Quote of the day

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From the New York Times:

"I can find no way around the thicket of laws and precedents that effectively allow the executive branch of our government to proclaim as perfectly lawful certain actions that seem on their face incompatible with our Constitution and laws while keeping the reasons for their conclusion a secret, ...The Alice-in-Wonderland nature of this pronouncement is not lost on me,"

So wrote Manhattan federal judge Colleen McMahon in a ruling that refused to require the Justice Department to disclose a memorandum providing the legal justification for targeted killing of U.S. citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in an administration-authorized drone strike in Yemen in 2011.

Such is the legal morass fashioned by the Obama administration that the judge, while handing down this ruling, also expressed frustration in her own role in keeping the justification for drone hits a state secret.

The lawsuit was filed by the New York Times and yesterday's decision also shot down a broader request for the memorandum by the ACLU. The Times said they would appeal the ruling.

"We began this litigation because we believed our readers deserved to know more about the U.S. government's legal position on the use of targeted killings against persons having ties to terrorism, including U.S. citizens," Mr. McCraw said. "Judge McMahon's decision speaks eloquently and at length to the serious legal questions raised by the targeted-killing program and to why in a democracy the government should be addressing those questions openly and fully."

Jameel Jaffer, a lawyer with the A.C.L.U., said his group also planned to appeal. "This ruling," he said, "denies the public access to crucial information about the government's extrajudicial killing of U.S. citizens and also effectively greenlights its practice of making selective and self-serving disclosures."

Dig this:

Judge McMahon's opinion included an overview of what she called "an extensive public relations campaign" by various government officials about the American role in the killing of Mr. Awlaki and the circumstances under which the government considers targeted killings, including of its citizens, to be lawful. The Times and the A.C.L.U. argued that the government had waived the right to withhold its legal rationale by discussing the program extensively in public.

Recall back in May, it was the very New York Times that did a lengthy and comprehensive piece on the Obama administration's drone strike program that was sufficiently nuanced to paint the President as at-once, an aggressive and stalwart counter-terrorist warrior while at the same time offering up no explicit criticisms other than some perfunctory "raises serious questions"-type chin stroking.


Here's what we had to say about the soft-pedaling throughout the article:

The tone of the article is starting to grate on us now. Read this:

The care that Mr. Obama and his counterterrorism chief take in choosing targets, and their reliance on a precision weapon, the drone, reflect his pledge at the outset of his presidency to reject what he called the Bush administration's "false choice between our safety and our ideals."

But he has found that war is a messy business, and his actions show that pursuing an enemy unbound by rules has required moral, legal and practical trade-offs that his speeches did not envision.

Oh for cryin' out loud. Even any implicit criticism of the President is pawned off on an abstraction related to the man.


We're running long so we'll try to wrap this up with some closing thoughts. The article touts Obama's professorial and lawyerly approach to the war on terror in order to preserve his principles but 3 years on, we are wondering just what his principles are. Remember, this is the man who wanted to try KSM in civilian court but when asked what would happen if KSM was actually acquitted, Obama assured us that, regardless, KSM would never see the light of freedom. Huh? We believe the term of art for that is "show trial".

Also, this is the same man who wants to confer the same legal rights enjoyed by U.S. citizens upon monsters like KSM but signed into law last November provisions that would give him the power to indefinetely detain U.S. citizens without cause and also the power to kill U.S. citizens overseas without traditionally recognized due process. How one goes about squaring these circles is beyond our comprehension.

While we do appreciate that the President realizes combating terrorism on a global scale is not for the dainty or meek of heart (somewhere, Dick Cheney is smiling and/or having a bemused chuckle), there are some glaring inconsistencies with respect to policy that lead us to believe that the President is playing politics with his tactics just as much as anything else.

Back to real time...


Of course any issues regarding lack of transparency and obfuscation with respect to this administration are naturally going to involve that hack that runs the Justice Department. McMahon zeroed in on a speech made by Holder last spring at Northwestern University:

When United States citizens are targeted for killing, Mr. Holder said, the Constitution's due process protections apply. But due process does not require "judicial process," he added.

Nope. It sure as hell doesn't appear that it does, now does it? This is Team O's way of saying they hold all the cards and in effect, have set up the executive branch as judge, jury and executioner of the assassination wing of the U.S. military.

Continuing to be vexed by the present set of legal circumstances thrown down by the Obama administration, McMahon allows herself to engage in some fanciful thinking:

"More fulsome disclosure of the legal reasoning on which the administration relies to justify the targeted killing of individuals, including United States citizens, far from any recognizable 'hot' field of battle, would allow for intelligent discussion and assessment of a tactic that (like torture before it) remains hotly debated," she wrote.

Intelligent discussion..? Remains hotly debated..? By whom? Where is this debate of which she speaks? God bless the Times for pursuing this through legal channels but they have been an abject failure at using their bully pulpit to make this a front burner issue and, in fact, and unlike the issue of torture during the previous administration, have been entirely complicit in sweeping a monumentally important constitutional and moral issue under the carpet.



To close things out and to quote W.C. Varones, "When democracy dies, the press should be held as an accomplice to murder."


