Posted on 02/08/2010 11:49:33 AM PST by Servant of the Cross
Yesterday on Meet the Press, Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan lashed out at Republicans for daring to criticize the Obama administration’s bungling of the interrogation of Abdulmutallab, the Christmas bomber — and said Republicans should have known he would automatically be Mirandized once the FBI began questioning him.
Brennan claimed that he spoke with four Republicans on Christmas night — Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Kit Bond, and Pete Hoekstra — and told them that Mr. Abdulmutallab “was in F.B.I. custody” and that they should have understood that “F.B.I. custody” meant reading Miranda rights in a civilian process. “None of those individuals raised any concerns with me at that point,” Brennan said.
The problem with Brennan’s claim?
As I point out in Courting Disaster, just a few months earlier, the Obama administration announced that its new FBI-led “High-Value Interrogation Group” (HIG) would not necessarily Mirandize suspects it was questioning.
In its story on the announcement, the Washington Post reported:
Interrogators will not necessarily read detainees their rights before questioning, instead making that decision on a case-by-case basis, officials
said. . . . "It’s not going to, certainly, be automatic in any regard that they are going to be Mirandized," one official said, referring to the practice
of reading defendants their rights. "Nor will it be automatic that they are not Mirandized."
In other words, Republicans were assured by the Obama administration that the decision on reading Miranda rights to captured terrorists would be made a on “case-by-case” basis.
So if Brennan is wondering why the Republicans he spoke with did not just assume Abdumutallab would be automatically Mirandized, it is because the Obama administration told them so.
Of course, the HIG was not interrogating Abdulmutallab because — despite all the fanfare with its announcement — it had not yet been stood up. But how were Republicans to know that? Especially since Obama’s own director of national intelligence didn’t know that either?
No, not one.
Charles Krauthammer said in his Feb. 1 column, “Terrorists should not be tried as criminal defendants.” This means of course that they should not be given the Miranda warning. However, his assertion ignored two intrusions into national defense by the Supreme Court.
The Constitution assigns national defense to Congress and President, because these branches must face citizen accountability at the voting booth. In contrast, the Constitution places no defensive powers within the unelected Judiciary.
Yet five justices in Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld did intrude, and fabricated an association of terrorists with Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions. This construction is false because terrorists do participate in international armed conflict, lack pacific character, and do not meet any definitions for legitimate armed forces or Protected Persons. The Conventions clearly place terrorist actions beyond the pale.
These five justices also improperly intruded with their Bonemediene vs. Bush ruling. They rejected Congressional trial guidelines developed from Hamdan vs. Rumsfeld, and instead applied Habeas Corpus to enemy aliens in opposition to U.S. legal practice, English Common Law, and the Geneva Conventions.
With these rulings terrorists become citizens and enjoy a legal backdoor into our society. Their present and prospective unsurpassed butchery now equates to common civil murder. These judicial actions compare to surgical malpractice leaving a festering rag inside a body cavity. Just as such doctors should forfeit their medical practices; these justices by impeachment should forfeit their legal practices.
Instead politicians such as Barack Obama and Eric Holder now find shelter within these rulings, and indulge personal moral orthodoxies forcing America into harm’s way.
I’m thinkin’ the reps probably thought the BO administration would never be that STUPID.
...never assume...
The Obama people must be really happy about Tim Russert.
Brennan is a shameless, lying, hack. He disgraced himself with the first round of lies he told about the underwear bomber, and mow he’s doing it again. His credibility is zero.
That is right. And if 0bama says something, believe the exact opposite.
I wonder if the Republican presidents he brags about working with knew what an incompetent, arrogant liar he was? I’ll bet government leaks to the NYT from “inside sources” could be traced back to him.
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