The Real Deal

Unlike with our local misfit Hosan Smadi, it appears the FBI got their hands on a guy who had both the ability and the means to carry out a terrorist attack, after evidence was collected in a series of raids in New York last week:

Documents filed in Brooklyn against the driver, Najibullah Zazi, contend he bought chemicals needed to build a bomb — hydrogen peroxide, acetone and hydrochloric acid — and in doing so, Mr. Zazi took a critical step made by few other terrorism suspects.

If government allegations are to be believed, Mr. Zazi, a legal immigrant from Afghanistan, had carefully prepared for a terrorist attack. He attended a Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, received training in explosives and stored in his laptop computer nine pages of instructions for making bombs from the same kind of chemicals he had bought.

While many important facts remain unknown, those allegations alone would distinguish Mr. Zazi from nearly all the other defendants in United States terrorism cases in recent years. More often than not the earlier suspects emerged as angry young men, inflamed by the rhetoric of Osama bin Laden or his associates. Some were serious in intent. More than a few seemed to be malcontents without the organization, technical skills and financing to be much of a threat. In some cases, the subjects appeared to be influenced by informants or undercover agents who pledged to provide the weapons or even do some of the planning.

In two cases unrelated to Mr. Zazi in which charges were announced on Thursday, in fact, the subjects dealt extensively with undercover agents.

The Zazi case “actually looks like the case the government kept claiming it had but never did,” said Karen J. Greenberg, executive director of the Center on Law and Security at New York University law school.

Neither does this plot involve a misfit acting alone, though authorities are not yet sure to what extent anyone else was involved in the conspiracy. So far the only other arrests are of Zazi's father and a Brookleyn Imam who warned Zazi he was under scrutiny, both of whom are charged with lying to authorities.

Plot to Blow Up Dallas Skyscraper Foiled

Not cool dude. Not cool at all:

Federal authorities arrested a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen whom they said placed an inactive car bomb today at Fountain Place, a 60-story skyscraper in downtown Dallas.

[...]

Authorities said that Smadi was under continuous FBI surveillance. Federal agents posed as members of an al-Qa’ida sleeper cell. Smadi, who was in the U.S. illegally, allegedly told them that he came to the country specifically to commit “Jihad for the sake of God.”

And indeed he was, as the criminal complaint filed against him makes clear. It appears that Smadi was acting entirely on his own, with only the aid of the FBI informants who were aware of his every act. Regardless, Smadi will now be in no position to network with authentic terrorists (or more serious amateurs at least) as he is likely to spend quite a bit of time in prison.

Saturday Morning Round-Up

1. A story in yesterday's Washington Post reveals that the Obama administration is considering drafting an executive order asserting the President's authority to detain terrorist suspects indefinitely without any judicial process. The White House denies that a draft order exists (via John Cole) thought there is no denial that they are considering such a move. I found this quote from the Post article to be particularly odd:

"...one administration official suggested that the White House is already trying to build support for an order. "Civil liberties groups have encouraged the administration, that if a prolonged detention system were to be sought, to do it through executive order," the official said.

First of all, I would like this official to find me one civil liberties group that has argued for such a thing. Perhaps what he/she meant is that they'd rather have an executive order than a Bush-like assertion of authority that merely cites the Constitution, but there's essentially no difference between the two approaches legally. Also, they are arguing that such an order would permit them to get Congress' acquiescence in the closing of Guantanamo, an effort stymied by the various Democratic and Republican bed-wetters on the Hill. Which basically would amount to Obama saying to Congress "I double-pledge to hold terrorists forever if you will please let me shut down Guantanamo." But it seems to me like sending them Bermuda an the South Pacific was working out alright.

2. Gays and Lesbiasn are-rightly-angered as well at the Obama administration's shuffling approach towards gay rights. Don't Ask, Don't Tell, remains in place, the Obama DOJ is arguing before the courts to retain DOMA, and Obama's decision to extend federal benefits to domestic partners was praised until advocates realized that those benefits didn't include health care (doubly ironic, considering the President's present political battle over a national health care plan.) Arnold King, while not citing specifically to the administration's approach to gay rights, makes the point that the Obama administration has many agendas, but appears satisfied to half-ass meeting their goals on any of them.

3. For some conservative Christians, Sanford's weeping and rending of garments is enough for them to get over his infidelity and bizarre behavior. I'm sure the fact that he's a Republican politician has absolutely no bearing on their attitudes. But stories like this make it clear that for all of Sanford's talk, he was determined to continuing playing his own staff, his own state, and especially his own wife, until he got caught. Politically connected religious leaders and politicians may be quick to forgive, but other conservatives? Not so much.

4. Bob Herbert takes a look at the economy and calls a spade (a jobless recovery) a spade (no recovery at all.)

5. The Iranian government appears to be gaining the upper-hand against the protesters, though it also seems clear that the massive protests have revealed divisions in the leadership that may indicate long-term change.

