who masterminded the biggest terrorist attack on American soil, nor did he care. If you know nothing, and no one else does either, you apparently can't be held accountable for anything.

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack

The housing project near central Copenhagen where the man accused of trying to kill a Danish cartoonist lived.

January 7, 2010

Danes Study Immigrants After Cartoonist Attack

By SARAH LYALL - NY Times

COPENHAGEN  As part of the prolonged national headache caused by a Danish newspaper's decision to publish 12 caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad in 2005, last weekend's attack on one of the cartoonists responsible had a certain awful inevitability about it.

Once again, the motivation was fury, still fresh after all this time, over the dissemination of the cartoons. And once again, the circumstances ? in this case, the news that the person accused of the attack was a Muslim immigrant suspected of having links to terrorists ? has led Danes into an uneasy examination of their relationship to their Muslim population.

In a country that already has one of the strictest immigration policies in Western Europe, the attack has also spurred politicians from across the political spectrum to demand ever more stringent rules about who should be allowed to live here.

?I?m sorry to say, but it?s d?j? vu ? every time we experience an episode, then in 10 minutes we have them saying we have to have a new law,? said Naser Khader, a member of Parliament and the spokesman on foreign affairs and immigration for the Conservative People?s Party. He was speaking of the increasingly powerful Danish People?s Party, whose votes the government relies on to pass legislation and whose populist, anti-immigrant rhetoric has informed and inflamed debate in recent years.

After the attack, the People?s Party leader, Pia Kjaersgaard, said that it should be easier to deport Danes linked to terrorists. ?It must be crystal clear to everyone in this country that we cannot accept having Islamists who associate with terror being more or less tolerated in this country,? she said.

Mr. Khader is just as hostile toward Islamists as anyone in Danish politics; he recently proposed banning burqas. But he said the latest comments had gone too far. ?You have to be responsible when such incidents happen, and not let emotions take over,? he said.

New details about the suspect in the attack on the cartoonist, 74-year-old Kurt Westergaard, have increased complaints that the security service has been lax in monitoring people suspected of being terrorist sympathizers.

The attack took place late last Friday when Mr. Westergaard was threatened in his townhouse in Aarhus, Denmark?s second largest city, by a man carrying a knife and an ax. Mr. Westergaard has been a focus of Muslim ire since drawing perhaps the most provocative of the 12 cartoons, showing Muhammad wearing a turban shaped like a bomb. He fled into a locked safe room and summoned the police with a panic button.

The suspected assailant, 28-year-old Muhudiin Mohamed Geele, was charged with two counts of attempted homicide, on Mr. Westergaard and on a police officer, and has pleaded not guilty.

Mr. Geele arrived in Denmark in 1995, a refugee from the civil war in Somalia, the authorities said, and the next year was granted indefinite leave to remain. He lived in the city of Aalborg and, as a boy, was a role model for others in a youth club there, said Nuuradiin Hussein, who worked at the club.

?He was one of my favorite boys at the club,? said Mr. Hussein, who is now a social worker. ?Most of the boys his age wanted to talk about girls and football, but he wanted to talk about the future and about getting an education.?

Mr. Geele married and had three children, and at some point, according to the Danish Security and Intelligence Service, known as PET, developed ties to the Shabab, a Somali terrorism organization, and to Al Qaeda in East Africa.

He also began making frequent trips abroad. Last summer, he was detained by the authorities in Nairobi, Kenya. The proximate cause was that he had lost his passport, but intelligence officials said he also was believed to have connections to suspects in a plot to blow up several buildings, including a hotel where Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was staying.

Nicholas Kamwende, head of Kenya?s antiterrorism police, said that the Kenyan authorities verbally shared ?intelligence information? about him with the Danish Embassy.

?We told them, ?He is a dangerous man,? but their reaction was negative,? Mr. Kamwende said in an interview.

In an interview with the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, Mr. Geele?s now ex-wife said that PET had tried to recruit him in 2006.

?The police wanted him as an informant,? she told the newspaper, ?and he became sad and more and more introverted. The police thought that he had participated in combat actions in Somalia against Ethiopian forces, and that he traveled back and forth to take part in war. But he had only been in Somalia in 2005 to visit the family.?

