Obama has American citizen assassinated

Original Post: CBS

Al Qaeda's Anwar al-Awlaki killed in Yemen

WASHINGTON - In a devastating double-blow to al Qaeda's most dangerous franchise, U.S. counterterrorism forces killed two American citizens who played key roles in inspiring attacks against the U.S., U.S. and Yemeni officials said Friday.

U.S-born cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, who edited the slick Jihadi Internet magazine, were killed in an air strike on their convoy in Yemen by a joint CIA-U.S. military operation, according to counterterrorism officials. Al-Awlaki was targeted in the killing, but Khan apparently was not targeted directly.

In remarks at Fort Myer, Va., President Obama called the death of the jihadist cleric a "major blow" to al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and praised the United States' successful alliance with Yemen's security forces.

"This is further proof that al Qaeda and its affiliates will find no safe haven anywhere in the world," Mr. Obama said. "Working with Yemen and our other allies and partners, we will be determined, we will be deliberate, we will be relentless, we will be resolute in our commitment to destroy terrorist networks that aim to kill Americans, and to build a world in which people everywhere can live in greater peace, prosperity and security."

Seeking to justify the targeted killing of a U.S. citizen, Mr. Obama outlined al-Awlaki's involvement in planning and directing attempts to murder Americans.

"He directed the failed attempt to blow up an airplane on Christmas Day in 2009. He directed the failed attempt to blow up U.S. cargo planes in 2010," Mr. Obama said. "And he repeatedly called on individuals in the United States and around the globe to kill innocent men, women and children to advance a murderous agenda."

Yemeni intelligence pinpointed al-Awlaki's hideout in the town of Al Khasaf, a Yemeni official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence. "He was closely monitored ever since," by Yemeni intelligence on the ground, backed by U.S. satellite and drones from the sky, the official said.

His death will deal al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula a serious blow, says CBS News terrorism analyst Juan Zarate, particularly his work to draw young Muslims into the jihadi mindset.

"His role as a propagandist actually will be very difficult to fill," says Zarate.

After three weeks of tracking the targets, U.S. armed drones and fighter jets shadowed the al Qaeda convoy before armed drones launched their lethal strike early Friday. The strike killed four operatives in all, officials said. All U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss matters of intelligence.

Al-Awlaki played a "significant operational role" in plotting and inspiring attacks on the United States, U.S. officials said Friday, as they disclosed detailed intelligence to justify the killing of a U.S. citizen. Khan, who was from North Carolina, wasn't considered operational but had published seven issues of Inspire Magazine, offering advice on how to make bombs and the use of weapons. The magazine was widely read.

Following the strike, a U.S. official outlined new details of al-Awlaki's involvement in anti-U.S. operations, including the attempted 2009 Christmas Day bombing of a U.S.-bound aircraft. The official said that al-Awlaki specifically directed the men accused of trying to bomb the Detroit-bound plane to detonate an explosive device over U.S. airspace to maximize casualties.

The official also said al-Awlaki had a direct role in supervising and directing a failed attempt to bring down two U.S. cargo aircraft by detonating explosives concealed inside two packages mailed to the U.S. The U.S. also believes Awlaki had sought to use poisons, including cyanide and ricin, to attack Westerners.

The U.S. and counterterrorism officials all spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence matters.

Al-Awlaki was killed by the same U.S. military unit that got Osama bin Laden. Al-Awlaki is the most prominent al Qaeda figure to be killed since bin Laden's death in May.

U.S. word of al-Awlaki's death came after the government of Yemen reported that he had been killed Friday about five miles from the town of Khashef, some 87 miles from the capital Sanaa.

The air strike was carried out more openly than the covert operation that sent Navy SEALs into bin Laden's Pakistani compound, U.S. officials said.

Counterterrorism cooperation between the United States and Yemen has improved in recent weeks, allowing better intelligence-gathering on al-Awlaki's movements, U.S. officials said. The ability to better track him was a key factor in the success of the strike, U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss intelligence matters.

