May 19, 2008 • Vol. 13, No. 34
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As the noose tightens around Assad over the Hariri assassination, we shouldn't forget his active support of our enemies in Iraq.
From a September 2005 Time piece:
The Baathists, on the other hand, were more active in courting the tribes. Starting in November 2003, tribal sheiks and Baathist expatriates held a series of monthly meetings at the Cham Palace hotel in Damascus. They were public events, supposedly meetings to express solidarity with the Iraqi opposition to the U.S. occupation. (The January 2004 gathering was attended by Syrian President Bashar Assad.) Behind the scenes, however, the meetings provided a convenient cover for leaders of the insurgency, including Muhammad Yunis al-Ahmed, the former Military Bureau director, to meet, plan and distribute money. A senior military officer told TIME that U.S. intelligence had an informant--a mid-level Baathist official who belonged to the Dulaimi tribe--attending the meetings and keeping the Americans informed about the insurgents' growing cohesion. But the increased flow of information did not produce a coherent strategy for fighting the growing rebellion.
From Thursday's Journal editorial:
The House took a step in that direction this month by passing another immigration "reform" bill heavy with border control and business harassment and light on anything that will work in the real world.
This past Saturday, the Washington Post published a letter by Coleen Rowley, former FBI Special Agent and the Chief Division Counsel for the Bureau's Minneapolis office, criticizing an editorial,"Vital Presidential Power," co-authored by Weekly Standard editor William Kristol and AEI resident scholar Gary Schmitt. The Kristol-Schmitt op-ed was a defense of President Bush's decision to by-pass the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in ordering NSA electronic surveillance of al Qaeda-related communications to and from the United States. Ms. Rowley, who is now running for Congress in Minnesota as a Democrat (DFL), made the following key criticism in her letter:
"... Contrary to Kristol and Schmitt's assertion that 'the Justice Department decided there was not sufficient evidence to get a FISA warrant to allow the inspection of his computer files,' no evidence of Moussaoui's suspicious flight training and ties with terrorism was presented to the Justice Department. The department was never contacted and so did not decide anything; therefore, no decision was ever made regarding the given evidence and its subsequent application to FISA standards.
That means the FISA procedures were not the reason the FBI failed to inspect Moussaoui's computer files. Rather, the FBI's failure to share and analyze intelligence sufficiently is what enabled Moussaoui to escape further investigation."
Technically, what Ms. Rowley writes is true. The Department of Justice never did make a decision about a possible FISA warrant for Moussaoui. But her point is also misleading. If the testimony of various FBI agents and headquarters officials set out in the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 by the House and Senate intelligence committees is accurate, the reason the Justice Department didn't pursue a FISA warrant was because the FBI itself refused to move forward with an application to the Justice Department. For all of the FBI's suspicions of Moussaoui, the Bureau believed there was not sufficient evidence that he was an "agent of a foreign power" or "terrorist" and, hence, the case did not in their judgment meet the "probable cause" standard required under FISA to obtain a warrant. If so, this would seem to confirm Kristol and Schmitt’s point that the “probable cause” standard required by FISA did play a central role in no FISA warrant being issued in this instance.
What follows are excerpts from the Joint Inquiry:
“Around this time, an attorney in the National Security Law Unit at FBI Headquarters asked the Chief Division Counsel in the Minneapolis field office whether she had considered trying to obtain a criminal warrant. The Chief Division Counsel replied that a FISA order would be the safer course..... (319)
At the suggestion of a Minneapolis supervisor, the agent contacted an FBI officer who had been detailed to the CTC. The agent shared the details of the Moussaoui investigation with the CTC detailee and provided the names of Moussaoui’s associates. The agent explained in a Joint Inquiry interview that he was looking for any information CTC could provide to strengthen the case linking Moussaoui to international terrorism..... (320)
On Wednesday, August 22, the FBI Legat in Paris provided a report that [ deleted ] started a series of discussions between Minneapolis and Headquarters RFU as to whether a specific group of Chechen rebels was a “recognized” foreign power, that is, was on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups and for which the FISA Court had previously granted orders.
The RFU agent told Joint Inquiry staff that, based on advice he received from the NSLU, he believed that the Chechen rebels were not a “recognized” foreign power and that, even if Moussaoui were to be linked to them, the FBI could not obtain a search order under FISA. The RFU agent told the Minneapolis agents that they had to connect Moussaoui to al-Qa’ida, which he believed was a “recognized” foreign power. (321)....
Ultimately, the RFU agent agreed to submit Minneapolis’ FISA request to attorneys in the FBI’s NSLU for review.
In interviews, several FBI attorneys with whom the RFU agent consulted confirmed that they advised the RFU agent that the evidence was insufficient to link Moussaoui to a foreign power. One of the attorneys noted that Chechen rebels were not an international foreign terrorism group under FISA (321)....
On August 27, the RFU agent told the Minneapolis supervisor that the supervisor was getting people “spun up” over Moussaoui. According to his notes and his statement to the Joint Inquiry, the supervisor replied that he was trying to get people at FBI Headquarters “spun up” because he was trying to make sure that Moussaoui “did not take control of a plane and fly it into the World Trade Center.” The Minneapolis agent said that the Headquarters agent told him:
‘[T]hat’s not going to happen. We don’t know he’s a terrorist. You don’t have enough to show he is a terrorist. You have a guy interested in this type of aircraft – that is it.’