Officials declined to say whether the agency had indeed made overtures to Mr. Geele, but said that it was normal for PET to conduct ?interviews with individuals that may be of interest to the service.? And Jakob Scharf, the director general, said that there had been no evidence that might have been ?deemed sufficient grounds for arresting, prosecuting or expelling? him, despite his suspected terrorism links.

More recently, Mr. Geele had been living in an apartment in a down-at-heel housing project of concrete buildings typical of an immigrant neighborhood, about seven miles from central Copenhagen.

Residents said that Mr. Geele had been renting a room in an apartment owned by an Egyptian taxi driver and that he was known for his religious convictions ? one neighbor said he had been asked several times to turn down music and recordings of the Koran ? and also for being, at least at first, aloof and unfriendly.

After the arrest, the police spent more than eight hours searching the apartment, neighbors said.

What the attack on Mr. Westergaard shows perhaps more than anything is how the publication of the cartoons has irrevocably changed Denmark?s place in world affairs. The damage was compounded in 2008, when in response to a separate plot to kill Mr. Westergaard, all of Denmark?s major newspapers reprinted the cartoons.

It was then that Osama bin Laden denounced the cartoons as part of ?a crusade? against Islam, and other Qaeda officials called on Muslims to make Denmark a target of their fury. That June, a suicide bomber in Islamabad, Pakistan, killed eight people at the Danish Embassy.

In the latest manifestation of Denmark?s troubles, the Sudanese government on Tuesday publicly denounced ?The Revenge,? a movie about the Sudanese war by the Danish filmmaker Susanne Bier. The government compared the film ? which has not yet been screened, and which is due to be released this summer ? to the cartoons.

Each new incident forces the more extreme circles of both the anti-immigrant and Islamist groups to become more deeply entrenched in their positions, said Ole Waever, a professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen. Meanwhile, as the rhetoric grows ever more strident, he said, Denmark?s sense of itself is being sorely tested.

?There?s a strange dialectic in the reaction,? Mr. Waever said in an interview. ?There is an identity crisis where we can no longer recognize ourselves. This view of ourselves as a liberal, relaxed society no longer fits the reality.?

Walter Gibbs contributed reporting from Oslo, Johan Spanner from Copenhagen, and Reuben Kyama from Nairobi, Kenya.

Momentum lost

President Obama seems to have lost momentum. The health care bill passed the Senate, in an ugly fashion (though that is how politics works, more often than not the sausage-making process is done behind closed doors, so the public is spared the ugliness of legislative reality). The climate summit in Copenhagen was not a great success, and seemed a waste of time. And now the underwear bomber has thrown the Administration on the defensive.

A couple of days ago Leslie Gelb wrote a piece warning President Obama against the Jimmy Carter-presidency syndrome. It well analyzes the drift of the Obama presidency. For one, I have been amazed at the start of the 2010 campaign: it kicked off on Wednesday 5 November, 2008, and again on January 21, 2009. And the Administration has never been in charge. Republicans have blustered, rode tea parties, said no over and over, and although they have not accomplished much, neither has the President.


Don’t be fooled by the year-end reprieve of President Obama because the economy looks a bit brighter and the Senate passed a health bill. He’s been pummeled hard all along the political spectrum. He’s in trouble. If he doesn’t overhaul himself and his administration quickly, right-wing bizarros will control Congress in 2011 and he’ll be looking for another job in 2013. He’ll end up a one-termer like Jimmy Carter and George H. W. Bush. Obama can’t afford to wait to make a mid-course correction a year from now. He’s got to make a quarter-course correction in the next months. He needs to prioritize and focus his energies on the economy, teach his opponents to fear him, and change some top personnel. Above all, he’s got to modify his own ways. He puts far too much store on being the smartest guy in the room and not enough on experience. He’d do well to remember that Jimmy Carter also rang all the IQ bells.

Gelb is not an alarmist. Someone should talk to the President.

Maureen Dowd ain't happy neither; she can be inconsistent, a bit quick off the mark, but she is very sharp, and not just with her pen. In an op-ed piece today, she makes her opinion quite clear.