Al-Awlaki's death is the latest in a run of high-profile kills for Washington under Mr. Obama. But the killing raises questions that the death of other al Qaeda leaders, including bin Laden, did not.

Al-Awlaki is a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico to Yemeni parents, who had not been charged with any crime. Civil liberties groups have questioned the government's authority to kill an American without trial.

Jameel Jaffer, deputy legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union, condemned the drone attack on Awlaki, saying, "The targeted killing program violates both U.S. and international law.

"As we've seen today, this is a program under which American citizens far from any battlefield can be executed by their own government without judicial process, and on the basis of standards and evidence that are kept secret not just from the public but from the courts," Jaffer said. "The government's authority to use lethal force against its own citizens should be limited to circumstances in which the threat to life is concrete, specific and imminent. It is a mistake to invest the President - any President - with the unreviewable power to kill any American whom he deems to present a threat to the country."

Awlaki's father, Nasser al-Awlaki of Yemen, had sued Mr. Obama and other administration officials 13 months ago to try to stop them from targeting his son for death. The father, represented by the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, argued that international law and the Constitution prevented the administration from assassinating his son unless he presented a specific imminent threat to life or physical safety and there were no other means to stop him.

But U.S. District Judge John Bates threw out the lawsuit in December, saying a judge does not have authority to review the president's military decisions and that Awlaki's father did not have the legal right to sue on behalf of his son. But Bates also seemed troubled by the facts of the case, which he wrote raised vital considerations of national security and for military and foreign affairs. For instance, the judge questioned why courts have authority to approve surveillance of Americans overseas but not their killing and whether the president could order an assassination of a citizen without "any form of judicial process whatsoever."

U.S. officials have said they believe al-Awlaki inspired the actions of Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is charged with 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted premeditated murder in the attack at Fort Hood, Texas.

In New York, the Pakistani-American man who pleaded guilty to the May 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt said he was "inspired" by al-Awlaki after making contact over the Internet.

Al-Awlaki also is believed to have had a hand in mail bombs addressed to Chicago-area synagogues, packages intercepted in Dubai and Europe in October 2010.

Al-Awlaki's death "will especially impact the group's ability to recruit, inspire and raise funds as al-Awlaki's influence and ability to connect to a broad demographic of potential supporters was unprecedented," said terrorist analyst Ben Venzke of the private intelligence monitoring firm, the IntelCenter.

But Venzke said the terror group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula will remain the most dangerous regional arm "both in its region and for the direct threat it poses to the U.S. following three recent failed attacks," with its leader Nasir al-Wahayshi still at large.

Al-Awlaki wrote an article in the latest issue of the terror group's magazine justifying attacking civilians in the West. It's titled "Targeting the Populations of Countries that Are at War with the Muslims."

Al-Awlaki served as imam at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Falls Church, Va., a Washington suburb, for about a year in 2001.

The mosque's outreach director, Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, has said that mosque members never saw al-Awlaki espousing radical ideology while he was there and that he believes Awlaki's views changed after he left the U.S. I support the war on terror. I applauded president Obama for telling the Seals to take the shots on the Somali pirates. I was pleasantly surprised when he had Bin Laden shot on the battle field and gave him laud for that. I cannot support this action. I'm sorry (actually I'm not), but I cannot support the president ordering the assassination of an American citizen with out a trial. I'm terrified of a government that would do that. It's straight up totalitarian. Do I think he was guilty and deserved to be executed for that? Yes, but he deserves due process. I have no guarantee that the president won't just decide that I should be assassinated with out a trial and neither do you. That should chill you to the bone.

Ralph Nader: Impeach Obama for Libya, Crimes

Original Post: newsmax

Consumer advocate Ralph Nader is calling for President Barack Obama's impeachment, saying he is responsible for war crimes in the Ralph Nader, Barack Obama, Impeach, War Crimes, Middle East,Middle East, The Hill reports.

In an interview with the anti-war group Democracy Now!, Nader said Obama was as much a war criminal as former President George W. Bush.