[On August 28, the RFU agent edited, and returned to Minneapolis for comment, the request for a FISA Court order that Minneapolis had prepared. The RFU agent told the Joint Inquiry that it was not unusual for FBI Headquarters agents to make changes to field submissions. The major substantive change was removal of information that tried to make connections between the Chechen rebels and al-Qa’ida. After the edit was complete, the RFU agent briefed the FBI Deputy General Counsel, who told the Joint Inquiry that he agreed with the agent that there was insufficient information to show that Moussaoui was an agent of a foreign power]. (322-23)
1) "What Happened to Iraq's Biological Agent Storage Tanks or the Spray Dryer Used for Turning Liquid Agent into a Dried Form? Any Update on the Document that Indicated Iraq had Built a Fermentation Plant?" -- Here
2) "What did Hans Blix say in March 2003 about Saddam's Missile & WMD-Warhead Disarmament? Did UN Inspectors Conclude Saddam had Disarmed? NO" -- Here
3) "What did Charles Duelfer have to say about Saddam's Missile Programs? Did Iraq Comply with UN Resolutions Regarding these Programs? NO" -- Here
4) "It's Easy to Forget Just How Close Saddam Came to Having a Nuclear Weapon in 1991, Despite Regular Inspections by the IAEA & the Eyes of US Intelligence" -- Here
5) "Document Date: Feb-02, Title: ...Training Manual from Al Qaida Chemical Plant regarding Chem Warfare, Description: Contains papers concerning Iraqi officials, prices of equipment, training plans, and actions...all concerning chemical warfare" -- Here
6) "Did Saddam Hussein Account for the VX known to have been Produced? No. How about the 600 Tons of VX Precursors UNSCOM believed Iraq had Imported? No. Did it Matter? Yes. Just Ask Clinton Defense Secretary William Cohen" -- Here
7) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No" -- Here
8) "Did Saddam Hussein Comply With the Provision of UN Resolution 687 Regarding Terrorism? No, Part II" -- Here
9) "With the apparent death of "Halabja" al-Douri, Let's Review Some Material from the Duelfer and UNMOVIC Reports that Won't Appear in a New York Times Editorial Anytime Soon" -- Here
10) "Trust in Saddam: What Hans Blix Doesn't Tell Audiences Nowadays" -- Here
11) "The Media Somehow Missed the Other News Powell Aide Made Yesterday" -- Here
12) "Who were Zawahiri's reported contacts in Iraq? Have members of the Iraqi Delegation that reportedly Traveled to Afghanistan to Meet the Taliban and Bin Ladin been Identified? Have Any Republicans Bothered to Ask?" -- Here
13) "Why did President Clinton Worry About a Terrorist Attack on the United States with Weapons Supplied by Iraq?" -- Here
14) "Why were U.S. Government Officials 'Deeply Worried' That Saddam Hussein Might Give 'Radical Islamist Groups' Biological Weapons to Attack the U.S. during the Clinton presidency?" -- Here
15) "Guess What Clinton's Assistant Secretary of State Had to Say about Saddam's Nuke Program in 2002?" -- Here
16) "What did U.S. intelligence tell the Clinton administration on the nuclear reconstitution issue?" -- Here
17) "Does the National Journal's 'Exclusive' Piece on Pre-War Intelligence Distort the Public Record?" -- Here
18) "More Distortion on Iraq & Niger" -- Here
19) "Another Media Distortion: Joe Wilson Didn't Uncover Forgeries and Didn't 'Debunk' Much of Anything" -- Here
20) "Another Washington Post Distortion" Here
21) "The Washington Post Continues the 'Imminent Threat' Myth" -- Here
22) "Paris v. The Wall Street Journal" -- Here13)
Tom Bevan of Real Clear Politics explains here.
... must we reveal every method we're employing for national security to the world....
Have you noticed that the Bush administration is always duping the Democrats? Just listen to John Kerry, Jay Rockefeller, Hillary Clinton, or Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid. They voted for the war in Iraq. They walked onto the Senate floor to explain their vote. Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons. He wanted nuclear weapons. He had ties to terrorists. He was a serial violator of UN resolutions and, yes, Saddam was an imminent threat.
Fast forward to the Spring 2003. Saddam's statue had been toppled but no weapons of mass destruction had been found. High-profile Democrats were not so sure they wouldn't be found, so they kept silent. If the weapons were uncovered (as President Clinton's defense secretary expected), they could still share credit with the president for disarming a tyrant. If no stockpiles were located, they could turn around and blame it on the president. It wasn't until well after March 2003 that Democrats trotted out the "Bush lied on wmd" routine in full force. Then came the backfilling on their Iraq war authorization vote. Kerry, Rockefeller, Reid, Hillary Clinton, et al. were duped into voting for the war because the White House manipulated the intelligence and painted a false portrait of Saddam Hussein. Sen. Clinton's "Letter to Constituents on Iraq Policy" is a good example of the "I was duped" fantasy. But the story doesn't end there.
Now, the White House duped those Democrats who were reportedly informed about the NSA surveillance program -- an operation that spied on al Qaeda communications with persons inside the U.S. Like the Iraq war authorization vote, the White House tricked them once again into going along with their spy plan.
Boy, those Democrats are a gullible lot. Voters will surely want to put them in charge of the House and Senate come November.
The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), explains why in today's Washington Times.