I was walking through a deserted downtown on Christmas Eve with a friend, past the lonely, gray Treasury Building, past the snowy White House with no president inside.

“I hope the terrorists don’t think this is a good time to attack,” I said, looking protectively at the White House, which always looks smaller and more vulnerable and beautiful than you expect, no matter how often you see it up close. I thought our guard might be down because of the holiday; now I realize our guard is down every day.


Not reassuring, or reassured, is she.


W.’s favorite word was “resolute,” but despite gazillions spent and Cheney’s bluster, our efforts to shield ourselves seemed flaccid.

Flaccid; interesting choice of word.


President Obama’s favorite word is “unprecedented,” as Carol Lee of Politico pointed out. Yet he often seems mired in the past as well, letting his hallmark legislation get loaded up with old-school bribes and pork; surrounding himself with Clintonites; continuing the Bushies’ penchant for secrecy and expansive executive privilege; doubling down in Afghanistan while acting as though he’s getting out; and failing to capitalize on snazzy new technology while agencies thumb through printouts and continue their old turf battles.

Aside from many speeches, and the health care bill he basically allowed Congress to devise (not a bad decision in itself), there certainly hasn't been much change. Of course, it needs to be pointed out that he is getting little push from his own party. And that is amazing in itself: the Democrats won the presidency, have a majority in the House, have 58 votes in the Senate, and yet seem unable to make things work. If the Republicans had 58 votes in the Senate, they would be passing legislation right and, well, right and center. Hell, with only 40 votes, they show solidarity, and unity. The Democrats are fractious, bumbling, and unequal to the challenge.


If we can’t catch a Nigerian with a powerful explosive powder in his oddly feminine-looking underpants and a syringe full of acid, a man whose own father had alerted the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, a traveler whose ticket was paid for in cash and who didn’t check bags, whose visa renewal had been denied by the British, who had studied Arabic in Al Qaeda sanctuary Yemen, whose name was on a counterterrorism watch list, who can we catch?

Now that he is President, this is his responsibility, and this breakdown his fault.


Before he left for vacation, Obama tried to shed his Spock mien and juice up the empathy quotient on jobs. But in his usual inspiring/listless cycle, he once more appeared chilly in his response to the chilling episode on Flight 253, issuing bulletins through his press secretary and hitting the links. At least you have to seem concerned.

I haven't followed it closely, but I must say that today my  support for the President is flaccid. He never loses his cool, and getting a little pissed off seems right



The Daily News, no longer a right-wing bastion, is equally punishing of the President: It's time to get serious, Obama! The president uncharacteristically lacked a sense of urgency in his address of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's failed bombing of Flight 253.

Uncharacteristically might not be the correct word.

The attempt to blow Northwest Flight 253 out of the air was planned as an attack on the United States and very nearly succeeded in accomplishing that horrific goal. The moment demanded inspiring, decisive presidential leadership.

America waited four days for a glimmer.

President Obama's initial response Monday was too long in coming, too cool in delivery and too removed from the extreme gravity of the plot.

Not a good mark, no B+ this time.


Obama's description of Abdulmutallab as an "isolated extremist" was remarkable and disturbing. This radicalized young Nigerian is nothing of the sort. He operated, in fact, as an Al Qaeda-recruited, Al Qaeda-supplied, Al Qaeda-directed foot soldier - as, to put it directly, an enemy combatant, and not as the criminal "suspect" of Obama's description.
 
And Republicans will not miss or tire in taking advantage of this opportunity served up to them on a political platter by Secretary Napolitano and President Obama.

 Ultimately, Obama will be measured by a single, unforgiving standard of accountability. It will not be that he affords constitutional rights to terrorists. It will not be that he distinguishes himself by 180 degrees from his predecessor. It will not be that he extends a hand to the Muslim world and refrains from speaking of Islamist terror. It will be whether, on his watch, America suffers a terror attack from abroad, as almost happened on Christmas.

GOP seizes on terror issue

Desperate times call for desperate measures. Health care got done. Birthers are gone. Tea parties, ditto. Republicans need an issue. They think they got one.

Today's headlines in the Post: Great Balls of Fire; and the News: Pants on fire. Guess that Murdoch's boys aren't so fussy about wording.