"Why don't we say what's on the minds of many legal experts; that the Obama administration is committing war crimes; and if Bush should have been impeached, Obama should be impeached," Nader said.

"[Bush officials] were considered war criminals by many people. Now, Barack Obama is committing the same crimes," the former presidential candidate said. "In fact, worse ones in Afghanistan. Innocents are being slaughtered, we are creating more enemies, he is violating international law."

The difference is Bush got Congressional approval. Obama told them as an after thought. Yet he has to wait for the U.N. to take action? I didn't realize that the U.N. was duly elected by us and had legislative authority where Congress does not. Learn something new every day.

Wikileaks documents show WMDs found in Iraq

Original Post: Hot Air

by Ed Morrissey

In this case, the surprise isn’t the data but the source. Wikileaks’ new release from purloined files of the Department of Defense may help remind people that, contrary to popular opinion and media memes, the US did find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and in significant quantities. While the invasion of Iraq didn’t find huge stockpiles of new WMDs, it did uncover stockpiles that the UN had demanded destroyed as a condition of the 1991 truce that Saddam Hussein abrogated for twelve years (via Instapundit):

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam’s toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents.

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base. …

Nearly three years later, American troops were still finding WMD in the region. An armored Buffalo vehicle unearthed a cache of artillery shells “that was covered by sacks and leaves under an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint. “The 155mm rounds are filled with an unknown liquid, and several of which are leaking a black tar-like substance.” Initial tests were inconclusive. But later, “the rounds tested positive for mustard.”

Some of these discoveries have been known for years. To the extent that the media covered these at all, these finds were generally treated as long-forgotten leftovers that somehow never got addressed by the Iraqi military in twelve years of UN inspections. That, however, disregards completely the kind of totalitarian state that Hussein had imposed on Iraq, up to the minute that circumstances forced him into his spider hole in 2003. Had Saddam Hussein wanted those weapons destroyed, no lower-ranking military officer would have dared defy him by keeping them hidden. It would have taken dozens of officers to conspire to move and hide those weapons, as well as a like number of enlisted men, any and all of whom could have been a spy for the Hussein clique.

That would have had to have happened a number of times, not just once, organically arising in the ranks. And why create a vast conspiracy of defiance to save the weapons that Saddam Hussein liked the most while Hussein himself complied with the UN? Why not a conspiracy to just remove Hussein and his sons and let the military run the country instead? Obviously, Hussein wanted to keep enough WMDs to use as terror weapons, not against the US, but against Iran in the event of an invasion from the east.

This isn’t exactly vindication of one of the arguments the Bush administration gave for invading Iraq, which was that Hussein had already begun stockpiling new WMDs and was working on nuclear weapons, but it is another vindication of the primary reason for restarting the war: Hussein and Iraq had violated the truce and refused to comply even after 17 UN resolutions demanding compliance. Hussein never had any intention of abiding by the truce, for whatever motivations one wants to assign to him. After the invasion, the US proved (through an armed-version of Wikileaks in Iraq’s diplomatic files) that the UN had allowed Hussein to grab billions in personal wealth by perverting the embargo in the Oil-for-Food Program, which would have given Hussein the means to fuel another WMD program as soon as the West withdrew from Iraq, and to restart Hussein’s dreams of pan-Arab dominance through military adventurism. In the end, there were no good options.

Obama pledges US to defend its ally South Korea

My Comments: Huh, another country that just wants nuclear power for clean energy right? I'm shocked, that historically violent countries would act up under the Wonderbringer's watch.

Original Post: Yahoo

By ANNE GEARAN, AP National Security Writer Anne Gearan, Ap National Security Writer – 54 mins ago

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama on Tuesday pledged the United States would stand "shoulder to shoulder" with South Korea after what the White House branded a provocative, outrageous attack by North Korea on its neighbor. Its options limited, the U.S. sought a diplomatic rather a military response to one of those most ominous clashes between the Koreas in decades.

"South Korea is our ally. It has been since the Korean war," Obama said in his first comments about the North Korean shelling of a South Korean island early Tuesday. "And we strongly affirm our commitment to defend South Korea as part of that alliance."