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Smack of the day

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Light day today as we are off to Orange County to be with family but before we left, we wanted to share some epic smack shot off by Charles Krauthammer this past week and which is consistent with pointing out the incoherence of the Obama administration's counter-terrorism policies:

So the peacemaker, Nobel laureate, nuclear disarmer, apologizer to the world for America having lost its moral way when it harshly interrogated the very people Obama now kills, has become — just in time for the 2012 campaign — Zeus the Avenger, smiting by lightning strike.

A rather strange ethics. You go around the world preening about how America has turned a new moral page by electing a president profoundly offended by George W. Bush’s belligerence and prisoner maltreatment, and now you’re ostentatiously telling the world that you personally play judge, jury and executioner to unseen combatants of your choosing and whatever innocents happen to be in their company.

This is not to argue against drone attacks. In principle, they are fully justified. No quarter need be given to terrorists who wear civilian clothes, hide among civilians and target civilians indiscriminately. But it is to question the moral amnesia of those whose delicate sensibilities were offended by the Bush methods that kept America safe for a decade — and who now embrace Obama’s campaign of assassination by remote control.

Moreover, there is an acute military problem. Dead terrorists can’t talk.

Drone attacks are cheap — which is good. But the path of least resistance has a cost. It yields no intelligence about terror networks or terror plans.

One capture could potentially make us safer than 10 killings. But because of the moral incoherence of Obama’s war on terror, there are practically no captures anymore. What would be the point? There’s nowhere for the CIA to interrogate. And what would they learn even if they did, Obama having decreed a new regime of kid-gloves, name-rank-and-serial-number interrogation?

This administration came out opposing military tribunals, wanting to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed in New York, reading the Christmas Day bomber his Miranda rights and trying mightily (and unsuccessfully, there being — surprise! — no plausible alternative) to close Guantanamo. Yet alongside this exquisite delicacy about the rights of terrorists is the campaign to kill them in their beds.

You festoon your prisoners with rights — but you take no prisoners. The morality is perverse. Which is why the results are so mixed. We do kill terror operatives, an important part of the war on terror, but we gratuitously forfeit potentially life-saving intelligence.

Bingo.


And it's not just foreign terrorists. Team O has fashioned a legal construct whereby American citizens can be held indefinetely without cause and like Anwar al-Awlaki, even be killed without due process.

For you Obama supporters out there, how do you square that circle? How do you wack U.S. citizens based upon one's personal vetting procedure but desire to confer the rights of citizenship upon foreign terrorists? You can't, therefore, you are guilty of championing a system, a process that is far more egregious, far more non-sensical and far more dangerous than any policy put into place by Obama's predecessor. You have become what you so allegedly and righteously claimed to have despised.

As we have said before, we never, for obvious reasons, want to hear one peep about water-boarding ever again. Funny how that outrage has quietly dissapated, now isn't it?

Of spiking the ball

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Hubris: exaggerated pride or self-confidence



After the capture of Sadaam Hussein, George W. Bush:

The success of yesterday's mission is a tribute to our men and women now serving in Iraq . The operation was based on the superb work of intelligence who found the Dictator’s footprints in a vast country. The operation was carried out with skill and precision by a brave fighting force. Our servicemen and women and our coalition allies have faced many dangers in the hunt for members of the fallen regime, and in their effort to bring hope and freedom to the Iraqi people. Their work continues, and so do the risks. Today, on behalf of the nation, I thank the members of our Armed Forces and I congratulate them.

Barack Obama, on Sunday, May 1, 2011:


And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as I continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle, and defeat his network. Then, last August, after years of painstaking work by my intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden. It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground. I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside of Pakistan . And finally, last week, I determined that I had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad , Pakistan.



And this from B-Daddy of The Liberator Today:

I am almost sick to my gut today, over the blatantly political attempts that spilled previously classified information about the killing of bin Laden, including the identity of the Seal Team Six Commander. Our President has no shame, blatantly using classified information to lure Hollywood pals to make a film in which he will be portrayed as heroic, no doubt. And Democrats complained that Bush politicized the war.

It has become apparent that the man suffers from security issues in more ways than one.

Quote of the day

B-Daddy at The Liberator Today, initiates a great discussion regarding the legality of killing U.S. citizens overseas, specifically the drone strike that took the life of American-born Anwar al-Awlaki and the use of state secrecy laws as implied justification for the killing. He finishes off his post with this:

Meanwhile we continue with the irony of Obama looking very Bush-like in the use of state secrecy laws to shield inquiry into the legality of the administration's actions in the war on terror. What incongruity will we next face, perhaps anti-Wall Street protests supporting an administration filled with bankers and financiers?

Quickies

A round up of news items, articles, columns and blog posts that caught our eye this past week.




So, about that jobs bill that we absolutely have to jump on right now... right now!

Well, damn that John Boehner

President Obama is still pressing Congress to pass his jobs-stimulus bill immediately, but Democratic Party leaders in the Senate once again have delayed taking a vote on the legislation and instead will take up a bill to punish China over its currency valuation.

Senators late Monday passed a bill to keep the government open into the next fiscal year and then adjourned for the rest of the week, but Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat, said when they return they’ll take up the China measure rather than Mr. Obama’s jobs plan.