Republicans have wasted no time in attacking Democrats on intelligence and screening failures leading up to the failed Christmas Day bombing of Flight 253 — a significant departure from the calibrated, less partisan responses that have followed other recent terrorist activity.

The strategy — coming as the Republican leadership seeks to exploit Democratic weaknesses heading into the 2010 midterms — is in many ways a natural for a party that views protecting the U.S. homeland as its ideological raison d’etre and electoral franchise.


Anything that sticks will be fine with the right.


“In the past six weeks, you’ve had the Fort Hood attack, the D.C. Five and now the attempted attack on the plane in Detroit … and they all underscored the clear philosophical difference between the administration and us,” said Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.

This is the party that allowed 9/11 to occur, that botched the war in Afghanistan.

“I think Secretary Napolitano and the rest of the Obama administration view their role as law enforcement, first responders dealing with the aftermath of an attack,” Hoekstra told POLITICO. “And we believe in a forward-looking approach to stopping these attacks before they happen.”


Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) went even further, telling FOX News that the Christmas attack proved President Obama’s talk-to-your-enemies approach might actually be encouraging terrorists.

DeMint is blocking a vote on the TSA nominee. Brilliant. His reason?

DeMint says he’s blocking Southers because the top cop at Los Angeles International Airport hasn’t vowed to block TSA unionization. And spokesman Wes Denton said the agency is better off headless than with big labor running the nation’s airports.

Anti-unionism interfering with national security, and this bozo is beefing?

From Guantánamo to Desk at Al Jazeera

Al Jazeera - Sami al-Hajj








Of the 779 known detainees who have been held at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — terrorism suspects, sympathizers of Al Qaeda, people deemed enemy combatants by the United States military — only one was a journalist.

The journalist, Sami al-Hajj, was working for Al Jazeera as a cameraman when he was stopped by Pakistani forces on the border with Afghanistan in late 2001. The United States military accused Mr. Hajj of, among other things, falsifying documents and delivering money to Chechen rebels, although he was never charged with a crime during his years in custody.

Now, more than a year after his release, Mr. Hajj, a 40-year-old native of Sudan, is back at work at the Arabic satellite news network, leading a new desk devoted to human rights and public liberties. The captive has become the correspondent.






Sami al-Hajj with his son, Mohammed, and Al Jazeera's news director, Waddah Khanfar, during a ceremony in Sudan after his release from the Guantánamo Bay detention center in May 2008.

the Point's Combating Terrorism Center

A news story about a drone strike in Pakistan quotes an analyst; his title, and his name, caught my eye.

A U.S. drone strike this week killed a senior al Qaeda operator in a Pakistani tribal area near the Afghan border, U.S. and Pakistani officials said Friday. U.S. officials said Saleh al-Somali, who was responsible for al Qaeda's operations outside of Afghanistan and Pakistan, was killed in the strike Tuesday. He was on the Central Intelligence Agency's list of the top 20 al Qaeda targets, according to an official familiar with the list.

On Friday, officials in Pakistan said intelligence officers on the ground had identified the dead militant as Abu Yahya al-Libi, a senior al Qaeda figure higher on the CIA's list of terrorist targets. Mr. Somali was likely involved in planning attacks against the U.S. and Europe, and maintained links to Pakistan-based militants plotting attacks in Afghanistan and Pakistan, a senior U.S. counterterrorism official said.

"He's a big fish when it comes to [al Qaeda's] efforts to strike in the West," said Vahid Brown, a research fellow at West Point's Combating Terrorism Center.

Vahid Brown. And West Point's Combating Terrorism Center. The URL has cta, the Center; usma for the Military Academy, and an extension of .edu (for educational institution). Not .mil for military

9/11 trials in NYC

Trying 9/11 Suspects in New York

In deciding to hold the trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in New York City, Attorney General Eric Holder is taking a variety of both political and legal risks, and will be forced to navigate difficult issues relating to intelligence and torture. Because many of the detainees were questioned while under duress, and some testimony against them was elicited through torture, the prosecution faces the possibility that some of the evidence will be thrown out. Holder remains confident that the untainted evidence—including a confession from Mohammed himself—is strong enough to ensure a conviction. The trial of Mohammed, the alleged mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, and four other suspects accused of plotting the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon is an important step in Obama's plan of eventually closing the Guantanamo Bay detention center, and the administration is running the extreme political risk that the Justice Department will fail to secure a conviction. "To the extent that there are political consequences," said Holder, "I'll just have to take my lumps."