6. Upon the news of Michael Jackson's death, I found myself wondering what condition his estate was in and upon whom would fall the unfortunate task of trying to sort it out. It appears he had at least one will, though no one knows it's contents yet. I predict there will be a gargantuan battle over his estate given the value still attached to his name and his music and the massive debt attached to much of his property, but I doubt it will interest the public as much as Anna Nicole Smith's highly publicized probate did, what with the absence of a childhood custody dispute. There can be no doubt though of Jackson's status as a mega-star, as the reaction to his death was almost more than the internet could bear.

7. You might've missed this news, but Wednesday the United States pulled off a shocking upset and defeated the number one team in the world 2-0 to advance to the final game of the Confederations Cup. Spain is praised for their ability to possess the ball, and it was expected that the U.S. would entrench upon defense and wait for their opportunities to counter. Instead, Spain committed uncharacteristic errors as the U.S. went with a strategy of heavily pressuring the ball and looking for quick counters, and remaining incredibly well-organized (and frankly, a little lucky) on defense. The strategy paid off with huge dividends; quick movement up the field led to a goal by Jozy Altidore, and a Spanish turnover led to a goal by Clint Dempsey. Altidore (after keeper Brad Guzan) was clearly man of the match. No telling if his outstanding play makes him the future of American soccer or another Eddie Johnson, but American soccer fans will take what they can get. The United States plays Brazil tomorrow, a team they already lost to in the first round, but against whom they might have a better chance if they play as decisively as they did against Spain.

8. I thought this article about Grandparents University at UNT was interesting. Grandparents and their grand-children apparently spend a weekend at the school's dorm and taking classes together, in a program designed to give young teenagers and tweeners a taste of college life, and some bonding time with their grand-parents.

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman finds at least one civil libertarian to whom the Obama administration official might be referring with the above quote from the Post story; Kate Martin of the Center for National Security Studies:

Martin thinks that established law holds that the administration doesn't require any additional legal authorization to hold anyone captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan without charge until the end of hostilities -- that comes from the September 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, as does dispensation for the 9/11 plotters -- but would need to charge or release any detainee picked up outside either Afghanistan or Iraq. Martin thinks the reported executive order might be the only thing standing in the way of an even broader congressional effort of the sort seen in the war supplemental that Daphne critiqued yesterday. Martin has expressed her organization's longstanding perspective on detainee matters to the administration's detentions task force.

So Martin supports it, but only to the extent that something from Congress might be worse. Given the way Congress has handled the possible closing of Gitmo this may be true, though I happen to think that Congress should be forced to craft an indefinite detention policy if that's what they want in exchange for closing Gitmo.

Glenn Greenwald has more though, as I've pointed out once before, he has a tendency to criticize the "many defenders" of Obama on various issues where Obama replicates Bush doctrines, without actually linking to or naming any of these defenders. Greenwald is a very thorough blogger, which is why I don't understand why he so eagerly reaches for the "some say" approach to blogging.

GAO shows our gun laws are weak

Ridiculous:

People on the government’s terrorist watch list tried to buy guns nearly 1,000 times in the last five years, and federal authorities cleared the purchases 9 times out of 10 because they had no legal way to stop them, according to a new government report.

In one case, a person on the list was able to buy more than 50 pounds of explosives.

The new statistics, compiled in a report from the Government Accountability Office that is scheduled for public release next week, draw attention to an odd divergence in federal law: people placed on the government’s terrorist watch list can be stopped from getting on a plane or getting a visa, but they cannot be stopped from buying a gun.

Gun purchases must be approved unless federal officials can find some other disqualification of the would-be buyer, like being a felon, an illegal immigrant or a drug addict.

“This is a glaring omission, and it’s a security issue,” Senator Frank R. Lautenberg, the New Jersey Democrat who requested the study, said in an interview.

Sen. Lautenberg introduced legislation in 2007 that would have given the attorney general the discretion to block gun sales to people on terror watch lists, but it was stalled by the NRA, of course. He will re-introduce it on Monday and hopefully Democrats will have the balls to take it up, but I doubt it. There's few lobbies they fear more than the gun lobby:

Can new evidence that high-powered US firearms are fueling Mexican drug violence change the political course of gun control in Washington?

Not likely, a number of gun experts say.

The Government Accountability Office information that 87 percent of seized guns given to US authorities by Mexican officials come from the US shouldn't come as a surprise, says Bill Vizzard, a criminologist at the California State University in Sacramento. "We're the largest legal gun market in the world."

Many of the firearms used to kill thousands of police and government officials in Mexico come from gun shops and gun shows in Southwest border states, the report says...

"Washington has to pacify the Mexican government, and, rightfully, the Mexican government is pointing at the US saying, 'You guys keep talking about our drugs going to the US. What about your guns coming down here?' " says Vizzard, adding, "And they legitimately have a beef."

After the landmark Heller decision last year – in which the Supreme Court affirmed Second Amendment gun rights – Democratic leadership has stepped back from pressing the gun control issue, at least at the national level. While popular in urban centers, gun control laws can have electoral implications in rural hunting states where Democrats made huge gains last election.

If anything, gun rights have expanded on the heels of last year's Heller decision. The Democrat-dominated Congress this year agreed to allow Americans to carry concealed weapons into national parks and wildlife refuges.