Working to head off any escalation, the U.S. did not reposition any of its 29,000 troops in the South or make other military moves after North Korea fired salvos of shells into the island, setting off an artillery duel between the two sides.

The president, speaking to ABC News, would not speculate when asked about military options.

Obama called South Korean President Lee Myung-bak later Tuesday night, saying the U.S. would work with the international community to strongly condemn the attack that killed the two South Koreans and injured many more, the White House said.

The White House said the two presidents agreed to hold combined military exercises and enhanced training in the days ahead to continue the close security cooperation between the two countries.

Obama assured Lee that "the United States stands shoulder to shoulder with our close friend and ally, the Republic of Korea," the White House statement said.

"President Obama said that North Korea must stop its provocative actions, which will only lead to further isolation, and fully abide by the terms of the armistice agreement and its obligations under international law," the statement said.

The U.S. has relatively few options when dealing with the Pyongyang government. Military action is particularly unappealing, since the unpredictable North possesses crude nuclear weapons as well as a huge standing army. North Korea exists largely outside the system of international financial and diplomatic institutions that the U.S. has used as leverage in dealing with other hostile countries, including Iran.

North Korea has also resisted pressure from its major ally, China, which appears to be nervous about the signs of instability in its neighbor.

"We strongly condemn the attack and we are rallying the international community to put pressure on North Korea," Obama said in the ABC interview, specifically citing the need for China's help. Obama said every nation in the region must know "this is a serious and ongoing threat."

An administration official said Tuesday evening that U.S. officials in Washington and in Beijing were appealing strongly to China to condemn the attack by arguing that it was an act that threatened the stability of the entire region, not just the Korean peninsula. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates phoned South Korea's defense minister to express sympathy for the deaths of two of the South's marines in the artillery shelling of a small South Korean island and to express appreciation "for the restraint shown to date" by the South's government, a Pentagon spokesman said.

Obama called North Korea's action "just one more provocative incident" and said he would consult with Lee on an appropriate response.

In his phone call to South Korea's defense minister, Gates said the U.S. viewed recent attacks as a violation of the armistice agreement that ended the Korea War in 1953, and he reiterated the U.S. commitment to South Korea's defense, said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

Obama was awakened at 4 a.m. Tuesday with the news. He went ahead with an Indiana trip focused on the economy before returning to the White House after dark.

State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the U.S. would take a "deliberate approach" in response to what he also called provocative North Korean behavior. At the same time, other administration officials, speaking on condition of anonymity to describe the emerging strategy, said the White House was determined to end a diplomatic cycle that officials said rewards North Korean brinksmanship.

In the past, the U.S. and other nations have sweetened offers to North Korea as it has developed new missiles and prototype nuclear weapons. North Korea is now demanding new one-on-one talks with the United States, which rejects that model in favor of group diplomacy that includes North Korea's protector, China.

"We're not going to respond willy-nilly," Toner said. "We believe that it's important that we keep a unified and measured approach going forward."

Both Republicans and Democrats on Capitol Hill accused North Korea of starting the skirmish.

The violence comes as the North prepares for a dynastic change in leadership and faces a winter of food and electricity shortages. It is the latest of a series of confrontations that have aggravated tensions on the divided peninsula.

The incident also follows the North's decision last week to give visiting Western scientists a tour of a secret uranium enrichment facility, which may signal an expansion of the North's nuclear weapons program. Six weeks ago, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il anointed his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, as his heir apparent.

The administration official said the U.S. did not interpret North Korea's aggression as a desire to go to war, but as yet another effort to extract concessions from the international community.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan said no new equipment or personnel have been relocated to South Korea, while Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz seemed to shrug off the latest incident as something that Seoul can handle on its own.

"The North Koreas have undertaken over time a number of provocations that have manifested themselves in different ways," Schwartz said.

The artillery exchange was only the latest serious incident between the two nations. In March, a South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, exploded and sank in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. South Korea accused the North of torpedoing the vessel; the North denied the allegation.