The right wing has already jumped in with criticisms. It seems risky, but I have high regard for the AG and the President. Nonetheless, they can not lose this one. It seems they have calculated that they will not.

Bush-Era Debate: Using G.I.’s in U.S.

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Testing the Constitution?

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Cheney, of course; he seems to have believed anything he decided to do would be legal. Surely John Yoo could have written him a memo declaring the actions constitutional.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

For whatever reason, he made the right decision.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests would be nearly unprecedented in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

A broad interpretation? Isn't that akin to judicial activism?

Italy: Tepid Applause for Qaddafi

The Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, on Thursday urged the world to understand what motivates terrorists, and likened the 1986 strikes by the United States on Libya to Osama bin Laden’s terrorist attacks. Colonel Qaddafi, left, who was long accused of sponsoring terrorism, got tepid applause from the Italian lawmakers he addressed on the second day of a trip to Italy, Libya’s former colonial ruler. “It is not very intelligent to chase terrorists down the Afghan mountains or Central Asia,” he said. “That’s impossible. We must look at their reasons.”

Weird reasoning, but par for Muammar.

A weird one

This one seems comical, yet it certainly has an eerie feel.

In Riverdale, New Anxieties, and a Resolve to Carry On

The scene on Thursday along 232nd Street in Riverdale. Jewish residents have been drawn to the neighborhood for decades.

In Bronx Bomb Case, Steps and Missteps, on Tape (May 22, 2009)

Suspects in Terror Bombing Plot: Drug Arrests and Prison Conversions (May 22, 2009)

N.Y. Bomb Plot Suspects Acted Alone, Police Say (May 22, 2009)

NYC: Interfaith Understanding Wins Out, and a Plot Loses (May 22, 2009)

Terror-War Fallout Lingers Over Bush Lawyers

Where are the Bush lawyers now? Far away from the reins of government, it is to be hoped.

When John C. Yoo, a former Justice Department lawyer, was selected by President George W. Bush in May 2004 to join a government board charged with releasing historical Nazi and Japanese war crimes records, trouble quickly followed.

The Abu Ghraib torture scandal was exploding, and fellow panelists learned that Mr. Yoo had written secret legal opinions saying presidents have sweeping wartime power to circumvent the Geneva Conventions. They protested that it was absurd to name Mr. Yoo, who they believed might have sanctioned war crimes, to a war crimes commission.

Secret? The Geneva Conventions are the core of international humanitarian law. One might suppose wartime is precisely the time to observe the Conventions.

White House officials canceled the appointment, though it had already been announced in a news release, and kept the episode quiet. “We saved them from incredible embarrassment,” said Thomas H. Baer, one of the dissenting panelists.

Interactive Feature Where Are They Now?

The Obama administration last week began releasing more secret memorandums written by Mr. Yoo and others that made such wide-ranging claims about presidential power that Senator Arlen Specter, Republican of Pennsylvania, called them “shocking.”

Specter is hardly my favorite. He seems to have leeway in foreign policy matters, but mostly conforms to the Republican line in most matters.

“I think the legal profession in the United States has been seriously hurt by their conduct,” said Stephen Gillers, a professor of legal ethics at New York University. He called the disputed legal opinions “sloppy, one-sided and incompetent” and added, “There has to be accountability.”

Are the opinions well written? Or were they conveniently written?

Mr. Yoo declined to comment. But in a March 7 opinion column in The Wall Street Journal, he defended his recently disclosed work and warned that the Obama administration risked harming national security if it punished lawyers like himself.

He hides behind specious arguments. Good legal work is its own best defense.

For some of Mr. Bush’s lawyers, the most likely consequence may be wariness from potential employers. The former White House counsel and attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, for example, has not found a job since resigning in 2007 amid accusations that he misled Congress about surveillance without warrants and the firing of United States attorneys. He recently told The Wall Street Journal that the controversy surrounding him had made law firms “skittish” about hiring him, calling himself “one of the many casualties of the war on terror.”