But the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence hopes that today's Congressional hearings on the GAO report will have some effect on efforts to close the so-called "gun show loophole" where guns can be sold without background checks.

"The extremist gun lobby should no longer be permitted to dictate our nation's gun policy," said Brady Center president Paul Helmke, in a statement.

Amen. If Republicans and Democrats really want to really be tough when it comes to the war on terrorism and the war on drugs, they need to get behind common sense gun laws instead of placating fringe gun nuts.

UPDATE: It's not just Mexico.

Wednesday Morning Reading

Some things for you to ponder this morning:

1. A senior cleric in Iran comes out against the election results. But were they rigged? Critics say yes.

2. Some analysis of Netanyahu's announcement that Israel would consider recognition of a Palestinian state. A step forward, but still balking on other important considerations like settlement expansion.

3. A Presidential election and some new laws, but the end result is the same; you can't trust the NSA not to spy on the American people.

4. Speaking of intelligence agencies, the CIA is fighting the release of it's own internal reports regarding interrogations of "high-value" detainees. Obviously, there's something in embarrassing in them.

5. Speaking of detainees, here are some people who don't wet their pants at the thought of being responsible for them.

6. Obama will announce that the federal government will extend benefits to the domestic partners, including same-sex partners and spouses, of federal employees.

7. The Obama administration is proposing regulatory changes that will broaden government oversight of banks and the financial markets.

8. And lastly, another great column of David Leonhardt at the New York Times. This time he takes on the scare word "rationing" and explains how health care is already rationed ineffeciently and unfairly everyday in America.

Morning Links

Some Tuesday morning reading for you:

1. The protests and demonstrations in Iran continue, despite the government's agreement to a "partial recount" of the election results. The NY Times says Ayatollah Khamenei is blinking, but how much? And Glenn Greenwald wonders if Iran would have arrived at this point if the Iran hawks, now cheering on the demonstrations, had gotten their way and convinced the Bush adminitration to bomb Iran.

2. Abu Zubaydah said in a 2007 hearing that his interrogators with the CIA acknowledged they were mistaken about his role in Al Qaeda, according to transcripts obtained by the ACLU (h/t Adam.) If that's true, it merely means they admitted to him what the rest of us have already known about Zubaydah for awhile.

3. Netanyahu has proposed that Israel recognize the Palestinian right to a state, but only if the Palestinians recognize Israel's right to exist first.

4. The recently released Uighurs: life on the beach is great, except for the fact that they can never go home or see their families again.

5. Obama has appointed a new American Indian advisor. The Department of Justice has also announced efforts to boost its crime-fighting operations in Indian Country.

Wednesday Morning Round-Up

1. Iraq is moving ahead with a referendum on the Iraq-US security agreement. Such is the perils of democracy. Though Iraqi leaders would almost certainly prefer American troops stay in the country, they can't afford to oppose the referendum in an election year.

2. The Obama administration signals that they may move away from a policy of isolation with the regime in Burma. Since that hasn't worked to date, I think it's worth trying something new.

3. The Senate is moving ahead with a bill that would give the FDA the power to regulate tobacco products.

4. A profile of the guard killed in yesterday's shooting at the Holocaust Museum in D.C. It would be interesting to ask the murderer what he thought he might accomplish with his act, though fanatics always seem to have a grander view of their place in the world than most of the rest of us do. I visited the museum when I was at law school in D.C., and was surprised at the heavy security required to enter the museum. Now I understand.

5. Some local news: Dallas County meals on wheels needs help. They don't need your money, so much as they need volunteers to deliver meals so they won't have to pay drivers to do so. If you'd like to help, more information is here. Also, local residents know about the odd series of minor earthquakes the area has experienced in recent months. Scientists at SMU hope to get to the bottom of the mystery.

6. Two mentally disabled men in Texas have (separately) been given ridiculously long sentences for molesting young children. Even the jury in Hart's case was shocked by the 100-year sentence the man, reported to have an IQ of roughly 47, received. The question I would like to ask the prosecutors in this case is, if both men are reported to have IQs themselves that are roughly equivalent to those of young children, why are they sentenced as if they were fully functioning adults? And, the Hart story points out, repeat sex offenders routinely receive shorter sentences than these men did, which raises the question of whether there is some discrimination against the mentally disabled going on here, at least in my mind.

7. Perhaps you heard about the collapse of the Cowboy's practice facility in Valley Ranch, Irving, last month that paralyzed a Cowboys scouting assistant? It appears the Cowboys knew of a similar incident involving a canopy built by the contractor they hired. While this isn't exactly proof of negligence on the Cowboys part, it sure does make it easier to add the Cowboys to the lawsuit that I'm sure is being contemplated against the contractor.

Four of the Uighurs Released in Bermuda

Just yesterday I blogged about a report that American officials were attempting to resettle the 17 Uighur detainees who have been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2001 in Palau, in the South Pacific. Well, it looks like four of them have been resettled a little closer to home:

Four Guantanamo Bay detainees have been released and resettled in Bermuda, U.S. officials said Thursday.