During Operations Desert Storm, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, coupled with the ongoing global war on terror, the United States has collected a vast array of foreign papers, documents, electronic media and other materials. These documents, stored in more than 35,000 boxes in a warehouse in the Persian Gulf, could constitute a treasure trove of intelligence related to Saddam Hussein and actions taken by his regime prior to the war in Iraq.
Despite the possibility that these documents may contain critical information, a vast and untold amount dating back to Operation Desert Storm in 1991 still remains untranslated. At the government's current rate of translation, there is a high probability that many of these CDs, books, ledgers and other items will go unreviewed for decades or more. This is unacceptable. We need to know what is in these documents now, not sometime in the future or possibly never. Why, you may ask, is it taking so long to translate these documents? Given the insight they could provide into prewar Iraq, shouldn't everyone want to know what the documents may say?
While in Iraq, the defense secretary hinted at reducing levels by two Army brigades that would "drop the American troop presence below the 138,000 level that had been considered a baseline prior to the temporary addition of about 20,000 troops to provide extra security during the Oct. 15 referendum and the Dec. 15 election. Rumsfeld had previously said those 20,000 would be leaving soon."
But Henry Kissinger, who supported Saddam's removal from power, argues that as Iraqi units are trained they should be added to the baseline US force to put maximum pressure on the insurgents.
The views of critics and administration spokesmen converge on the proposition that as Iraqi units are trained, they should replace American forces – hence the controversy over which Iraqi units are in what state of readiness. But strategy based on substituting Iraqi for American troops may result in confirming an unsatisfactory stalemate. Even assuming that the training proceeds as scheduled and produces units the equivalent of the American forces being replaced – a highly dubious proposition – I would question the premise that American reductions should be in a linear relationship to Iraqi training. A design for simply maintaining the present unsatisfactory security situation.
The better view is that the first fully trained Iraqi units should be seen as increments to coalition forces and not replacements, making possible accelerated offensive operations aimed at the guerrilla infrastructure. Such a strategy would help remedy the shortage of ground forces, which has slowed anti-guerrilla operations throughout the occupation. While seemingly more time-consuming, it would in fact present better opportunities for stabilizing the country and hence provide a more reliable exit route....
Pressures to continue or accelerate the withdrawals could magnify so that the relationship to the political criteria of progress will be lost. A process driven by technical or domestic criteria may evoke a competition between various Iraqi factions to achieve nationalist credit for accelerating the U.S. withdrawal, perhaps by turning on us either politically or with some of their militia....
Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso states the obvious. From the AP:
Japan has long listed China's military expansion as a top security concern in the region but the remarks by Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso were unusually blunt and echoed U.S. concern about Beijing's military spending.
''It's a neighboring country with nuclear bombs, and its military expenditure has been on the rise for 12 years. It's beginning to pose a considerable threat,'' Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso told a news conference....
''China is fanning threat and anxiety,'' Aso said. ''The content of China's military expenditures is difficult for outsiders to know, and that fuels suspicion.''
See comments of Dan Blumenthal, former senior director for China, Taiwan and Mongolia in the Secretary of Defense's Office of International Security Affairs and current AEI fellow, here.
From today's Washington Post:
Annan castigated what he called unfair media coverage of his role and that of his son, Kojo, in the United Nations' now-defunct oil-for-food program in Iraq.
He scolded James Bone of the Times of London for telling him, "Your own version of events don't really make sense."
Annan responded: "I think you're being very cheeky. Listen, James Bone -- you've been behaving like an overgrown schoolboy in this room for many, many months and years. You are an embarrassment to your colleagues and to your profession. Please stop misbehaving and please let's move on to a serious subject."
Annan said not enough weight was given to bribes and oil smuggling outside of the $64 billion program, recently documented by a U.N.-established inquiry, headed by former Federal Reserve chairman Paul A. Volcker.
"We all have to be careful, whatever responsibilities we have, not to be fed by people with agendas," Annan said.
Asked again if he bought a Mercedes tax-free for his son with his diplomatic discount, Annan said: "I know you are all obsessed about the car. If you want to know more about it, please address yourself to my son or his lawyer."
"I am neither his spokesman or his lawyer," he said. "The report of Paul Volcker is clear. I am not going to rehash it."
From the Duelfer Report, Volume 3, Biological Warfare, September 30, 2004:
(Storage Tanks/Fermenters)
In 1990, Iraq produced at least 39—possibly as many as 70—1,000-liter mobile tanks that could be readily converted into fermenters. Additionally, 8 mobile 800-liter tanks/fermentors were transferred from Al Kindi Vet Vaccine Facility to Al Hakam in 1987/88. Of the combined 1,000-liter and 800-liter mobile tanks, only 24 were cited as destroyed by Iraq. Evidence of such destruction of 24 units was provided to UNSCOM and stored at the UN Headquarters in the Canal Hotel. Thus, 23 remained after the alleged unilateral destruction of BW weapons and agents by Iraq in 1991. ISG has determined that two more tanks were destroyed at Al ‘Aziziyah. Of those remaining, four are 800-liter imported tanks/fermentors.
Rihab [Dr. Rihab Rashid Taha Al ‘Azzawi, head of Iraq’s bacterial program] stated that Iraq was able to produce one cubic meter model fermentors “with bad wheels.” Documentary evidence dated September 2000 recovered by ISG indicates that Iraq converted one cubic meter storage tanks into fermentors that are assessed to have been indigenously fabricated for Al Hakam under Rihab’s supervision. These storage tanks have been an unresolved issue for the UN. Rihab denied receiving mobile tanks/fermentors while at Al Hakam in 1994.