In August, the South Korean military reported that the North had fired 110 artillery rounds into the Yellow Sea near the disputed sea border but said the shells fell harmlessly into North Korean waters.

South Korean officials said Tuesday's clash came after Pyongyang warned the South to halt military drills near the small South Korean island of Yeonpyeong.

When Seoul refused and began firing artillery into the water near the disputed sea border, the North bombarded Yeonpyeong, which houses South Korean military installations and a small civilian population.

Recent joint U.S.-Korean naval exercises and strenuous denunciations of the North may only have provoked the regime in Pyongyang. Some experts say the secretive regime may be trying to promote Kim Jong Un as a worthy successor who, like his father, is capable of standing up to the U.S.

"I think it may be all wrapped in this succession planning, in the way the North is looking at it," said Robert RisCassi, a retired Army general who commanded U.S. forces in Korea from 1990-93.

The U.S.-South Korea exercises also angered China. Beijing is regarded as the key to any long-term diplomatic bargain to end North Korea's nuclear program and reduce tensions on the peninsula.

But U.S. officials say the North's motives and internal politics are opaque and sometimes appear inconsistent.

"I don't know the answer to any question about North Korea that begins with the word 'why,'" Gates told reporters Monday.

___

Associated Press writers Julie Pace, Anne Flaherty, Ben Feller, Jim Kuhnhenn, Pauline Jelinek and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Miranda Rights for Terrorists

My friends and I joked about this years ago. Apparently the Dems. heard us and thought it was a good idea.

Original Post: weeklystandard
By: Stephen F. Hayes

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. "I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal - read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it's a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today - foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they're reading them their rights - Mirandizing these foreign fighters," says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. "I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn't been briefed on it, I didn't know about it. We're still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative."

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda warning - so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda vs. Arizona that required police officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals of their rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration's approach. "If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in Afghanistan, they're likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future."

But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. "When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,'" says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up."

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. "The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people - Take the option. You want a lawyer.'"

Rogers adds: "The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he's building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer - you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone."

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, "I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people."

Critics Still Haven't Read the 'Torture' Memos

Original Post: Wall Street Journal
By: VICTORIA TOENSING

Sen. Patrick Leahy wants an independent commission to investigate them. Rep. John Conyers wants the Obama Justice Department to prosecute them. Liberal lawyers want to disbar them, and the media maligns them.

What did the Justice Department attorneys at George W. Bush's Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) -- John Yoo and Jay Bybee -- do to garner such scorn? They analyzed a 1994 criminal statute prohibiting torture when the CIA asked for legal guidance on interrogation techniques for a high-level al Qaeda detainee (Abu Zubaydah).

In the mid-1980s, when I supervised the legality of apprehending terrorists to stand trial, I relied on a decades-old Supreme Court standard: Our capture and treatment could not "shock the conscience" of the court. The OLC lawyers, however, were not asked what treatment was legal to preserve a prosecution. They were asked what treatment was legal for a detainee who they were told had knowledge of future attacks on Americans.

The 1994 law was passed pursuant to an international treaty, the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment. The law's definition of torture is circular. Torture under that law means "severe physical or mental pain or suffering," which in turn means "prolonged mental harm," which must be caused by one of four prohibited acts. The only relevant one to the CIA inquiry was threatening or inflicting "severe physical pain or suffering." What is "prolonged mental suffering"? The term appears nowhere else in the U.S. Code.

Congress required, in order for there to be a violation of the law, that an interrogator specifically intend that the detainee suffer prolonged physical or mental suffering as a result of the prohibited conduct. Just knowing a person could be injured from the interrogation method is not a violation under Supreme Court rulings interpreting "specific intent" in other criminal statutes.

In the summer of 2002, the CIA outlined 10 interrogation methods that would be used only on Abu Zubaydah, who it told the lawyers was "one of the highest ranking members of" al Qaeda, serving as "Usama Bin Laden's senior lieutenant." According to the CIA, Zubaydah had "been involved in every major" al Qaeda terrorist operation including 9/11, and was "planning future terrorist attacks" against U.S. interests.