The four are part of a group of 17 Chinese Muslims who have been in legal limbo at the military detention center in Cuba.

Abdul Nasser, one of the four detainees who landed in Bermuda early Thursday morning, issued a statement through his lawyers, saying: ''Growing up under communism we always dreamed of living in peace and working in free society like this one. Today you have let freedom ring.''

Why four and not all of them? And is the plan still to resettle the rest in Palau? No clue yet. However, somebody should probably tell Ed Morissey to scratch Bermuda off the list of future vacation spots.

Stupid and Scared

According to this article, our government is willing to pay $200 million to a tiny island in the South Pacific because we are a nation of hyperventilating scaredy cats:

Palau, with a population of about 20,000, is an archipelago of eight main islands plus more than 250 islets that is best known for diving and tourism and is located some 500 miles east of the Philippines in the Pacific Ocean.

"We have spoken with the Palauans, but neither they nor we have made any decisions," said one senior official. That official and two others spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the talks.

Two of the officials said the U.S. was prepared to give Palau up to $200 million in development, budget support and other assistance in return for accepting the Uighurs.

The third official did not deny that a significant amount of money would be involved. But the official denied it would be a direct transfer to the Palau government.

Oh, well in that case, what am I bitching about?

It is not possible to overstate how absurd and ridiculous this is. Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers would have you believe that the Uighurs-who, by the way, were fighting the CHINESE before they were locked up in Gitmo-are hard-core terrorists who swore at an early age to seek nothing in life but to kill Americans. And thanks to their fear-mongering and pandering, they have somehow persuaded a nation of pearl-clutching hyperventilators that it's a good idea to PAY a small island in the South Pacific $200 million so we can avoid having "terrorists" (who will never live free of the watchful eye of local law enforcement and every right-wing wacko in their neighborhood) living in our country. Last time I checked, weren't we a little short on funds over here? But I guess helping weak-minded Americans to not be a little scared is a good investment of government funds these days.

UPDATE: Glenn Greenwald also blogs about this supreme idiocy, and links to this piece of bed-wetting from Ed Morissey over at Hot Air:

Of course, with a recidivism rate for released Gitmo detainees of around 14%, odds are that a couple of the Uighurs might not be quite as cuddly as Obama promises. Hopefully it will work out all right for Palau and its tourists, but if I were making decisions on expensive South Pacific vacations, I’d start looking elsewhere.

No, he's not being sarcastic. He earnestly believes that the first thing the Uighurs are going to do when they get to Palau is immediately begin plotting how to kill Americans (presumably Americans who visit the island, as I don't imagine they'll be going anywhere.) This is so stupid as to defy all logic and reason, and it's primarily trembling right-wingers like Ed Morrissey and pandering Democratic and Republican politicians who are forcing the government to pay a tiny island nation $200 million for the privilege of profiting from our idiocy.

Via ScotusBlog, the ACLU is reporting that the Obama administration is planning to take Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri out of custody at the naval brig in South Carolina where he is being held and try him in the criminal courts (h/t Adam.) The significance of this move lies in the fact that in doing so, the Obama administration would effectively moot the case that Al-Marri has pending before the Supreme Court, which is scheduled to hear arguments at the end of April. Were the Supreme Court to dismiss the matter as a result, this would leave unanswered one of the greatest legal question posed by the Bush administration during the "war on terror": whether the President has the authority to order the indefinite detention of terrorist suspects captured on U.S. soil. Naturally Al-Marri and the ACLU would prefer that this not happen, as this would effectively destroy any opportunity for the Supreme Court to limit the executive authority to detain individuals indefinitely. Although it is not unheard of for the Supreme Court to hear cases that are moot (Roe v. Wade is one example) they are loathe to do so, and I don't think there's a high likelihood that Al-Marri's case will long survive his transfer to the criminal justice system.

Just last week I discussed Jane Mayer's "The Hard Cases", where she wrties at length about the unique difficulties presented by detainees like Al-Marri. In it she explored the possibility of the creation of a special national security court, or the possibility of "preventive" detention. It would seem that if the Obama administration is declining to have Al-Marri's case heard before the Supreme Court, they are also demurring on an opportunity to defend their authority to order indefinite detention, as well as retreating from the possibility of a national security court that could order something like preventive detention. I for one am pleased that Al-Marri will get the criminal trial he should've had after he was arrested in 2001 (even with the difficulties posed by the fact that his original case was dismissed with prejudice.) But what the Obama administration intends to signal about the breadth of executive authority with this move is unclear, at least to me.