(Fermentation Plant)
ISG obtained a document that indicated 10 one cubic meter tanks were connected prior to 2000 to form a 10 cubic meter fermentation plant (location unknown). Another document indicates the delivery of an additional 13-14 such tanks in 1993.
(Spray Dryer)
A spray dryer—the second of two air freighted into Baghdad in 1989, model number 0142 was located in 1997 by UNSCOM in a warehouse in northern Iraq, the first model 0141 was at Al Hakam in 1991 and was destroyed in 1996. Before the two weeks it took to assemble a sampling team, Iraq again relocated the dryer, completely disassembled it to cleanse and sterilize it and then reassembled it. This dryer was under monitoring until 15 December 1998 by UNSCOM. Its present whereabouts is unknown.
It's a good bet Americans may be interested in getting an answer. Sen. Rockefeller and Rep. Pelosi were briefed on the NSA surveillance program two years ago, but are quick to let everyone (particularly their party's hysterical base) know that they had serious "concerns" about it. According to today's Washington Post,
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.) revealed Monday that he had written to Vice President Cheney the day he was first briefed on the program in July 2003, raising serious concerns about the surveillance effort. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said she also expressed concerns in a letter to Cheney, which she did not make public.
So, Rockefeller and Pelosi are now claiming that they opposed the NSA operation as briefed to them by intelligence officials. They also want to hold the president "accountable" for pursing the program. But what about their accountability in light of the remarks of Gen. Michael Hayden, deputy national intelligence director, made at a Monday news conference?
REPORTER: Have you identified armed enemy combatants, through this program, in the United States?
GENERAL HAYDEN: This program has been successful in detecting and preventing attacks inside the United States.
REPORTER: General Hayden, I know you're not going to talk about specifics about that, and you say it's been successful. But would it have been as successful -- can you unequivocally say that something has been stopped or there was an imminent attack or you got information through this that you could not have gotten through going to the court?
GENERAL HAYDEN: I can say unequivocally, all right, that we have got information through this program that would not otherwise have been available.
America is a battlefield in the war against al Qaeda that stretches from New York, Washington and Los Angeles to Madrid, Baghdad, Karachi and Jakarta. The commander-in-chief believes he had the legal authority to conduct surveillance when "one party to the communication is outside the U.S" (as does a Clinton associate attorney general here), and, according to Gen. Hayden, the president's actions stopped terrorist "attacks inside the United States."
Pelosi and Rockefeller and other Democrats opposed these actions.
Let the debate begin.
John Schmidt, who served in the Clinton Justice Department from 1994 to 1997, wrote the following in today's Chicago Tribune:
President had legal authority to OK taps
Chicago Tribune
By John Schmidt
Published December 21, 2005
President Bush's post- Sept. 11, 2001, authorization to the National Security Agency to carry out electronic surveillance into private phone calls and e-mails is consistent with court decisions and with the positions of the Justice Department under prior presidents.
The president authorized the NSA program in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks on America. An identifiable group, Al Qaeda, was responsible and believed to be planning future attacks in the United States. Electronic surveillance of communications to or from those who might plausibly be members of or in contact with Al Qaeda was probably the only means of obtaining information about what its members were planning next. No one except the president and the few officials with access to the NSA program can know how valuable such surveillance has been in protecting the nation.
In the Supreme Court's 1972 Keith decision holding that the president does not have inherent authority to order wiretapping without warrants to combat domestic threats, the court said explicitly that it was not questioning the president's authority to take such action in response to threats from abroad.
Four federal courts of appeal subsequently faced the issue squarely and held that the president has inherent authority to authorize wiretapping for foreign intelligence purposes without judicial warrant.
In the most recent judicial statement on the issue, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, composed of three federal appellate court judges, said in 2002 that "All the ... courts to have decided the issue held that the president did have inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches to obtain foreign intelligence ... We take for granted that the president does have that authority."
The passage of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act in 1978 did not alter the constitutional situation. That law created the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court that can authorize surveillance directed at an "agent of a foreign power," which includes a foreign terrorist group. Thus, Congress put its weight behind the constitutionality of such surveillance in compliance with the law's procedures.
But as the 2002 Court of Review noted, if the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless searches, "FISA could not encroach on the president's constitutional power."
Every president since FISA's passage has asserted that he retained inherent power to go beyond the act's terms. Under President Clinton, deputy Atty. Gen. Jamie Gorelick testified that "the Department of Justice believes, and the case law supports, that the president has inherent authority to conduct warrantless physical searches for foreign intelligence purposes."
FISA contains a provision making it illegal to "engage in electronic surveillance under color of law except as authorized by statute." The term "electronic surveillance" is defined to exclude interception outside the U.S., as done by the NSA, unless there is interception of a communication "sent by or intended to be received by a particular, known United States person" (a U.S. citizen or permanent resident) and the communication is intercepted by "intentionally targeting that United States person." The cryptic descriptions of the NSA program leave unclear whether it involves targeting of identified U.S. citizens. If the surveillance is based upon other kinds of evidence, it would fall outside what a FISA court could authorize and also outside the act's prohibition on electronic surveillance.
The administration has offered the further defense that FISA's reference to surveillance "authorized by statute" is satisfied by congressional passage of the post-Sept. 11 resolution giving the president authority to "use all necessary and appropriate force" to prevent those responsible for Sept. 11 from carrying out further attacks. The administration argues that obtaining intelligence is a necessary and expected component of any military or other use of force to prevent enemy action.