What a crock.

But Mr. Richman, of Columbia, said any punishment against Bush lawyers is unlikely unless e-mail messages or early drafts turn up proving that they blatantly altered their legal conclusions to fit a policy agenda. Mr. Richman said that would be unlikely for Mr. Yoo, who had pushed an aggressive theory of presidential power long before the administration recruited him.

“The selection of Yoo was putting in place someone where you sort of had an idea what he would say,” Mr. Richman said. “Most academics are in the center of most things, but there are some outliers. And he was an outlier.”

The Afghan Quagmire

Even before getting into office, Obama is getting flak, advice, admonishment and grief from every quarter. I respect Bob Herbert a great deal, so this column of his makes me think. A lot. AMong the first things I think are: well, if the US leaves Afghanistan in order not to destabilize Pakistan, then what becomes of Afghanistan?

Andrew Bacevich, a retired Army colonel who is now a professor of history and international relations at Boston University, wrote an important piece for Newsweek warning against the proposed buildup. “Afghanistan will be a sinkhole,” he said, “consuming resources neither the U.S. military nor the U.S. government can afford to waste.”

Yet, if the US leaves Afghanistan, who takes over, who fills the vacuum? Both the US and USSR abandoned the country, and in the 1990s the Taliban moved in, and no tonly made the country a laboratory for extreme Islamism, but also made it a haven for AL Qaeda and its ilk.

The time to go all out in Afghanistan was in the immediate aftermath of the 2001 terror attacks. That time has passed.

So, what now? Who handles it?

What’s the upside to the U.S., a nation in dire economic distress, of an escalation in Afghanistan? If we send 20,000, or 30,000, or however many thousand more troops in there, what will their mission be?

Well, to stabilize a key nation in a strategically important region, for one. To not allow Taliban and other forces to take over the nation, unchecked. Seem a couple of good reasons.

In his article for Newsweek, Mr. Bacevich said: “The chief effect of military operations in Afghanistan so far has been to push radical Islamists across the Pakistani border. As a result, efforts to stabilize Afghanistan are contributing to the destabilization of Pakistan, with potentially devastating implications.

“No country poses a greater potential threat to U.S. national security — today and for the foreseeable future — than Pakistan. To risk the stability of that nuclear-armed state in the vain hope of salvaging Afghanistan would be a terrible mistake.”

Agreed. But what is the alternative? To forsake Afghanistan is not to de facto stabilize Pakistan. Can not the two aims be satisfied concurrently, to both stabilize Afghanistan and not destabilize, nay, to even stabilize, Pakistan?

Our interest in Afghanistan is to prevent it from becoming a haven for terrorists bent on attacking us. That does not require the scale of military operations that the incoming administration is contemplating. It does not require a wholesale occupation. It does not require the endless funneling of human treasure and countless billions of taxpayer dollars to the Afghan government at the expense of rebuilding the United States, which is falling apart before our very eyes.

The forces now in Afghanistan are insufficient to make the US mission work. Thus, the US either has to double up, or get out. The numbers being discussed are not what would be a wholesale occupation.

If Mr. Obama does send more troops to Afghanistan, he should go on television and tell the American people, in the clearest possible language, what he is trying to achieve. He should spell out the mission’s goals, and lay out an exit strategy.

He will owe that to the public because he will own the conflict at that point. It will be Barack Obama’s war.

So, there.

You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down'

Found this story in the website of the Sydney Morning Herald. It is, at the least, informative and sobering.

It is difficult to understand just who these fanatics have more contempt for: the infidels they so clearly and cavalierly denounce as worthy of no more than being destroyed, or the very constituency of Muslims whom they exhort to join in the blood bath.




You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down'

Richard Macey - November 1, 2008


ON THE eve of their executions, the Bali bombers have called for revenge against the West and have warned the US to expect defeat.

In separate letters on October 22, and posted on an Islamic website, Amrozi, Mukhlas and Imam Samudra have urged Muslims to attack non-believers.

Amrozi declared in his letter that every "fellow Muslim" needed to raise his hands "to offend the infidels and Thagut [non-believers] that wronged the Muslim, by cutting their necks [beheading]".