“I don’t think there’s anything more important for a jobs measure than China trade,” said Mr. Reid, who is the chief Senate sponsor of Mr. Obama’s plan, but who said taking on China is a bigger priority right now.

You know, considering the abject failure of the original $800 billion Porkulus "jobs bill" which is mirrored by half, the son of Porkulus, perhaps the Senate Leader is doing the President a favor.





Here's some more of that post-partisan civility we've been hearing so much about.

“Some of you here may be folks who actually used to be Republicans but are puzzled by what’s happened to that party, are puzzled by what’s happening to that party. I mean, has anybody been watching the debates lately? You’ve got a governor whose state is on fire denying climate change,”

Wild fires as causal evidence of climate change. Interesting.






If you've been reading this blog for a while, it probably won't come as a surprise that we are not entirely unsympathetic to the Occupy Wall St. crowd given our common gripe of the bailouts and corporatism/crony capitalism that have been the hallmarks of the Bush and Obama administrations. However, at the end of the day, you don't have to scratch too far beneath the surface to find a virulent anti-free market, anti-capitalist Marxism that is driving this movement and it is there where we must part ways.

"Greed", they cry...

.... and speaking of greed, it always reminds us of this guy:

A conversation no one seems willing to have: Executing alleged terrorists who are U.S. citizens.

Let's get this straight: We have a Justice Department and an Administration that still very much appear to desire to close Gitmo and bring suspected terrorists to civilian trials, essentially affording them the same rights as U.S. citizens. Yet, we just whacked Anwar Awlaki and Samir Khan, U.S. citizens, in a drone strike in Yemen this past week.

And just so you know our hearts in the right place, we commend the President for his aggressive pursuit of terrorist ring leaders and continuing many of the policies of his predecessor. But killing U.S. citizens without due process? We need to talk about this.




W.C. Varones on corruption, Wall Street and Washington D.C.:

Liberals always paint this as an issue of tax policy and campaign finance reform. But that is a naive view. Where there is money and power, it will find influence. The Wall Street - Washington cabal is far too deep and intertwined to be restrained by campaign finance rules, and they will always find a way to push the burden of higher tax rates onto the middle class while buying loopholes for themselves. The revolving door between Wall Street and Washington is far more pernicious than any campaign contributions. Hank Paulson was a Wall Street multi-multi-millionaire before he came to the Treasury and used his position to bail out his Wall Street buddies. And Timmy the Tax Cheat knows that he'll have a seven-figure Wall Street job waiting for him as long as he does Wall Street's bidding as Treasury Secretary. That kind of giant personal wealth incentive makes any campaign contributions seem quaint by comparison.

Quote(s) of the day:

President Barack Obama on Thursday said the U.S. has lost some of its competitive edge and gotten a “little soft.”

Mr. Obama, in an interview with WESH-TV in Orlando, said his administration has been tough on the country’s trading partners and tried to strengthen U.S. manufacturing.

“This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,” Mr. Obama said in response to a question about the country’s economic future. “We need to get back on track.”

To which Jonah Goldberg retorts:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

And whom we might add, his charges believe food stamps and extensions in unemployment benefits are an economic stimulus. Yeah, soft, indeed.




B-Daddy on the GOP field:

I am struck by who is not running in the Republican field, Mitch Daniels, Chris Christie, and Sarah Palin. It seems that each of these potential candidates has a cache of highly enthusiastic supporters that none of the current crop, Ron Paul excepted seems to bring to the race. The good news is that Republican voters tend to be grown-ups about these choices and are less likely to fall in love with a candidate who is all show and no dough like the incumbent. The bad news is that this will leave the tea party movement split, whose energy will be needed to unseat Obama. Further, since the eventual nominee is unlikely to please the tea party to the extent that Palin might have, the movement may suffer a loss of enthusiasm for participation in the political process. The other bit of bad news is that Republicans have shown a certain trend over the last 20 years. Two Bushes, McCain, and Dole all have that "I'm a conservative, but maybe not one to limit government growth and interference in the markets when it suits my purposes" quality.

Check out here what B-Daddy thinks qualifies the best Republican candidate.




That's it for today, gang. We'll see you all on Monday.

Wait, what?

Where we take a look at the absurd, the incredulous and certainly the unexpected.


The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department was speaking before an enthusiastic lot of like-minded people and was opining on the subject of countering terrorism.

Holder’s declaration came in a Thursday speech to hundreds of progressive lawyers, advocates, judges and students gathered at the American Constitution Society’s annual gala. “I know that – in distant countries, and within our own borders – there are people intent on, and actively plotting to, kill Americans,” he told his legal peers in the enthusiastic audience. “Victory and security will not come easily, and they won’t come at all if we adhere to a rigid ideology, adopt a narrow methodology, or abandon our most effective terror-fighting weapon – our Article III [civil] court system,” he declared to much applause.

(italics, ours)

Wait, what?...... Our court system?


This ought to clear up any lingering doubts you may have that these people operate on a different reality plane than the rest of us and should remove any doubt regarding Holder's fitness to serve in the capacity of Attorney General but we've known that for quite some time, now, haven't we?

Funny thing is, though, what Holder says is rather at odds with the behavior of his boss (setting aside whatever verbal drivel that's similar to Holder's) who acts as if drone and air strikes are the best way to deal with terrorists.