But even if the NSA activity is "electronic surveillance" and the Sept. 11 resolution is not "statutory authorization" within the meaning of FISA, the act still cannot, in the words of the 2002 Court of Review decision, "encroach upon the president's constitutional power."
FISA does not anticipate a post-Sept. 11 situation. What was needed after Sept. 11, according to the president, was surveillance beyond what could be authorized under that kind of individualized case-by-case judgment. It is hard to imagine the Supreme Court second-guessing that presidential judgment.
Should we be afraid of this inherent presidential power? Of course. If surveillance is used only for the purpose of preventing another Sept. 11 type of attack or a similar threat, the harm of interfering with the privacy of people in this country is minimal and the benefit is immense. The danger is that surveillance will not be used solely for that narrow and extraordinary purpose.
But we cannot eliminate the need for extraordinary action in the kind of unforeseen circumstances presented by Sept.11. I do not believe the Constitution allows Congress to take away from the president the inherent authority to act in response to a foreign attack. That inherent power is reason to be careful about who we elect as president, but it is authority we have needed in the past and, in the light of history, could well need again.
Weekly Standard contributor Tom Joscelyn points to this interesting piece from the Associated Press on his new blog (http://thomasjoscelyn.blogspot.com).
December 20, 2005 Tuesday 7:55 PM Eastern Time
U.S. Army Digs Up Weapons Cache in Iraq
BYLINE: RYAN LENZ; Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: ZUWAD KHALAF, Iraq
BODY:
U.S. soldiers in the northern Iraqi desert dug up more than 1,000 aging rockets and missiles wrapped in plastic, some of which were buried as recently as two weeks ago, Army officials said Tuesday.
Commanders in the 101st Airborne Division said an Iraqi tipped them off to the buried weapons, perhaps an indication that residents in this largely Sunni Arab region about 150 miles north of Baghdad are beginning to warm up to coalition forces.
"The tide is turning," said 2nd Lt. Patrick Vardaro, 23, of Norwood, Mass., a platoon leader in the division's 187th Infantry Regiment. "It's better to work with Americans than against us."
As the sun set, soldiers from the 101st continued to uncover more, following zigzagging tire tracks across the desert floor and using metal detectors to locate weapons including mines, mortars and machine gun rounds.
"This is the mother load, right here," Sgt. Jeremy Galusha, 25, of Dallas, Ore., said, leaning on a shovel after finding more than 20 Soviet missiles.
The weapons are of primary concern for soldiers in Iraq, where bombs made with loose ordinance by insurgents are the preferred method to target coalition forces.
"In our eyes, every one of these rockets represents one less" bomb, Vardaro said.
Vardaro would not comment on whether there were signs the caches had been used recently to make bombs. But service records accompanying the missiles dated to 1984, suggesting they were buried by the Iraqi military under Saddam Hussein.
Still, the plastic around some of the rockets - of Soviet, German and French origins - appeared to be fresh and had not deteriorated as it had on some of the older munitions.
A U.S. Air Force explosive ordinance team planned to begin destroying them as early as Wednesday morning.
First, America can't "win the war in Iraq" and now the head of the Democratic Party contributes this to the war effort against al Qaeda.
This is an interesting nugget from a New York Post op-ed today:
In 2002, the feds (presumably the NSA) picked up random cellphone chatter using the words "Brooklyn Bridge" (which apparently didn't translate well into Arabic). They notified the New York Police Department, which flooded the bridge with cops. Then the feds overheard a phone call in which a man said things were "too hot" on the bridge to pull off an operation. Later, an interrogation of a terrorist allowed by the Patriot Act led cops to the doorstep of this would-be bridge bomber. (His plans would definitely have brought down the bridge, NYPD sources told me.)
Why didn't Bush get a warrant? On who? For what? The NSA wasn't looking for a man who might blow up the bridge. It had no idea what it was looking for. It just intercepted random phone calls from people in the United States to those outside — and so heard the allusions to the bridge that tipped them off.
In criminal investigations, one can target a suspect and get a warrant to investigate him. But this deductive approach is a limited instrument in fighting terror. An inductive approach, in which one gathers a mass of evidence and looks for patterns, is far more useful.
But, if the Democrats are to be heeded, it will no longer be possible.
Wonder if Howard Dean signed on to this "report." Yet another reason voters aren't likely to want a Speaker Pelosi in the midst of the War on Terror. Here are some more reasons.
With the far-left impeachment train gathering steam, this may be a good time to review a December 2003 piece in Slate by Stewart Baker, general counsel to the National Security Agency from 1992 to 94.
In the spring and summer of 2001, with al-Qaida's preparations growing even more intense, the turmoil grew so bad that national security wiretaps were allowed to lapse—something that had never happened before. It isn't clear what intelligence we missed, but the loss of those wiretaps was treated as less troubling than the privacy scandal that now hung over the antiterrorism effort....
We should know that we can't prevent every imaginable privacy abuse without hampering the fight against terror; that an appetite for privacy scandals hampers the fight against terror; and that the consequence of these actions will be more attacks and more dead, perhaps in numbers we can hardly fathom....
So the effort to build information technology tools to find terrorists has stalled. Worse, the wall is back; doubts about legal authority are denying CIA analysts access to law enforcement information in our new Terrorist Threat Integration Center. Bit by bit we are recreating the political and legal climate of August 2001.
And sooner or later, I fear, that August will lead to another September.