Jane Mayer's "The Hard Cases"

Jane Mayer of the New Yorker takes a hard look at a "hard case", Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri, who has been held in indefinite detention at the naval brig in Charleston, South Carolina, since 2003. There's too much worth excerpting to do a cut-and-paste of her article, so I recommend reading it in full. But it's easy to arrive at some central conclusions. First, al-Marri, who's case goes before the Supreme Court in April, is probably the most critical first test of what will be the Obama administration's approach to detention of terrorist suspects. Second, the Obama administration is certainly looking beyond the Bush administration's narrow approach, but has not entirely backed away from the idea that some terrorist suspects can be held indefinitely. Instead, they are at least considering the idea of a national security court that can order "preventive detention" for suspects with whom they might have difficulty obtaining convictions at trial. Third, the Bush administration shot itself in the foot, removing al-Marri from the criminal justice system where his trial was impending, and thus losing the flexibility to charge him at a later point with the same crimes so as to test their legal theory on indefinite detention. As we know, they lost that gamble, as the Supreme Court has repeatedly limited the executive's authority to hold detainees without justification. And once again, the Bush administration's punitive approach to detention is highlighted, as Mayer details increasingly severe treatment al-Marri was treated to for his unwillingness to confess to being a terrorist.

For what it's worth, I do not favor the creation of a national security court. I don't trust that such a body can hold the government accountable for potential government malfeasance (like hiding or destroying exculpatory evidence) because the bar is lowered for what the government must show to obtain a conviction (or an "order" of detention) and transparency is deliberately reduced. And I think it would be silly to stake the creation of a system on the al-Marri case, arguing that only a specialized court can handle a terrorist who was likely to be convicted and sentenced to years in prison by the normal criminal process. As we have learned over the last eight years, mere good intentions do not justify illegal conduct or war crimes, and administration officials cannot be excused because they were trying their best. It doesn't matter that the Obama administration is filled with critics of prior detention policies. If we give them the leeway to behave in a similar fashion, you can rest assured that someone will be sent to prison or detained for a long time who otherwise doesn't deserve to be there, and we will hear the same dire justifications for such treatment as we heard under Bush.

D.C. Circuit Overturns Uighur Decision

Yesterday the D.C. Circuit ruled that a federal district judge had exceeded his authority in ordering the release of seventeen Uighur detainees being held at Guantanamo Bay:

Only the political branches — the President and Congress — have the authority to decide when aliens may enter the U.S., the Circuit Court concluded by a 2-1 vote. A third judge on the panel found that the judge’s release order was premature, but did not join in the ruling against release at this time.

The majority concluded that “it is not within the province of any court, unless expressly authorized by law, to review the determination of the political branch of the government to exclude a given alien. With respect to these seventeen petitioners, the Executive Branch has determined not to allow them to enter the United States.”

[...]

The Circuit Court said it was not deciding at this point whether the President “may ignore the immigration laws and release [the Uighurs] into the United States without the consent of Congress.”

[...]

Circuit Judge Judith W. Rogers, while voting to overturn the judge’s release order, denounced the majority’s reasoning. She said the majority’s analysis “is not faithful” to the Supreme Court’s ruling last June in Boumediene v. Bush on detainees’ rights, and “would compromise both the Great Writ as a check on arbitrary detention and the balance of powers over exclusion and admission and release of aliens into the United States recognized by the Supreme Court to reside in the Congress, the Executive and the habeas court.” She also said the ruling’s analysis was unnecessary because the court could not yet know whether detention was justified under immigration law.

The Circuit Court decision appeared to be confined closely to the single issue of whether a federal judge may order release into the U.S. of non-citizens being held outside U.S. territory. The majority noted that the only claim by detainees that was before it was not “simple release” from Guantanamo, but whether a court could order the Executive Branch “to release them into the United States outside the framework of the immigration laws….The question here is not whether petitioners should be released, but where.”

The extent of the victory for the Bush administration's detention policies depends on which side you're one I suppose. From one angle, the appellate decision checks the authority of the judiciary to order the release of detainees. The majority tries to confine the issue merely to whether the judiciary has the authority to order the release of detainees into the United States against the wishes of the executive and outside the scope of immigration law, but the dissenting judge seems to think that the ruling is in the vein of prior rulings that have upheld executive authority to hold detainees without reason indefinitely. Either way they demurred on the question of whether the Uighurs could be released into the United States under present immigration laws were they to apply for admission.

Former Prison Guard Details Conditions at Gitmo

In the category of "this would've been useful a few years ago", a former prisoner guard at Guantanamo Bay recounts abuses he witnessed at the detention camp (h/t Adam):

...as Neely put it in an interview with The Associated Press this week, "The stuff I did and the stuff I saw was just wrong."

Neely, a burly Texan who served for a year in Iraq after his six months at Guantanamo, received an honorable discharge last year, with the rank of specialist, and now works as a law enforcement officer in the Houston area. He is also president of the local chapter of Iraq Veterans Against the War.

An urge to tell his story led him to the University of California at Davis' Guantanamo Testimonials Project, an effort to document accounts of prisoner abuse. It includes public statements from three other former guards, but Neely was the first to grant researchers an interview. He also spoke extensively with the AP.

Testimony from the other guards echoes some of Neely's concerns. One of the other guards, Sean Baker, described in an interview with CBS' "60 Minutes" how he was beaten and hospitalized by fellow soldiers in a January 2003 training drill in which he wore an orange jumpsuit to play the role of a detainee.

Terry C. Holdbrooks Jr. told the Web site cageprisoners.com in an interview this month that he saw several abuses during his service at Guantanamo in 2003, including detainees subjected to cold temperatures and loud music, and he later converted to Islam.