Glad the roles aren't reversed.

Lesson (hopefully) Learned

Rich Lowry from NRO:

If bin Laden truly believed we’d curl up in a fetal position after September 11, or we’d ever stop hunting him, he profoundly misjudged our national character. Our manhunt for him was relentless and meticulous, building rather than winding down over the years, as we slowly put together the pieces to track down his courier and then him.

The effort stretched across two administrations, with both George W. Bush and Obama making contributions. The much-reviled interrogation program at Guantanamo Bay turned up crucial information, and to his credit, Obama ordered a risky, honest-to-goodness raid of bin Laden’s compound for the sake of definitiveness.

Its success was met with spontaneous celebrations recalling the sense of unity we briefly had after 9/11. President Bush eventually regretted saying he wanted bin Laden “dead or alive.” In the relief and joy at the terror mastermind’s dispatch, though, it seemed Bush had gotten American sentiment about right. There’s enough Jacksonianism left in this country that we can relish some old-fashioned score-settling. As one jubilant handmade sign said outside the White House, “Osama bin gotten.”

(Italics, ours)

We cannot emphasize enough why this is so important: Don't (mess) with us. Do. not. (mess). with. us. Because if you do, you saw what is going to happen. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next month and maybe not even next year. It will eventually happen. Whether it's a Republican or Democrat in the Oval Office or whether he is a community organizer from Chicago or a drawlin' son of priviledge from Texas, they are going to see through to a rather unseemly end to your existence whereby a group of the roughest, glass-chewing, steel-spitting SOBs on the face of the planet are literally going to drop from out of the sky, pop smoke, Ninja-style in the middle of your bedroom and pump enough lead into your soon-to-be bullet-ravaged corpse to open us strip mining operations and then spirit you out with them only to be dumped unceremoniously in the middle of the ocean to sleep with the fish.

You think al-Zawahiri has got much sleep, lately? We don't.

Wrapping up

Just a few more thoughts on what has gone down over the past couple of days.


Former Journolister, Dave Weigel tweets:

So, uh, who wants to run against this guy? You take this one, Buddy Roemer.

Funny thing is, when we woke up this morning, Osama bin Laden was still dead and gas was still way above that you're-probably-not-getting-re-elected Mendoza line of $4.

It was said that the President was very engaged in supervising and monitoring this operation which is terrific news. But whether it's pirates on the high seas or Gaddafi (and his son, apparently) and now, Osama bin Laden, why does it seem the Commander-in-Chief is most locked-in when it involves wacking people? Is it a Chicago thing?

Hey, don't get us wrong, it's just that we never thought that this Nobel Peace Prize winner would turn out to be such a stone cold killer. No one wants to talk about any of that fey healing the planet crap, now, do they?

And just when unsavory counter-terrorism practices like enhanced interrogation, renditions and, ahem, assassinations seemed so 2003, they're suddenly all the rage again and it would be the height of ingratitude and cheap politicization to not recognize President Obama for it.





So, with the President vowing, out on the campaign trail in '08, to bring bin Laden to justice, he has now fulfilled two major campaign promises.






Downloads of the image below can be found, here.

All snark aside, this has been a tremendous success for President Obama, President Bush and America.

Rejoice...! (UPDATED)

"I heard a thundering sound, followed by heavy firing. Then firing suddenly stopped. Then more thundering, then a big blast,"

September 11, 2001 0600 PDT Clock radio comes on. Local sports-talk hacks on 1090 far too subdued. Something's wrong.




10 years on...

For those in the know, we're thinking that raising a pint at Mc P's in Coronado this evening might be entirely appropriate.



(UPDATE #1):

Awwwww: Bin Laden’s burial at sea questioned by Islamic scholars.

Muslim clerics said Monday that Osama bin Laden’s burial at sea was a violation of Islamic tradition that may further provoke militant calls for revenge attacks against American targets.

Although there appears to be some room for debate over the burial — as with many issues within the faith — a wide range of Islamic scholars interpreted it as a humiliating disregard for the standard Muslim practice of placing the body in a grave with the head pointed toward the holy city of Mecca.

Sea burials can be allowed, they said, but only in special cases where the death occurred aboard a ship.

“The Americans want to humiliate Muslims through this burial, and I don’t think this is in the interest of the U.S. administration,” said Omar Bakri Mohammed, a radical cleric in Lebanon.

We'd be fascinated to know just how it was that those SEALs "prepped" OBL's body prior to his burial.



Awwww Pt. II: Pervez Musharraf Upset About US Violation of Pakistan’s Sovereignty




The Taiwanese take a crack at depicting how it all went down.






And about that SEAL Team 6...

When a former Navy SEAL was called for a comment about this article all he could say was: "You know I'd love to help you man, but I can't say a word about Team 6. There is no Team 6."

What a testament to the fact that we will never... never
give up our pursuit of scum like bin Laden. Terrorist kingpins cannot be sleeping very well of late.




Oh, and please feel free to blame Bush:

Officials say CIA interrogators in secret overseas prisons developed the first strands of information that ultimately led to the killing of Osama bin Laden.

Current and former U.S. officials say that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, provided the nom de guerre of one of bin Laden’s most trusted aides. The CIA got similar information from Mohammed’s successor, Abu Faraj al-Libi. Both were subjected to harsh interrogation tactics inside CIA prisons in Poland and Romania.