This, he warned, would be the only way to stop "their cruelty to us".

Samudra directed his letter to people in the West, suggesting they should not be surprised "if America, the so-called superpower, is beaten, almost dying," and it would lose "the war against the mujahideen".

"You, the little people, will be easy to 'smack down' by the mujahideen."

"You will be defeated in this world and will be taken to hell."

"Who doesn't know that the toothless giant, the US infidel and their allies, are now dying.

How can it be, Andi Matalata [Indonesia's Human Rights and Law Minister] … and all the judges from Bali do not understand this? Don't understand that America is 'klepek-klepek' [a slang word used to describe the death throes of an animal as it is slaughtered].

"You think, if you execute the three of us, you can walk freely, there's no way."

Attacking corruption in Indonesia he wrote "you even have to pay if you want to be a civil servant, even bribe … so there's no way, man. Nothing is free. You can probably decide on the execution as ordered by your bosses but … ahem! The answer is, 'what you see' not 'what you hear'.

He completed his letter by writing, in large print, "Remember: there's not one free Muslim blood drop!"

The ABC reported the International Crisis Group's terrorism expert, Sidney Jones, as saying she was amazed that the bombers were still able to incite violence from their cells.

"I just think that if there's an increase in the security threat as the result of the executions, the Government is at least in part to blame for allowing these three men access to the media over and over and over again."

The mother of two of the Bali bombers says her sons were right to "kill infidels".

Seventy-year-old Tariem was speaking in Tenggulun, East Java.

"I don't cry. I leave it all to God," she said as Amrozi and Mukhlas, two of her 13 children, waited for the firing squad.

"I feel that killing infidels isn't a mistake because they don't pray."

with AFP

This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2008/11/01/1224956342990.html

Twilight Struggle

Another analysis of Bush and Cheney's policy: act first, ask no questions later. The strike inside Syria is significant, but there is more to it than violating another nation's sovereignty.

We have entered a new phase in the war on terror. In July, according to three administration sources, the Bush administration formally gave the military new power to strike terrorist safe havens outside of Iraq and Afghanistan. Before then, a military strike in a country like Syria or Pakistan would have required President Bush's personal approval. Now, those kinds of strikes in the region can occur at the discretion of the incoming commander of Central Command (Centcomm), General David Petraeus. One intelligence source described the order as institutionalizing the "Chicago Way," an allusion to Sean Connery's famous soliloquy about bringing a gun to a knife fight.

Why the change in policy?

For starters, the administration is genuinely worried about al Qaeda's resurgence, not just in Pakistan, but across Asia and Africa. But with the clock winding down on the administration, it has a greater appetite for racking up victories against al Qaeda--and less worries about any residual political consequences from striking. Roger Cressey, a former deputy to Richard Clarke in the Clinton and Bush administrations, says, "[W]ith the administration in the final weeks, the bar for military operations will be lowered because the downsides for the president are minimal."

Minimal? Minimal for whom?

The big mystery now is whether the next administration will dismantle this policy or permit Petraeus to follow it to fruition. Obama has said nothing about Sunday's strikes in Syria (a silence that has rightly earned him taunting from the McCain campaign). On one level, this new policy conflicts with Obama's stated desire for opening up diplomatic channels to places like Tehran and Damascus. On the other hand, this is precisely the type of policy that he has repeatedly promised at least for Pakistan, whose territory is believed to host Osama bin Laden: If America has actionable intelligence on al Qaeda leaders, and the country housing those terrorist sits on its hands, we will act. His campaign rhetoric has now become the official war policy he will inherit. Is this a development that pleases him?

Campaign rhetoric ends the day he wins office.

Pakistani and American Troops Exchange Fire

More of W's legacy.

Bush Said to Give Orders Allowing Raids in Pakistan

Part of his legacy: do whatever he wants, and damn the details.

President Bush secretly approved orders in July that for the first time allow American Special Operations forces to carry out ground assaults inside Pakistan without the prior approval of the Pakistani government, according to senior American officials.

That is a direct violation of the sovereignty of a purported ally. Amazing.