Neely, 28, describes a litany of cruel treatment by his fellow soldiers, including beatings and humiliations he said were intended only to deliver physical or psychological pain.

Only months had passed since the Sept. 11 attacks, and Neely said many of the guards wanted revenge. Especially before the first Red Cross visit, he said guards were seizing on any apparent infractions to "get some" by hurting the detainees. The soldiers' behavior seemed justified at the time, he said, because they were told "these are the worst terrorists in the world."

He said one medic punched a handcuffed prisoner in the face for refusing to swallow a liquid nutritional supplement, and another bragged about cruelly stretching a prisoner's torn muscles during what was supposed to be physical therapy treatments.

He said detainees were forced to submit to take showers and defecate into buckets in full view of female soldiers, against Islamic customs. When a detainee yelled an expletive at a female guard, he said a crew of soldiers beat the man up and held him down so that the woman could repeatedly strike him in the face.

Neely says he feels personally ashamed for how he treated that elderly detainee the first day. As he recalls it, the man made a movement to resist on his way to his cage, and he responded by shoving the shackled man headfirst to the ground, bruising and scraping his face. Other soldiers hog-tied him and left him in the sun for hours.
Only later did Neely learn — from another detainee — that the man had jerked away thinking he was about to be executed.

"I just felt horrible," Neely recalled.

A former Army spokesman for the base says the guards had "strict direction from the start" (the reporter's words) but that's bullshit. This sort of thing only happens with the explicit or implicit approval of commanders, and commanders only give that approval when civilian leadership wants it or doesn't care to stop it.

Never Heard of This Guy?

Me neither (via Sadly, No!):

James G. Cummings, who police say was shot to death by his wife two months ago, allegedly had a cache of radioactive materials in his home suitable for building a “dirty bomb.”

According to an FBI field intelligence report from the Washington Regional Threat and Analysis Center posted online by WikiLeaks, an organization that posts leaked documents, an investigation into the case revealed that radioactive materials were removed from Cummings’ home after his shooting death on Dec. 9.

The report posted on the WikiLeaks Web site states that “On 9 December 2008, radiological dispersal device components and literature, and radioactive materials, were discovered at the Maine residence of an identified deceased [person] James Cummings.”

The section referring to Cummings can be read here.

It says that four 1-gallon containers of 35 percent hydrogen peroxide, uranium, thorium, lithium metal, thermite, aluminum powder, beryllium, boron, black iron oxide and magnesium ribbon were found in the home.

Also found was literature on how to build “dirty bombs” and information about cesium-137, strontium-90 and cobalt-60, radioactive materials. The FBI report also stated there was evidence linking James Cummings to white supremacist groups.

[...]

An application for membership in the National Socialist Movement filled out by Cummings also was found in the residence, according to the report. Cummings’ wife, Amber B. Cummings, 31, told investigators that her husband spoke of “dirty bombs,” according to the report, and mixed chemicals in her kitchen sink. She allegedly told police that Cummings subjected her to years of mental, physical and sexual abuse. She also said that Cummings was “very upset” when Barack Obama was elected president.

So, a crazy right-winger, neo-nazi and white supremacist was apparently involved in a credible plot to build an actual "dirty bomb", a plot that was thwarted only when his wife did us the favor of shooting him. Strangely, this news item is not being splashed all over blogs that are apparently obsessed with terrorism. Why is that?

More on Obama and State Secrets

Via Glenn Greenwald, Marc Ambinder talks to "senior officials" and gets their explanation for why the Obama administration asserted the state secrets privilege on steroids that was the hallmark of the Bush administration's reasoning in the case:

Officials decided that it would be imprudent to reverse course so abruptly because they realized they didn't yet have a full picture of the intelligence methods and secrets that underlay the privilege's assertions, because the privilege might correctly protect a state secret, and because the domino effect of retracting it could harm legitimate cases, both civil and criminal, that are already in progress.

"If you decide today precipitously to waive this privilege, you can't get it back,an administration official said. "If you decide to assert it, you can always retract it in the future."

I don't agree with Greenwald that Ambinder's post is nothing more than "subservient pro-administration stenography" because Ambinder cites an anonymous source in the administration and doesn't question the source's reasoning; before Ambinder's post we didn't know the rationale behind the administration's decision to adopt the Bush administration's position as their own, and now thanks to Ambinder we do. Or at least we know what they're willing to say publicly (if anonymously.)

What I do agree with Greenwald about, is the absurdity of the idea that the Obama administration would be "precipitously" waiving the privilege. That's ridiculous on its face. Senior members of the Obama DOJ have studied, and criticized, the assertion of the state secrets privilege by the Bush administration for years now. To argue that coming into office they were not prepared for this case is disingenuous at best.

Now I'm willing to give the Obama administration a the benefit of the doubt, but only to a slight extent. The assertion of this privilege to deny plaintiffs even their day in court to air their grievances is wrong, and is nothing more than a means to defend government wrong-doing and lawbreaking. If members of the Obama administration do not make it clear that they agree, sooner rather than later, than we are entirely justified to lambaste the Obama administration for their failure to commit to the ideals that Obama himself articulated on the campaign trail.