Most importantly, the lawyers were told that Zubaydah -- who was well-versed in American interrogation techniques, having written al Qaeda's manual on the subject -- "displays no signs of willingness" to provide information and "has come to expect that no physical harm will be done to him." When the usual interrogation methods were used, he had maintained his "unabated desire to kill Americans and Jews."

The CIA and Department of Justice lawyers had two options: continue questioning Zubaydah by a process that had not worked or escalate the interrogation techniques in compliance with U.S. law. They chose the latter.

The Justice Department lawyers wrote two opinions totaling 54 pages. One went to White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales, the other to the CIA general counsel.

Both memos noted that the legislative history of the 1994 torture statute was "scant." Neither house of Congress had hearings, debates or amendments, or provided clarification about terms such as "severe" or "prolonged mental harm." There is no record of Rep. Jerrold Nadler -- who now calls for impeachment and a criminal investigation of the lawyers -- trying to make any act (e.g., waterboarding) illegal, or attempting to lessen the specific intent standard.

The Gonzales memo analyzed "torture" under American and international law. It noted that our courts, under a civil statute, have interpreted "severe" physical or mental pain or suffering to require extreme acts: The person had to be shot, beaten or raped, threatened with death or removal of extremities, or denied medical care. One federal court distinguished between torture and acts that were "cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment." So have international courts. The European Court of Human Rights in the case of Ireland v. United Kingdom (1978) specifically found that wall standing (to produce muscle fatigue), hooding, and sleep and food deprivation were not torture.

The U.N. treaty defined torture as "severe pain and suffering." The Justice Department witness for the Senate treaty hearings testified that "[t]orture is understood to be barbaric cruelty . . . the mere mention of which sends chills down one's spine." He gave examples of "the needle under the fingernail, the application of electrical shock to the genital area, the piercing of eyeballs. . . ." Mental torture was an act "designed to damage and destroy the human personality."

The treaty had a specific provision stating that nothing, not even war, justifies torture. Congress removed that provision when drafting the 1994 law against torture, thereby permitting someone accused of violating the statute to invoke the long-established defense of necessity.

The memo to the CIA discussed 10 requested interrogation techniques and how each should be limited so as not to violate the statute. The lawyers warned that no procedure could be used that "interferes with the proper healing of Zubaydah's wound," which he incurred during capture. They observed that all the techniques, including waterboarding, were used on our military trainees, and that the CIA had conducted an "extensive inquiry" with experts and psychologists.

But now, safe in ivory towers eight years removed from 9/11, critics demand criminalization of the techniques and the prosecution or disbarment of the lawyers who advised the CIA. Contrary to columnist Frank Rich's uninformed accusation in the New York Times that the lawyers "proposed using" the techniques, they did no such thing. They were asked to provide legal guidance on whether the CIA's proposed methods violated the law.

Then there is Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson, who declared that "waterboarding will almost certainly be deemed illegal if put under judicial scrutiny," depending on which "of several possibly applicable legal standards" apply. Does he know the Senate rejected a bill in 2006 to make waterboarding illegal? That fact alone negates criminalization of the act. So quick to condemn, Mr. Robinson later replied to a TV interview question that he did not know how long sleep deprivation could go before it was "immoral." It is "a nuance," he said.

Yet the CIA asked those OLC lawyers to figure out exactly where that nuance stopped in the context of preventing another attack. There should be a rule that all persons proposing investigation, prosecution or disbarment must read the two memos and all underlying documents and then draft a dissenting analysis.

Ms. Toensing was chief counsel for the Senate Intelligence Committee and deputy assistant attorney general in the Reagan administration.

Muslims declare security measures against their faith

source

So, apparently Muslims can just declare Fatwas whenever they want. The airport security devices were going to be put into place after one Muslim, with Al Qaeda contacts tried to blow up a plane with his crotch.