Colombia considers Afghan mission

This is the kind of story that I just don't see in, say, the NY Times, LA Times, or Washington Post; I found it on Al-Jazeera. It is good to diversify one's news sources and gain a wider perspective.

Colombia may offer mine-removal and counter-narcotics assistance [EPA]

Mukasey Seeks Law on Detainees

They just don't get it.

Attorney General Michael Mukasey urged Congress to pass new limits on the legal rights of terror detainees, a move that seeks to bolster the Bush administration's antiterrorism policies in light of a rebuke by the Supreme Court.

The court ruled, the Bushies don't agree, so they want the rules rewritten.

Democratic leaders in Congress say there is little chance of addressing such potentially controversial legislation. With only about six months remaining in the current administration, questions of what to do about the more than 200 detainees at the U.S. detention center in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will likely fall to the next president.

The Democrats are expected to do this in the summer before the presidential election? Gimme a break. Pure politics.

Shortly after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Congress passed an "Authorization for Use of Military Force" against those who carried out the attacks. The administration has used that congressional resolution as legal backing for its surveillance and detention policies.

The Supreme Court in June, for the third time in four years, struck down the White House's treatment of prisoners it deems enemy combatants, specifically restrictions on their ability to challenge their detention. The ruling opened the way for detainees to seek a hearing in a U.S. court.

Seems clear enough, the Court having ruled three times in four years -- and this is the Bush court, at that.

Chris Anders, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel, said the administration is "obviously worried about their detention authority for people who they don't plan to charge but who they want to keep in detention."Mr. Mukasey said his request for a congressional declaration doesn't signal that the administration is worried about its legal footing for holding terror detainees. "I'm asking for a reaffirmation of something that was enacted in legislation after Sept. 11, 2001," he said. "I am suggesting that it would do all of us good to have that principle reaffirmed, not that the principle itself is in doubt."

Interesting point: why does something that is already law need to be reaffirmed?

Afghanistan: from war to insurgency

The Afghanistan conflict, the original effort to extract revenge against those who perpetrated 9/11 (the Taliban, who made Afghanistan a haven and base for terrorists), seven years on continues unabated. In fact, it might be worse now than any other time since the American invasion.

A Wall Street Journal story discusses that, as part of the background of a story about US soldiers who develop relationships with native Afghanis. It is an interesting piece of reporting.

However, along the way, some mangling of the English language detracts from the story's narrative. Witness this clunky sentence construction: The Afghan war, begun as an effort to oust the Taliban regime and destroy its al Qaeda allies, has become a lengthy insurgency that senior coalition commanders say has taken a turn for the worse in many parts of the country.

The beginning effort was made by the US; the dependent clause (begun as an effort...) does not make it clear. Take that dependent clause out, and the sentence makes more sense.

Anyway, the important point is the war, both as it impacts Afghanistan and the US: In recent months, more U.S. forces have been killed in Afghanistan than in Iraq, where the overall level of violence has slowed. On Sunday, insurgents killed nine U.S. soldiers and injured 15 more at a U.S. base in Kunar, one of the provinces where Lt. Col. Kolenda's men are fighting. A few days later, U.S. troops pulled out of the base.

The war continues. The US is bogged down. When the US took a big hit, it pulled back. A very sorry state of affairs. Afghanistan is where the US should be pounding, and pounding hard, to fight terrorism. Fighting in Iraq takes away from that, and compounds things.

Senior Pentagon officers are pushing for more troop reductions in Iraq to free up forces for Afghanistan, potentially bringing more novices into the field.

The fascinating part of this article is how a particular US soldier approaches it.

Well ahead of the transition from Lt. Col. Kolenda's squadron to the Sixth Squadron, Fourth Cavalry Regiment, out of Fort Hood, Texas, the outgoing team emailed all of their records and papers to the new unit. Lt. Col. Kolenda and his men plan to squire the new commanders about the battlefield, introducing them to the people who will help them and to those who will get in their way.

Hearts and minds need to be won, if the insurgency is ever to be defeated. Now, technology adds a new dimension.

The Army also offers the troops an online reference source, Wiki-Afghan. It looks just like Wikipedia, except it's all about Afghanistan and much of it is classified. There are upwards of 10,000 articles, and any authorized soldier can click on an entry and add new information.