The Good and the Bad

First, the good. Paul Krugman's fears aside, it appears that the Obama administration is determined to maintain the focus on health care reform even in the midst of battles over stimulus packages and an economy in crisis (h/t Adam):

The Obama administration’s health care czar may be gone, but here is one hint that its commitment to pursuing major health care legislation in 2009 remains in place. On Sunday, a senior administration official told me that health care would be a “central focus” of Obama’s first budget proposal.

The official didn’t specify precisely what that meant: Would the administration be asking for funds to make sure every American has insurance, or just a portion? Would there be major reforms of the way medical care is delivered? But even with that ambiguity, the statement seems to signal that Obama still takes health care seriously and hopes to pass significant legislation in the next year.

[...]

...in interviews over the past week, administration officials have said repeatedly that the dobuts about Obama’s commitment are unfounded. They say Obama himself has indicated health care is a top priority, to be pursued shortly after the debate over the economic stimulus package is over.

They also say he believes it is important to make sure everybody (or almost everybody) has insurance, because it’s not possible to control costs while so many people lack health benefits. "I've been in meetings with him and it's clear this guy is committed to getting health care and getting coverage to everybody," says one high-ranking member of the administration. "There's no question in my mind."

And now, the bad:

In the first major national security case of the Obama administration, lawyers representing the government took the exact same position as the Bush administration. Government attorneys asked a judge to throw out a torture case, citing the need to preserve state secrets. Some human rights activists now say they feel betrayed by an administration that had promised greater openness and transparency.

Five former terrorism detainees brought the lawsuit, Mohammed et al. vs. Jeppesen DataPlan Inc. The men accuse Jeppesen, a Boeing subsidiary, of providing logistical support to the CIA for "torture flights" to overseas prisons.

Bush administration lawyers had argued there was no way to try this case without revealing state secrets. Activist groups and newspaper editorial pages hammered the Justice Department for taking that position, but a trial judge agreed and threw the case out.

As the government prepared to argue the case again before three judges at an appeals court Monday, observers wondered whether the Justice Department would change course now that there is a new president and a new attorney general. The government did not change course.

ACLU attorney Ben Wizner, who represents the detainees, said in a phone interview after arguments, "The Obama administration, which came to office on a promise of greater transparency — on a promise of ending these practices — stood up and made exactly the same arguments that were made by Bush lawyers to throw out torture victims' lawsuits. And that's a profound disappointment."

[...]

Many senior Obama nominees for national security positions have not yet been confirmed. Robert Raben, a former U.S. assistant attorney general during the Clinton administration, believes the administration's position on state secrets may evolve once those people arrive. "I just don't think there's been enough time," Raben said. "I don't think every computer has been turned on in the executive branch, I don't think every seat has been warmed by the smarties that will sit down and figure out what the policy will be.

"I think people need to stay calm," said Raben.

One of those "smarties" is Georgetown Professor of Law Marty Lederman, who has repeatedly denounced the Bush administration for years on matters of detention and torture over at the law blog Balkinization and who has now signed up to be part of the Obama admin's OLC. His colleague at Balkinization, David Luban, castigates the Obama administration in a post entitled "You Cover It Up, You Own It" (he's joined by Glenn Greenwald in flaying the administration.) For my part I detest the state secrets doctrine, I detest that it's been used to cover up government wrongdoing, that anyone in government can possibly argue that even hearing a case threatens national security, and I detest the manner in which our supposedly independent judiciary rolls over to government misfeasance whenever anyone whispers the word terrorism or Al Qaeda. I sincerely hope Raben is right, but I honestly would be surprised. It seems only natural for government to presume that we have no reason to know exactly what it is they're up to when it comes to national security.

India and Pakistan Edging Towards War?

Bluster or not, tensions are on the rise between India and Pakistan in the wake of the horrific Mumbia attacks in November:

n signs of growing regional tension since the Mumbai attacks last month, Pakistan scrambled fighter jets over several of its larger cities Monday, and India's foreign minister told a gathering of Indian diplomats in New Delhi that the country is keeping all its options open to bring the perpetrators of the attacks to justice.

"We have so far acted with utmost restraint," Pranab Mukherjee told the more than 120 envoys from posts around the world. But he added, "We will take all measures necessary as we deem fit to deal with the situation."

A senior government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, later called Mukherjee's tough talk "an expression of political will that India will not take this lying down." He added that the option of "precision airstrikes" on terrorist training camps in Pakistan would remain on the table if Islamabad did not act effectively against groups fomenting terrorism against India.

On Monday, Pakistan put its air force on high alert, with several fighter jets conducting exercises over the capital, Islamabad, as well as Rawalpindi, Lahore and Pakistan-controlled Kashmir. Offices of newspapers and television channels were inundated with calls from people asking whether the exercises, which caused delays in some civilian flights, were a response to airstrikes by India.

A Pakistani air force spokesman, Commodore Humayun Viqar, said in a statement, "In view of the current environment, PAF has enhanced its vigilance."