Our current security measures are apparently unable to deal with terrorists so we came up with more secure measures that should be. But then potential terrorists just said "no". No? Really? They can just do that? That's brilliant!

I'll bet the Emperor of Japan wished he thought of that during WWII. "You're going to drop an atomic bomb on us? You can't. Being blown up by an atomic bomb is against our religion". Well, I guess we have no choice but not to bomb them then.

So we're going to put in these new scanners designed to help us find suicide bombers and then exclude the very people who they were designed to protect us against in the first place. Genius!

For the record, It's against my religion for my country to be attacked by people who have declared a jihad against us because we're infidels for not belonging to a religion that can just declare fatwas against anything that stands in our way.

Taliban say U.S. reconciliation offer "lunatic"

Original Post: reuters
By Sayed Salahuddin

KABUL, April 1 (Reuters) - Taliban insurgents rejected on Wednesday a U.S. offer of "honourable reconciliation" as a "lunatic idea" and said the withdrawal of foreign troops was the only way to end the war in Afghanistan.

With the Afghan conflict now in its eighth year, NATO-led forces and the Taliban are locked in a bloody stalemate with violence set to rise further this year as more U.S. troops arrive and seek to contain the insurgency ahead of August elections.

President Barack Obama is redoubling U.S. efforts with more troops, more diplomatic effort and more economic assistance, but he has also already spoken of the need for an "exit strategy".

If the U.S. plan fails to show results, analysts say, time is on the Taliban side.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told an international conference on Afghanistan on Tuesday that those members of the Taliban who abandoned extremism must be granted an "honourable form of reconciliation".

"This matter was also raised in the past," said Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, referring to comments by Obama last month who spoke of reaching out to moderate Taliban.

"They have to go and find the moderate Taliban, their leader and speak to them. This is a lunatic idea," Mujahid said by telephone from an unknown location.

The 21,000 extra U.S. troops ordered by Obama to join the 70,000 foreign soldiers now fighting insurgents in Afghanistan showed the United States wanted the war to continue, Mujahid said, and the Taliban would keep fighting till they left.

"There is no other way. We want our freedom and respect for our independence," Mujahid said.

Swiftly ousted by U.S.-led forces in 2001 for harbouring al Qaeda after the Sept. 11 attacks, the Taliban regrouped and have steadily spread their attacks from their traditional support base in the south and east to areas closer to the capital.

STALEMATE

NATO commanders admit that mainly British, Canadian and Dutch troops are locked in a stalemate in the south, unable to stop insurgent roadside and suicide bomb attacks without the active support of the population, while Taliban militants are incapable of overcoming Western troops in head-on battle.

Most of the new U.S. troops will be deployed in the south in an effort to break that stalemate, but while U.S. commanders say their forces, mainly in the east, are making progress against the insurgency, violence has risen steadily there too.

As Obama unveiled his new strategy he focused on the fight against al Qaeda and not allowing Afghanistan to again become a base for Osama bin Laden's group to attack the United States.

By doing so, Obama effectively changed the measure of success in Afghanistan from the Bush administration's goal of also defeating the Taliban and installing Western-style democracy.

Despite the Taliban's harsh rhetoric against foreign troops, the Islamist movement says it does not need al Qaeda support and has also toned down its criticism of the Afghan government.

The shifting stances offer a glimpse of what a possible peace deal may entail: Taliban repudiation of al Qaeda in return for a pledge to withdraw foreign troops.

But while moderate former Taliban officials have been involved in Saudi-sponsored talks to explore ways of opening dialogue with the insurgents, the Taliban are unlikely to engage in negotiations as long as they feel they are winning the war.

Strong indigenous security forces are a key to success in counter-insurgency, U.S. military doctrine states, and Obama said his new strategy would increase efforts to train Afghan forces and bring the Afghan army and police up to strength by 2011.

That date also coincides with the time by which, diplomats say, the Obama administration is likely to want to see results in Afghanistan -- a year before the next U.S. presidential election.

The Taliban meanwhile, do not have to win the war, analysts say. All they have to do is survive and wait for their opponents to lose the will to keep fighting.