The damage they did was a lot deeper than two towers and sveral thousand lives

As time goes on, it appears that the terror war hawks may be right, the War on Terror does represent an existential threat to America in away that the Nazis or Communists never did -- although not in the way that the terror war hawks may mean.

As this recent discussion before the Supreme Court illustrates, certain basic liberties are under assault -- even from those we might hope would know better. Obama administartion lawyers argued that the government could criminalize filing "friend of the court briefs" in support of an oragnization that the government has deemed "terrorist. Even those with dim imaginations should have little trouble imaging the likely consequences of this sort of power.

Bin Laden's attack on New York on 9/11 was a stunning success from his point of view -- and not merely because of the immediate damage and loss of life. No, the real fruits of his strategy ripened later courtesy of our own reactions to his attack. The economic damage alone of our security measures and wars dwarfs the damage done to New York. And even more important over the long term, we did grievous damage to our liberty and our moral authority with torture, our detention policy, the PATRIOT (sic) Act, warrantless wiretapping and the eorion of principl and rule of law needed to enact and implement all of that.

Osama Bin Laden and AlQaeda have done more real, lasting damage to us than Hitler and Tojo did.

Thinly veiled racism at the Drudge Report

Matt Drudge rarely passes up an opportunity to smear Muslims. On his site he trumpets that Five Muslim soldiers were "arrested" on allegations they Poisoned fellow soldiers at Ft. Jackson. Yet even the story he links to does not actually say anyone was arrested and other reporting says that nothing was substantiated. So much for "presumption of innocence."

It's this mindset that led to so much abuse during the Bush administration. It's the mindset that turns accused or even merely suspected detainees into "Terrorists" who can and should be tortured because they might know something. It's the mindset that leads to profiling that gets any Muslim or anyone some ignorant fool thinks may be Muslim (like a Sikh) targeted. Meanwhile we're somehow supposed to win the hearts and minds of Muslims while treating them as enemies without distinction.

Meanwhile, hours after contrary reports emerge that don't fit his narrative, Drudge leaves up his accusatory headline. A quick Google search shows it's already going viral on various right-wing blogs and sites even though it's already been debunked. As is so often the case, the truth will have a hard time ever catching up to the lie, which is the insidious thing about the way Drudge operates whenever he's dealing with one of his favorite themes (climate change, Sarah Palin, Obama approval ratings, corrupt Democrats, among others).

No torture and he talks

Excellent summary of the facts at Obsidian Wings but the bottom line is that reading the terror suspect his rights, treating him humanely and observing due process not only upholds our honor but actually results in more intelligence than harsh "Jack Bauer" style acts.

Will Obama get Osama?

Probably not directly, a la a Predator strike or the like, but Obama, as is is wont, may be creating the conditions for positive things to happen.

This Daily Kos dairist lays out the case for "Osama being a dead man" here: http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/6/17/743628/-Osama-bin-Laden-Is-a-Dead-Man

I won't be the slightest bit surprised if Osama doesn't make it to 2010. When you think of it, the Obama administration has moved at a rapid clip on a lot of things.

Homegrown terror

It's highly likely that the next major terrorist attack in the US will come from home-grown sources. Before 9/11 the biggest terror attack was the Oklahoma City bombing, and even after 9/11 the most damaging terror attack -- the anthrax letters -- was almost certainly from a domestic source.

With the election of Barack Obama there's also a chance white supremacists will be revitalized. This story out of Maine is worrisome: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Slain_white_supremacist_had_components_for_0309.html

While it makes good TV dramas to show foreign terror cells made up of swarthy young men in our midst, real world experience suggest that real terrorists need to be able to blend into the population. They need to be able to case targets and approach without detection. Everywhere that's been afflicted with persistent terror, from Northern Ireland, to Israel, to Britain, India, Sri Lanka, Germany, etc. the terrorists are either native to the country or part of a large minority within the country that are a part of everyday life.

The 9/11 hijackers took advantage of the cosmopolitan nature of air travel and flaws in the screening system to make their attack. The attack also relied on surprise to succeed and anything like that is unlikely to succeed again. Indeed, any attack that relies on seizing control of a transport vehicle probably won't work now because passengers and crews now fight back.

Instead successful attacks in recent years have generally relied on infiltrating suicide bombers or assassins into crowds, which is obviously easier if the assassin can blend in.

Our next terror attacker may very well be some American.

Baffle them with Warfare link

An amusing, yet accurate read on the problem of winning a war against terrorists:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/10/9/9813/16416/597/624860

Entebbe-style

The Columbian hostage rescue was a stunning, brilliant special operation.