And finally...

"Uh oh, now I'm the guy who liveblogged the Osama raid without knowing it."

'Cause if it didn't happen on Twitter, did it really happen?

= Pt. II

President Barack Obama's advisers plan to remove terms such as "Islamic radicalism" from a document outlining national security strategy and will use the new version to emphasize that the U.S. does not view Muslim nations through the lens of terrorism, counterterrorism officials say.

The change would be a significant shift in the National Security Strategy, a document that previously outlined the Bush Doctrine of preventive war. It currently states, "The struggle against militant Islamic radicalism is the great ideological conflict of the early years of the 21st century."

The officials described the changes on condition of anonymity because the document is still being written and is unlikely to be released for weeks, and the White House would not discuss it. But rewriting the strategy document is the latest example of Obama putting his stamp on U.S. foreign policy, as with his promises to dismantle nuclear weapons and limit the situations in which they can be used.

The revisions are part of a larger effort about which the White House talks openly, one that seeks to change not just how the U.S. talks to Muslim nations, but also what it talks to them about, from health care and science to business startups and education.

If by healthcare, it is meant somehow convincing Muslim nations to quit funding... Muslim terrorist groups from building roadside bombs and training suicide bombers to kill Americans which really does nothing to bend the cost curve downward then we're for it.

Look, we're down with getting outside the box and other management bullshit-speak if it means effectively countering terrorism generating from Muslim countries but in reading this article, we couldn't help but think it was just another effort by the Obama administration to rhetorically distance themselves from the Bush administration while doing nothing substantively different.

Check this out:

That shift away from terrorism has been building for a year, since Obama went to Cairo and promised a "new beginning" in the relationship between the U.S. and the Muslim world. The White House believes the previous administration based that relationship entirely on fighting terrorism and winning the war of ideas.

"You take a country where the overwhelming majority are not going to become terrorists, and you go in and say, 'We're building you a hospital so you don't become terrorists.' That doesn't make much sense," National Security Council staffer Pradeep Ramamurthy said.

With respect to the shift away from winning the war of ideas: and Bush was the anti-intellectual?

And no sooner than the idea of humanitarian aid is derided, the Obama administration intends on winning over Muslim nations with.... humanitarian aid.

Like Reagan in China, Obama in Cairo made only passing references to terrorism. Instead he focused on cooperation. He announced the U.S. would team up to fight polio with the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, a multinational body based in Saudi Arabia. The U.S. and OIC had worked together before, but never with that focus.

"President Obama saw it as an opportunity to say, 'We work on things far beyond the war on terrorism,'" World Health Organization spokeswoman Sona Bari said.

"We're probably entering into a whole new level of engagement between the OIC and the polio program because of the stimulus coming from the U.S. government," said Michael Galway, who works on polio eradication for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also began working more closely with local Islamic leaders in northern Nigeria, a network that had been overlooked for years, said John Fitzsimmons, the deputy director of the CDC's immunization division.

Though health officials are reluctant to assign credit to any one action, new polio cases in Nigeria fell from 83 during the first quarter of last year to just one so far this year, Fitzsimmons said.

... and blah, blah, blah.

Maybe we should look at the bright side of things and cheefully grant the President these rhetorical departures as bone-throws to his Left knowing that he, as his track record thus far has indicated, has not done anything of substance to dismantle the Bush anti-terrorism regime.

=

For long-time readers of this blog, you all know we have had what we term; "a complex relationship with President Bush". His "compassionate conservatism" was simply government activism in pursuit of conservative ends (oxymoronic, we know) and ultimately, a fool's errand.

However, as an addendum to our statement regarding President Bush we state: "The one thing he absolutely had to get right, he got right."

There is much to criticize about President Obama on foreign policy, but increasingly, despite all the “reset button” rhetoric and the obligatory nods to the Left, his anti-terrorism policies are becoming near identical extensions (if in cynical fashion) of George Bush’s.

I can’t think of a present-day anti-terrorism methodology that Team Obama (a) did not at one time blast as anti-constitutional and (b) does not now accept in its near entirety. Apparently, Obama has figured (perhaps rightly) that intercepts, the Patriot Act, Predator air attacks, renditions, tribunals, wiretaps, etc., are necessary, and that their earlier damnation by Obama et al. was simply political demagoguery of the sort necessary to galvanize the left-wing base that, now, forgivingly, accepts these measures as needed.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are essentially extensions of the 2006–8 Bush-Petraeus counter-insurgency strategies so savagely ridiculed during congressional testimony by Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. Once again, the Left, fortunately for the country, sees the current flip-flopping — remember Obama’s promise to be out of Iraq by March 2008, or the Biden folly of trisecting Iraq, or Hillary’s “suspension of disbelief”? — as necessary expediency. Indeed, soon, Iraq is promised to be Obama’s “greatest achievement.”

We're supposed to know it's just politics but in life and death matters of fighting terrorism and sending American men and women overseas into battle while coming from the wing of the Democratic Party that did everything within its power to undermine those efforts in combating terrorism, the grace and humility deficit possessed by the Obama administration is staggering.