National Review's Byron York explains here.
In a little-remembered debate from 1994, the Clinton administration argued that the president has "inherent authority" to order physical searches — including break-ins at the homes of U.S. citizens — for foreign intelligence purposes without any warrant or permission from any outside body. Even after the administration ultimately agreed with Congress's decision to place the authority to pre-approve such searches in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, President Clinton still maintained that he had sufficient authority to order such searches on his own.
We heard a lot of criticism from politicians and editorial page writers on the failure of U.S. intelligence to "connect to dots" to prevent the September 11 attacks. But what about connecting them post-9/11. Gary Schmitt, currently a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, wrote on the limitations of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) in the Weekly Standard in October 2001 and co-authored with William Kristol this editorial in today's Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal has an excellent editorial on the "Beltway furor over last week's leak of National Security Agency wiretaps." And Dick Morris gives his take in today's New York Post.
See here for complete results.
Craig S. Smith explains in Sunday's New York Times.
While French universities are open to all high school graduates, the grandes écoles - great schools - from which many of the country's leaders emerge, weed out anyone who does not fit a finely honed mold. Of the 350,000 students graduating annually from French high schools, the top few grandes écoles accept only about 1,000, virtually all of whom come from a handful of elite preparatory schools.
Most of the country's political leaders, on both the right and the left, come from the grandes écoles. President Jacques Chirac and his prime minister, Dominique de Villepin, studied at the National School of Administration, which has produced most of the technocrats who have run France for the last 30 years.
From a Weekly Standard friend:
"Four days after Iraq's third free election this year, and on the day Afghanistan's new parliament opens, Freedom House released its major survey of global freedom. The study can be found here.
In his essay on the Middle East, Arch Puddington, director of research at Freedom House, writes:
The global picture thus suggests that 2005 was one of the most successful years for freedom since Freedom House began measuring world freedom in 1972.... The Freedom in the World 2006 ratings for the Middle East represent the region's best performance in the history of the survey.... Since the events of 9/11, the United States has made the promotion of democracy -- in the Middle East primarily but in other regions as well -- a greater priority among the broad mix of foreign policy goals.... the administration of George W. Bush, building on policies initiated by his predecessors, has pushed forward an agenda in which the advancement of freedom plays a tangible role.... While the precise impact of democracy promotion policies is often difficult to measure, it is by now clear that the efforts by the established democracies to expand freedom's reach are paying dividends. Democracy promotion has always had its critics, and the critics' objections, as might be expected, have been amplified during a controversial war. But if the gains for freedom revealed in this survey tell us anything, it is that the policies of the United States, Europe, and other free societies are achieving some crucial goals. These efforts should be strengthened, not diminished.
The findings of Freedom House are a reminder that these are remarkable days in the history of liberty."
The New York Sun has an excellent editorial today on the Democrats and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
America is in a war with Islamic extremists who are trying to defeat our country. "Two of the terrorist hijackers who flew a jet into the Pentagon, Nawaf al Hamzi and Khalid al Mihdhar, communicated while they were in the United States to other members of al Qaeda who were overseas," Mr. Bush said in his radio address. "But we didn't know they were here, until it was too late." The president said the activities he authorized by the National Security Agency "make it more likely that killers like these 9/11 hijackers will be identified and located in time."
Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) delivered the following remarks today on the Senate floor regarding a New York Times article published last Friday:
As the New York Times reported, the President of the United States has authorized, after counseling with the Department of Justice and various legal authorities, as well as consulting with Congress on up to 12 occasions, the use of intercepted messages from the National Security Agency as part of our ongoing counterterrorism efforts. The New York Times suggested that this was a secret way to threaten the civil liberties of Americans. The fact is, as is now being revealed, Congress was consulted at least 12 times since September 11th about the President’s authorization of these interceptions of communications, interceptions which were not solely within the United States but were from known links to international terrorism in the United States and known links with international terrorism overseas.
It is perhaps not a coincidence that just before the vote on cloture on the reauthorization of the PATRIOT Act, the New York Times released this story. Indeed, at least two Senators -- I heard with my own ears -- cited this article as a reason why they voted to not allow a bipartisan majority to reauthorize the PATRIOT Act. As it turns out, the author of this article had turned in a book to his publisher 3 months ago. The paper failed to reveal that the story was tied to a book release and sale by the author James Risen. The title of the book is "State of War, the Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration." It is about to be published by the Free Press in the coming weeks.
It is a crying shame that America's safety is endangered by the potential expiration of the PATRIOT Act in part because a newspaper has seen fit to release, on the night before the vote on the reauthorization of the Act, and as part of a marketing campaign for selling the book, something that is blatantly misrepresentative of the facts and appears to be an attempt to strike terror or perhaps paranoia into Senators and others out of some unrealistic and inaccurate concern for invasion of civil liberties.
It is appropriate that Congress have hearings to look into this, but the fact is, the President and his administration have briefed high ranking Members of Congress on 12 occasions since this so-called secret program of intercepting communications between known terrorist contacts in the United States and overseas occurred.
Robert Kagan and William Kristol explain here.