Some details here: http://www.yehey.com/news/article.aspx?id=219181

FISA follies

There's certainly a good case to be made for adjusting the FISA provisions. The problem is that the normal benefit of the doubt one would like to extend to an administration cannot be extended to this one.

Just today, even as the House voted to trust Bush one more time, his former press spokesman was in a nearby hearing room outlining all the ways the administration lied, shaded the truth, overstated intel and generally demonstrated that trust was undeserved.

The immunity provision is the rub. There seems to be no other mechanism to hold the lawbreaking accountable other than civil lawsuits, considering that Congress apparently is helpless to do it's oversight job. The sad thing is that Congress, while unable or unwilling to do its job, is more than willing to stop anyone else from doing it either.

Wrong guys

One of the foreseeable consequences of our bad decision to abandon precedent and allow the torture and mistreatment of prisoners is that a lot of mistakes were made.

Lord knows, the actual criminal justices system makes plenty of mistakes, despite all the protections of due process, legal assistance and presumption of evidence. It defies reason to think that the seizures on the battlefield and war zone will be more efficient. Now, obviously we don't want soldiers in combat to have to mirandize detainees. That's unreasonable, impractical and unnecessary.

But we therefore have to acknowledge the certainty that many of the people detained are not, actually, guilty of anything. Therefore it makes sense to treat all detainees as humanely as tactical conditions permit and the policy should be, as it always was before, to treat all prisoners properly. Again, this can't be emphasized enough. many of them will not only be innocent, but some will be allies and friends caught up by mistake. Of course, abusing friends, allies and neutrals may be a good way to turn them into enemies.

This news article explains some cases: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/detainees/story/38773.html

Are we a non-Geneva state now?

Andrew Sullivan asks: Is the U.S. a non-Geneva state?
http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/04/is-the-us-now-a.html#more

I think the U.S, has de facto withdrawn from the Geneva conventions and stands in great danger of very negative consequences down the road unless the next president takes firm steps to right the ship.

One interesting feature in Sullivan's site is a poll on the question.50 percent of the respondents say the US is now a non0Geneva state, the rest say it still is or are not sure. There's also a state-by-state breakdown. Only a handful of states show a majority believing the US still is a Geneva state. Notable states where the majority of respondents still believe the US has not managed to remove itself from Geneva despite torturing people are New Hampshire, Alaska and Texas.

Now obviously this is not a scientific poll and can't be taken as a definitive statement on how people in Texas, or anyplace else feel about the question, but it's still interesting to see the sorts of places where a large number of people can still buy into the Bush viewpoint.

Yoo

Stephen Bainbridge defends Yoo's right to be at Berkeley Law and says that allowing criticism of him to result in his removal would chill academic freedom.

Yoo is not the worse actor on this whole torture. Alone he could have done little. Clearly the biggest blame rests with Bush and Cheney and other decision makers up the chain from Yoo.

But Yoo's memo provided cover for atrocious acts that tarnished the honor of America and damaged us in the war on terror. His memo was not merely an academic exercise. It had real effects. For a long time it was the guiding "legal" document on the issue, which meant it directly led to abuse and deaths. It made it impossible for military and civilians in the government who thought torture was wrong to effectively resist. After all, it had been deemed "legal."

Although eventually repudiated, the memo did its damage and may still have echoes among the still-classified memos.

And why was this Yoo memo classified? Was there a single bona fide secret protected? Or was it just politically convenient to keep it a secret? To ask the question is to get the answer.

Backwards at Brooking

From an AP story about how Afghanistan could use a couple more brigades:
Michael O’Hanlon of the Brookings Institution warned that adding forces to Afghanistan could hurt efforts in Iraq. “We shouldn’t shortchange the Iraq mission to find the brigades for Afghanistan,” O’Hanlon said.

No, how about not shortchanging the mission IN AFGHANISTAN!
That's where the blokes who attacked us and killed 3,000 Americans came from. Oh, and by the way, the bastards who did it are still AT LARGE.

Get a clue, Mr. O'Hanlon.

Greenwald on the real issue

Nobody has done more streling service in defense of liberty in the face of Bushist lawlessness than Glenn Greenwald. He's well worth reading.
Today he zeroes in on the real point of the FISA controversy:
One other vital point: The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. But there is no risk that they will refuse requests to cooperate with legal surveillance, particularly since they are legally obligated to cooperate in those circumstances. The claim the telcoms will cease to cooperate with surveillance requests is pure fear-mongering, and is purely dishonest.