As it is, in the world we live in, 3... possibly 7 years from now perhaps we will be saying: "He may have royally screwed up everything else, but the one thing Obama absolutely had to get right, he got right."

Kill'em all because Holder can't sort'em out Pt. II

The miserable hack that runs the Justice Department was testifying before the House Judiciary committee earlier this week and the subject of Osama bin Laden came up. After claiming that bin Laden would be entitled to the same rights as Charles Manson in a court of law, here is what the hack had to say about mirandizing bin Laden:

HOLDER: Let me -- you're talking about a hypothetical that will never occur. The reality is that we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden. He will never appear in an American courtroom.

Lest you think the hack has suddenly transformed into the Dirty Harry of counter-terrorism, please realize these are the words of a man who has an entirely incoherent policy with respect to the treatment of terrorists and unlawful combatants on the battlefield and hopes to god we don’t ever have the good fortune of actually capturing bin Laden alive.

Don't get us wrong. bin Laden in the sights, 500 meters out, of a Spec Ops sniper is all good but on the outside chance he is captured alive, then what? Holder doesn't have a clue.


We know Geithner won our "biggest hack" poll question a couple of months ago but Holder blows "Turbo Tax" Tim out of the water for completely irresponsible ideologically driven words and deeds. He needs to go and he needs to go now.

Kill 'em all 'cause Holder can't sort 'em out.

When a window of opportunity opened to strike the leader of al-Qaeda in East Africa last September, U.S. Special Operations forces prepared several options. They could obliterate his vehicle with an airstrike as he drove through southern Somalia. Or they could fire from helicopters that could land at the scene to confirm the kill. Or they could try to take him alive.

The White House authorized the second option. On the morning of Sept. 14, helicopters flying from a U.S. ship off the Somali coast blew up a car carrying Saleh Ali Nabhan. While several hovered overhead, one set down long enough for troops to scoop up enough of the remains for DNA verification. Moments later, the helicopters were headed back to the ship.

The strike was considered a major success, according to senior administration and military officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the classified operation and other sensitive matters. But the opportunity to interrogate one of the most wanted U.S. terrorism targets was gone forever.

Well, we suppose that takes care of that thorny issue of whether or not we will mirandize unlawful combatants and terror suspects out in the field.

In fact, the Post story reports that this unofficial shift in strategy from capture to kill has resulted directly from the Obama administration's and by extension, that miserable hack’s Justice Department’s lack of a coherent policy for detaining prisoners.

After all, when you promise to close Gitmo, are in process of trying one of the highest profile terror leaders in civilian court and offer inconsistent guidance to the boots on the ground with respect to Miranda policy, you’ve pretty much painted yourself into a corner where whacking these high-level operatives before valuable intel can be extracted remains your only tenable option.

Terrorists in our midst

Proponents of prosecuting alleged terrorists via our criminal justice system will point to the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid and the “Dirty Bomber” Jose Padilla as justification for this method over that of the military tribunal system.

With respect to Padilla, here is the dirty little secret they don't want to tell you:

He was not convicted of the most important plot we had against him — the conspiracy with KSM, Binyam Mohammed, and others to carry out a second wave of post-9/11 attacks inside the United States. He was never indicted on that plot because he could not be convicted applying civilian due process standards.

Padilla refused to give information to the FBI, using its regular protocols. It was only when he was designated as an enemy combatant and transferred to military custody (no lawyer involved in interrogations, no Miranda, no case to plea bargain) that he began to give up valuable information. None of those confessions could be admitted under the standards applicable in civilian courts.

Moreover, we knew a lot of other information about him from the interrogations of other Qaeda detainees, like KSM, by the CIA. But that information, too, could not be admitted under civilian court rules unless we were willing to give the sources immunity from prosecution. Since we were never going to immunize the likes of KSM, that was never going to happen.

By the way, you’ll be pleased to know that in 17 years from this point, Padilla will walk as a free man in this country as opposed to the life sentence he would’ve received had he been convicted of his major activity.

WW()D?

Even though police are tapping into the locations of mobile phones thousands of times a year, the legal ground rules remain unclear, and federal privacy laws written a generation ago are ambiguous at best. On Friday, the first federal appeals court to consider the topic will hear oral arguments (PDF) in a case that could establish new standards for locating wireless devices.

In that case, the (Bush) administration has argued that warrantless tracking is permitted because Americans enjoy no "reasonable expectation of privacy" in their--or at least their cell phones'--whereabouts. U.S. Department of Justice lawyers say that "a customer's Fourth Amendment rights are not violated when the phone company reveals to the government its own records" that show where a mobile device placed and received calls.

Those claims have alarmed the ACLU and other civil liberties groups, which have opposed the Justice Department's request and plan to tell the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia that Americans' privacy deserves more protection and judicial oversight than what the administration has proposed.

"This is a critical question for privacy in the 21st century," says Kevin Bankston, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who will be arguing on Friday. "If the courts do side with the government, that means that everywhere we go, in the real world and online, will be an open book to the government unprotected by the Fourth Amendment."

We audibly groaned when we read this news piece. Does this mean we’re going to have to do another one of those posts?

We enjoy doing them but we’re thinking that after a time, the novelty sort of wears off.