India is continuing to demand that Pakistan end its support for terrorists operating in the country. For their part Pakistan officials continue to deny any involvement in planning the attacks or supporting terrorist organizations.

Buying Pakistan's Nukes

Bret Stephens (via Security Law Brief) proposes that we solve the problem posed by Pakistan's nukes by buying them, in exchange for an economic stimulus package of about $100 billion. Now the first thing you are probably wondering is why Pakistan would be willing to abandon its nukes in the face of the threat posed by India, a threat that prompted them to acquire the nukes in the first place. Stephens solution: extend our nuclear umbrella to include Pakistan. So...to get Pakistan to give up its nukes, we're going to aim ours (potentially) at our ally India? And we should propose this now, while India is quite justifiably upset with Pakistan over the Mumbai attacks? I appreciate Stephens' sincerity, but someone would have to be paying us to even try this.

Afghanistan: The Unwinnable War?

Thanks the writings of those like Nir Rosen and Bartle Breese Bull and rapidly changing facts on the ground the public perception that to win in Afghanistan we need merely devote more troops and resources to the conflict is beginning to erode. Joe Klein is only the latest to wonder what exactly we're hoping to get out of a "surge" in Afghanistan:

The war in Afghanistan — the war that President-elect Barack Obama pledged to fight and win — has become an aimless absurdity. It began with a specific target. Afghanistan was where Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda lived, harbored by the Islamic extremist Taliban government. But the enemy escaped into Pakistan, and for the past seven years, Afghanistan has been a slow bleed against an array of mostly indigenous narco-jihadi-tribal guerrilla forces that we continue to call the "Taliban." These ragtag bands are funded by opium profits and led by assorted religious extremists and druglords, many of whom have safe havens in Pakistan.

We know what the mission used to be — to kill or capture Osama bin Laden and destroy his al-Qaeda command. But once bin Laden slipped away, the mission morphed into a vast, messy nation — building effort to support the allegedly democratic Karzai government. There was a certain logic to that. The Taliban and al-Qaeda can't base themselves in Afghanistan if something resembling a stable, secure nation-state exists there. But the mission was also historically implausible: Afghanistan has never had a strong central government. It has been governed for thousands of years by local and regional tribal coalitions. The tribes have often been at one another's throats — a good part of the current "Taliban" uprising is nothing more than standard tribal rivalries juiced by Western arms and opium profits — except when foreigners have invaded the area, in which case the Afghans have united and slowly humiliated conquerors from Alexander the Great to the Soviets.

History is not at all on our side, as Michael Crowley discusses in more detail(via Ezra Klein):

Afghanistan is like a Chinese finger trap: The harder you try to solve it, the more it constricts you. Ask the Russians. In 1979, the Soviet Union sent military forces to install a pro-Soviet government in Kabul. At its peak in the country, the Red Army numbered some 140,000. But, after ten years of inconclusive fighting, 15,000 dead, and tens of thousands more wounded, the battered Soviets mounted a humiliating retreat--one that probably helped speed the collapse of their empire. ("They've already repeated all of our mistakes," one former Soviet general from the Afghan campaign recently said to The New York Times of the U.S. occupation.) Or ask the British. More than a century earlier, the United Kingdom dispatched a huge army to Afghanistan from India to secure it against Russian influence. That adventure, too, was a disaster, ending in a retreat of 16,500 troops and civilians through the Khyber Pass into Pakistan. Only one survivor made it--his life spared by the Afghans so he could recount the ghastly tale for others.

As Klein also mentions, the the most maddening problem when it comes to securing Afghanistan is Pakistan. And in that respect, the situation has only gotten worse. Another thirty or fifty or hundred thousand troops may do wonders for bringing security to more remote regions of Afghanistan, but we face an intractable problem in the fact that the Taliban can cross the border into Pakistan at will. Pakistan is presently the home of an even more powerful Taliban that now appears willing to challenge the government of Pakistan directly, and Pakistan itself faces worsening relations with India thanks to the Mumbai attacks last month.

So far I've seen nothing that indicates that Obama is considering or anticipating backing away from the general nation-building exercise we presently have going on in Afghanistan. I do not see Obama as the type of President to continue investing heavily in a war that can't be won, but the problem is there appear to be very few establishment figures calling for anything other than a greater commitment to Afghanistan, and a majority of Americans seem to agree that the war is still winnable. If in fact the mission in Afghanistan becomes untenable such a conclusion will not be clear for some time, and it will be some time still after that before a clamor to bring the troops home. And unfortunately unlike in Iraq, Pakistan remains a safe harbor for Al Qaeda, an organization that continues to pose a threat to us and other western nations to a degree that can't simply be ignored.

Mumbai Fallout

As you've probably heard, the attackers responsible for the terror attacks in Mumbai last month were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, an outlawed Islamic militant group based in Pakistan and the Kashmir. Although Pakistan has raided training camps for the terrorist group, their intelligence services have also been linked to Lashkar and they've indicated no willingness to turn over any captured suspects to India. Pakistan's stone-walling on the investigation of the attacks has led to some sword-rattling from India, which has prompted sword-rattling in turn from Pakistan (h/t Julie.)