THE PURPLE INK on 11 million Iraqi fingers had not yet dried after an unprecedented, almost miraculous exercise in democratic freedom--and already there were querulous American critics working hard to make light of the whole thing. "Experts Cautious in Assessing Iraqi Election," ran the headline on a Friday Washington Post story by Robin Wright; "High Turnout, Low Violence a Positive Step, but Not a Turning Point, Analysts Say." And indeed, the indefatigable Ms. Wright had telephoned her usual cast of sour experts, each of whom was eager to help explain why, whatever else it might be, the peaceful election of a national assembly for a fully self-governing Arab democracy was Not a Turning Point. Elsewhere in the Post, former Clinton assistant secretary of state Susan Rice took the occasion of Iraq's elections to reject, with a bit of a sneer, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's assertion that democracy in Iraq serves American security interests.
Funny, isn't it? We seem to remember that the Clinton administration's declared foreign policy doctrine was something called "democratic enlargement." No longer operative, it seems.
Funny, I never knew that Albert Brooks had such a command of Islamic culture and history.
First, it was John Kerry who caved in to the anti-war left. John Edwards soon followed -- see here. Now, it's Sen. Clinton. In the last few weeks, the prospective presidential candidate supported the Levin resolution on timetables for troop withdrawal from Iraq, penned "a letter to constituents" that basically said she was duped into voting for the war, and now she is joining the filibuster to water-down the Patriot Act.
Speaking of, does Gov. Mark Warner support the filibuster or will he refuse to answer as he has done on many questions regarding Iraq.
Richard John Neuhaus, Editor-in-Chief of First Things, November 28, 2005:
This is an argument very much worth having. Charles Krauthammer writes in the Weekly Standard: “But if that is the case, then McCain embraces the same exceptions I do, but prefers to pretend he does not. If that is the case, then his much-touted and endlessly repeated absolutism on inhumane treatment is merely for show. If that is the case, then the moral preening and the phony arguments can stop now, and we can all agree that in this real world of astonishingly murderous enemies, in . . . very circumscribed circumstances, we must all be prepared to torture. Having established that, we can then begin to work together to codify rules of interrogation for the two very unpleasant but very real cases in which we are morally permitted–indeed morally compelled–to do terrible things.”
Krauthammer is writing against Senator John McCain’s proposal for banning all forms of “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners, a proposal which has overwhelming support in Congress but is opposed by the Bush administration. McCain has said that in extreme circumstances — such as the familiar “ticking time bomb” scenario — authorities will do what they have to do to extract information. Krauthammer says that means McCain’s proposed rule is “merely for show,” and comes close to saying that its supporters are guilty of hypocrisy.
I am not at all sure. Establishing a principle is not “merely for show.” Recognizing, clearly but sotto voce, that there will sometimes be exceptions to the principle is not hypocrisy. Those who, under the most extreme circumstances, violate the rule must be held strictly accountable to higher authority. Here the venerable maxim applies, abusus non tollit usus–the abuse does not abolish the use.
We are not talking here about the reckless indulgence of cruelty and sadism exhibited in, for instance, the much-publicized Abu Ghraib scandal. We are speaking, rather, of extraordinary circumstances in which senior officials, acting under perceived necessity, decide there is no moral alternative to making an exception to the rules, and accept responsibility for their decision. Please note that, in saying this, one does not condone the decision. It is simply a recognition that in the real world such decisions will be made.
This understanding of the matter offends the legal, and legalistic, mind of Alan Dershowitz of Harvard who has suggested that officials should have to get a court order in order to torture a prisoner. This, like Krauthammer’s proposal and the apparent position of the administration, would be a giant step toward “normalizing” torture and other forms of cruel and inhumane treatment. In short order, it would likely result not only in the very widespread abuse of the rule but in the effective abolition of the rule.
Krauthammer’s moral logic is that it is sometimes necessary to do evil in order that good may result. Here he is in the company of Michael Walzer who has argued that effective leaders must be prepared to have “dirty hands.” An alternative argument is that coercion, even brutal coercion, may be morally justified in extraordinary circumstances in order to save thousands of innocent lives. In that event, it is further argued, the use of such coercion is not evil but is the moral course of action.
Whether, in fact, the circumstances justified the action must be subject to the rigid scrutiny of higher authority. There will likely be cover-ups, rationalizations, and other forms of duplicity. Where possible, they must be exposed, in the full awareness that in this connection, as in all connections, we are dealing with fallen humanity. As with all rules, the aim is to make sure that the exception to the rule does not become the rule.
McCain is right: The United States should be on record as banning “cruel, inhuman, or degrading” treatment of prisoners. The meaning of each of those terms will inevitably be disputed, as will the case-by-case application of the principle. But again, abusus non tollit usus.
Victor Davis Hanson
Chicago Tribune
December 2, 2005
On torture, U.S. must take the high road
We mustn't stoop to our enemies' level
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) recently proposed an amendment to a defense appropriations bill in an attempt to plug loopholes in existing anti-torture laws. The amendment, which President Bush opposes, is a good idea for America--but not necessarily for the reasons cited by most critics of the administration.
Contrary to popular belief, throughout history, torture has brought results--either to gain critical, sometimes lifesaving, intelligence or more gratuitously to obtain embarrassing confessions from terrified captives.
The question, then, for a liberal democracy is not whether torture in certain cases is effective, but whether its value is worth the negative publicity and demoralizing effect on a consensual society that believes its cause and methods must enjoy a moral high ground far above the enemy's.
Nor can opponents of torture say that it is entirely foreign to the U.S. military experience, at least from what we know of it even in so-called good wars like World War II. There were American soldiers--sometimes in furor over the loss of comrades, sometimes to obtain critical information--who executed or tortured captured Japanese and German prisoners. Those who did so operated on a de facto "don't ask, don't tell" understanding, occasionally found it effective and were rarely punished by commanding officers. Even so, soldiers never descended to the levels of depravity common in the Wehrmacht or the Soviet and Imperial Japanese armies.