Please let us know what you think because we’re kind of 50/50 at this point. Part of us thinks it’s important to keep pointing out the hollow sophistry of Hope and Change for record keeping purposes but part of us also thinks that we’ve pretty well established how faithfully the Obama administration has cleaved to the Bush playbook. After all, with respect to this, isn’t the science settled?

Feel free to chime in. Thanks.

Out: Dissent is patriotic... In: Dissent is assisting the terrorists

The Obama administration’s counter-terrorism czar, John Brennan, took to the pages of USA Today’s Op-Ed section to scold critics of the administration’s handling of the war on terror and specifically the mirandizing of alleged terrorists. In the piece, he closes with this money paragraph

Politically motivated criticism and unfounded fear-mongering only serve the goals of al-Qaeda. Terrorists are not 100-feet tall. Nor do they deserve the abject fear they seek to instill. They will, however, be dismantled and destroyed, by our military, our intelligence services and our law enforcement community. And the notion that America's counterterrorism professionals and America's system of justice are unable to handle these murderous miscreants is absurd.

Never mind the self-serving nature of that first line, what it is that serves the goals of al-Qaeda is the out-of-the-blocks bumbling of the administration in the immediate wake of the Christmas crotch bomber where the President waited a whole three days to address the incident and where the director of the National Counterterrorism Center decided to stay on the ski slopes rather than return to D.C. in what was an obvious all-hands on deck situation.

What it is that serves the goals of al-Qaeda is that miserable hack that runs the Justic Dept. giving stuttering and incoherent answers to whether or not or troops would be expected to mirandize enemy combatants and known terrorists, including Osama bin Laden on the field of battle.

And 100-ft. tall terrorists? Just what is it about asymmetrical warfare does this counter-terrorism expert not understand. One snot nose punk barely out of his teens nearly ruined Christmas for this entire country. These idiots don’t have to be smart, strong, cunning or courageous, they need only be willing. That this appears lost on Brennan does not exactly inspire confidence in us that he knows what the hell he is doing.

And as for his overall whine about partisan politics injecting itself into the matters of national security, let’s take a little walk down memory lane, shall we. Here’s Brennan in August of 2009:

"The fight against terrorists and violent extremists has been returned to its right and proper place: no longer defining — indeed, distorting — our entire national security and foreign policy, but rather serving as a vital part of those larger policies."

Nope. Nothing partisan about that. Hell, Bush-bashing hardly qualifies anymore. Don’t know about you all, but all that “distorting” seemed to work quite nicely.

Quotes of the week

We were used as kind of a political football during the campaign. We obviously would cover these negotiations. The only time we’ve been allowed to cover the White House part of it is one hour inside the East Room, which was just a show-horse type of thing…

The American people pay for all of this that goes on in this town. It’s always been my contention…that if we pay for something, and it’s the public’s business, we ought to be able to see how it’s done. It’s just that simple, it has nothing to do with this particular fight right now.

- C-SPAN'S Brian Lamb on the "transparency" of the healthcare debate.

“Of course, nobody can see the managers’ amendment. It is composed of over 40 amendments. How could anyone vote for a piece of legislation such as that — a managers’ amendment with 42 separate amendments? Now, these amendments were not put in a conference committee. People complain about that. But at least in a conference committee, you have people working together, sticking things in…Here, you have one person making a decision as to what is going to be in the managers’ amendment. There is no way to know what is in it.”

- Harry Reid in 2006 railing against informal deal-making that circumvented the committee process and attacking the use of manager's amendments to avoid public scrutiny.

"President Obama continues to totally ignore one of the important thrusts of our 9/11 recommendations, which is that you have to approach counterterrorism as a multiagency intelligence issue, and not as a law-enforcement issue. He's made a lot of commission's members angry for dismissing our report and ignoring key recommendations."

- 9/11 Commission member and former Secretary of the Navy, John Lehman, on the mirandizing of counter-terrorism.

"Stalin, Hitler, Mao, McCarthy -- these people have been vilified pretty thoroughly by history," Stone told reporters at the Television Critics Association's semi-annual press tour in Pasadena.

"Stalin has a complete other story," Stone said. "Not to paint him as a hero, but to tell a more factual representation. He fought the German war machine more than any single person. We can't judge people as only 'bad' or 'good.' Hitler is an easy scapegoat throughout history and its been used cheaply. He's the product of a series of actions. It's cause and effect ... People in America don't know the connection between WWI and WWII ... I've been able to walk in Stalin's shoes and Hitler's shoes to understand their point of view. We're going to educate our minds and liberalize them and broaden them. We want to move beyond opinions ... Go into the funding of the Nazi party. How many American corporations were involved, from GM through IBM. Hitler is just a man who could have easily been assassinated."

- Castro and Chavez-coddler, Oliver Stone, on his upcoming Showtime miniseries documentary "Secret History of America". What could possibly go wrong?

Big Media's KSM problem

Column here by Eugene Robinson, titled “Battlefield in the War of Ideas” is fairly representative of the liberal-Left’s defense of the Obama administration’s decision to try KSM in civilian courts (extreme Cliff notes version: “they” will like us more).

And fairly representative because it also embodies what we will refer to as the Great Dodge. The Great Dodge is the liberal-Left’s complete unwillingness to address the rank hypocrisy of trying KSM in civilian court. If one wishes to try KSM and other terror detainees in civilian court that is one thing. If one wishes to try KSM in civilian court and the USS COLE bombers in a military tribunal, that is entirely another. Considering the heinousness of the 9-11 WTC attack against defenseless civilians vs. an attack on a U.S. warship, what is the greater warcrime?

It would still appear to be an inconsistency but we could at least see the logic of trying the USS COLE bombers in NYC but reserving the military tribunal for the true war criminal, KSM. This administration, however, gets it completely bass-ackwards. Wrong in principle – wrong in application.

The Great Dodge is also the liberal-Left’s unwillingness to call the Obama administration on the carpet for publicly saying KSM will be convicted and that regardless of the outcome of KSM’s trial, he will not be set free.

The administration has made a grand showing of this trial being faithful to the principles of the Constitution and American civil rights but their deeds and words betray that notion. Both Obama and Holder can legitimately be accused of pre-judging the accused and their assertion that KSM will never be allowed to walk free regardless of the outcome of his trial sets this up as nothing more than a show trial and thus makes a mockery of the very principles the administration is claiming to uphold. It also reveals what this civilian trial was all about from the beginning: not to uphold any true American justice but just cheap political payback to the left.

Robinson and others of his ilk have, thus far, refused to call out the administration let alone even acknowledge there might be a tiny problem with not setting a man free if he wins an acquittal in our court system. The Great Dodge ambles on.

Is the fix in? Pt. II (UPDATED)

So, when is it time to remove the question mark and rearrange the words of the title?

Please click here for an exchange between the President and NBC’s Chuck Todd and determine for yourself whether or not the President is “pre-judging” or simply expressing confidence in the prosecution team regarding the trial of KSM.

Bear in mind that the President is on record as saying he won’t let any Al Qaeda terrorists free on U.S. soil and that his own Deputy Solicitor General has flirted openly with the concept of an extra-legal system to handle any unsavory civilian trial outcomes of any unsavory individuals.

Don’t get us wrong – though we take nothing for granted these days, we’re glad the President sounds committed to keeping our streets safe from terrorists. That’s a great start. But please just drop the sanctimonious bullcrap regarding the Constitution and civil rights when KSM’s ultimate disposition is fait accompli as it just makes a complete mockery of the same Constitution and civil rights.



P.S. We did some inadvertent guest blogging on the 2006 trial of Zacarias Moussaoui and the lessons learned from that here at B-Daddy's place.




(UPDATE #1): On Wednesday, the Senate Judiciary Committee held hearings with Attorney General, Eric Holder. The video of the exchange between him and Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) can be found here but below are two of the sweet spots in the exchange

SENATOR LINDSEY GRAHAM, (R-S.C): Can you give me a case in United States history where a enemy combatant caught on a battlefield was tried in civilian court?

ERIC HOLDER, ATTORNEY GENERAL: I don't know. I'd have to look at that. I think that, you know, the determination I've made --

GRAHAM: We're making history here, Mr. Attorney General. I'll answer it for you. The answer is no.

One would think that basic knowledge would be known to the man who is, you know, making history.

And with respect to mirandizing enemy combatants on the field of battle:

GRAHAM: If bin Laden were caught tomorrow, would it be the position of this administration that he would be brought to justice?

HOLDER: He would certainly be brought to justice, absolutely.

GRAHAM: Where would you try him?

HOLDER: Well, we'd go through our protocol. And we'd make the determination about where he should appropriately be tried. [...]

GRAHAM: If we captured bin Laden tomorrow, would he be entitled to Miranda warnings at the moment of capture?

HOLDER: Again I'm not -- that all depends. I mean, the notion that we --

GRAHAM: Well, it does not depend. If you're going to prosecute anybody in civilian court, our law is clear that the moment custodial interrogation occurs the defendant, the criminal defendant, is entitled to a lawyer and to be informed of their right to remain silent.

The big problem I have is that you're criminalizing the war, that if we caught bin Laden tomorrow, we'd have mixed theories and we couldn't turn him over -- to the CIA, the FBI or military intelligence -- for an interrogation on the battlefield, because now we're saying that he is subject to criminal court in the United States. And you're confusing the people fighting this war.

Isn't that just wonderful? The top cop in the land when asked to articulate the ground rules for fighting the war on terror that he himself is now writing with the civilian trial of KSM renders a policy so haphazard and incoherent it defies description.

Exit question: Is this a question of Holder's hubris or monumental incompetence?

Quickies

More favorable comparisons of an American president to perhaps the greatest mass murderer of all-time made by people who should know better.

The federal pay czar is now worried that meddling in what firms can/cannot pay their top dogs may scare off talent. Who knew?

The father of Bailout Nation warns against too much government intervention into the free market.

A very good counter (in fact, possibly the only one we’ve seen) to this “Jesus was a socialist” non-sense.

More green on green violence over windmill farms in the San Diego east county wilderness.

And finally, a popular catchphrase you may be hearing in the aftermath of the Ft. Hood terrorist attack is that we are back to a “pre – 9-11” mindset with respect to counter-terrorism. Andrew McCarthy who prosecuted the “Blind Sheikh” argues that it’s actually much worse than that.