There is also not much to the argument that our employment of torture will only embolden the enemy to barbarously treat Americans held captive. What a silly idea! Captured Americans have already been filmed being beheaded--or shot or burned--and their mutilated corpses hung up for public ridicule.
We know from both its professed creed and its conduct in the field that Al Qaeda cares nothing for civilized behavior. Its barbarism is innate, not predicated on any notion of reciprocity. Beheading and torturing prisoners occurred before the sexual humiliation so amply photographed at Abu Ghraib. U.S. soldiers already grasp what surrendering to Al Qaeda terrorists would mean; they've seen other Westerners appearing hooded and in jumpsuits on the Internet before losing their heads to choruses of "Allahu Akbar."
Others argue that by employing torture we will only earn the censure of the liberal, especially European, world. Maybe so, but once again, Europe, the United Nations and international human-rights groups, for reasons that transcend the war in Iraq, will fault the United States no matter what it does.
Castigating our misdemeanors, while mostly ignoring the felonies of real barbarians, seems to ensure these sidelined utopians a sense of easy moral smugness. We see that in regard to Guantanamo Bay. Europeans fixate on American interrogations of captive murderous terrorists but remain silent about thousands who have been killed, tortured or forgotten in Fidel Castro's gulag a few miles away. Iran, North Korea, Serbia and Saddam Hussein's Iraq tortured and executed tens of thousands without much fear that either the United Nations or the Europeans would spend their own lives and treasure to stop such endemic barbarism.
There is also a danger that once we try to quantify precisely what constitutes torture, we could, in the ensuing utopian debate, define anything from sleep deprivation to loud noise as unacceptable. Indeed, we might achieve the unintended effect of only creating disdain for our moral pretensions from incarcerated terrorists. They would have no worries of suffering pain but plenty of new demands on their legalistic hosts, from ethnically correct meals to proper protocols in handling their Korans.
So we might as well admit that by foreswearing the use of torture, we will probably be at a disadvantage in obtaining key information and perhaps endanger American lives here at home. (And, ironically, those who now allege that we are too rough will no doubt decry "faulty intelligence" and "incompetence" should there be another terrorist attack on an American city.) Our restraint will not ensure any better treatment for our own captured soldiers. Nor will our allies or the UN appreciate American forbearance. The terrorists themselves will probably treat our magnanimity with disdain, as if we were weak rather than good.
But all that is precisely the risk we must take in supporting the McCain amendment--because it is a public reaffirmation of our country's ideals. The United States can win this global war without employing torture. That we will not resort to what comes so naturally to Islamic terrorists also defines the nobility of our cause, reminding us that we need not and will not become anything like our enemies.
John Burns of the New York Times continues his first-rate reporting from Iraq.
On a day when the high voter turnout among Sunni Arabs was the main surprise, Ali and his posse of friends, unguarded as boys can be, acted like a chorus for the scene unfolding about them. A new willingness to distance themselves from the insurgency, an absence of hostility for Americans, a casual contempt for Saddam Hussein, a yearning for Sunnis to find a place for themselves in the post-Hussein Iraq - the boys' themes were their parents', too, only more boldly expressed.
Turnout "at least 67 percent" reports Lebanon's Daily Star.
The New York Sun has the story here.
From the Wall Street Journal, December 9, 2005:
Even as Saddam Hussein's trial and the dramatic witness testimonies about his crimes are broadcast live across the world, doubts about the legitimacy of the war continue to get a lot of media attention. But thanks to a Frenchman -- no, that's no typo -- we can obtain a fresh moral perspective on why the coalition invasion of Iraq and the continuing battle against extremists in that country served, and serves, the cause of justice.
Just out in Paris, "Le Livre Noir De Saddam Hussein" (The Black Book of Saddam Hussein) chronicles the mind-numbing death toll and suffering in Saddam's Iraq during more than three decades of non-intervention. Each terror attack is today played out live on TV to bolster the anti-Bush camp's claims of a war gone awry, But the butcher of Baghdad terrorized his people with impunity on a mass scale until the horror show was ended by allied troops in 2003.
"The American war was perhaps not a good solution to put an end to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship. But, as this book shows, after 35 years of a dictatorship of exceptional violence which destroyed Iraqi civil society and created millions of victims, there wasn't a good option," the book's editor, journalist Chris Kutschera, writes in his introduction. Coming from a French journalist, that's a rather large concession. But no wonder. The 700-page account of Saddam's crimes destroys all claims to the cause of "peace" by the war's opponents.
Bill Roggio reports from Barwana, Iraq:
The polls have been open for six hours in the town of Barwana, one of the three Triad cities which include Haqlaniyah and Haditha. The poll site sits right beneath the now-destroyed Barwana bridge, where Zarqawi terrorists routinely executed residents for not conforming to their perverse interpretation of Islam....
Barwana, once part of Zarqawi self declared “Islamic Republic of Iraq”, is now the scene of al-Qaeda’s greatest nightmare: Muslims exercising their constitutional right to chose their destiny.
The transcript may be found here.
and "soldiers talk democracy," while Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid talks baseball. The president "is 0 for 3 in his last three speeches," Reid said today. "He hasn't leveled with the American people or laid out a strategy for success." How inspiring.
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