Posted on 02/14/2010 1:02:15 PM PST by kristinn
The Washington Post has a disturbing story today about the war on terror under Obama that has been pretty much ignored.
The article's main point is that the Obama administration is opting to kill terror targets rather than capture and interrogate them. Some might see that as a good thing. However, without saying it directly, The Post reports that the lawfare campaign by the pro-terrorist left against U.S. detention and interrogation policies under the Bush administration has succeeded in seriously hurting our intelligence gathering abilities under the Obama administration.
One problem identified by those within and outside the government is the question of where to take captives apprehended outside established war zones and cooperating countries. "We've been trying to decide this for over a year," the senior military officer said. "When you don't have a detention policy or a set of facilities," he said, operational decisions become more difficult.
The administration has pledged to close the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; Congress has resisted moving any of the about 190 detainees remaining there, let alone terrorism suspects who have been recently captured, to this country. All of the CIA's former "black site" prisons have been shut down, and a U.S. official involved in operations planning confirmed that the agency has no terrorism suspects in its custody. Although the CIA retains the right to briefly retain terrorism suspects, any detainees would be quickly transferred to a military prison or an allied government with jurisdiction over the case, the official said.
Military officials emphasized that terrorism suspects continue to be captured in Iraq and Afghanistan. But in Iraq, where counterterrorism operations must be approved in advance by its government and conducted with Iraqi forces in the lead, all prisoners must be turned over to Baghdad.
In Afghanistan, the massive U.S.-run prison at the Bagram air base is scheduled to be relinquished to the Afghan government by the end of the year. Its 750 prisoners include about 30 foreigners, some of them captured in other countries and brought there. But recent legal decisions, and Afghan government restrictions, have largely eliminated that option.
"In some cases," the senior military official said, captives in Afghanistan have been taken to "other facilities" maintained by Special Operations forces. Such detentions, even on a temporary basis, have become more difficult because of legal and human rights concerns, he said.
Michelle Malkin, in her book, Culture of Corruption, wrote of the pro bono lawfare waged on behalf of terrorists by the lawfirm that Attorney General Eric Holder was a senior partner of while he campaigned for Obama and left upon becoming Obama's A.G.
Putting on the best terrorist defense is a Covington & Burling specialty. Among the firm’s other celebrity terrorist clients: 17 Yemenis held at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. The law firm employed dozens of radical attorneys such as David Remes and Marc Falkoff to provide the enemy combatants with more than 3,000 hours of pro bono representation. Covington & Burling co-authored one of three petitioners’ briefs filed in the Boumediene v. Bush detainee case, and secured victories for several other Gitmo enemy combatants in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Falkoff went on to publish a book of poetry, Poems from Guantanamo: The Detainees Speak, which he dedicated to the suspected terrorists: “For my friends inside the wire, Mahmoad, Majid, Yasein, Saeed, Abdulsalam, Mohammed, Adnan, Jamal, Othman, Adil, Mohamed, Abdulmalik, Areef, Adeq, Farouk, Salman, and Makhtar. Inshallah, we will next meet over coffee in your homes in Yemen.”
How sweet. One of the class of Yemeni Gitmo detainees that Falkoff described as “gentle, thoughtful young men” was released in 2005—only to blow himself up (gently and thoughtfully, of course) in a truck bombing in Mosul, Iraq, in 2008, killing 13 soldiers from the 2nd Iraqi Army division and seriously wounding 42 others.
The Senate shrugged at the glaring conflict of interest Attorney General Holder presents in handling Gitmo legal issues. Lieutenant Colonel Gordon Cucullu, author of Inside Gitmo: The True Story Behind the Myths of Guantanamo Bay, makes the ethical problem plain:
As a senior partner, he undoubtedly had significant input on what kind of charity cases his firm picked up. He surely knew that dozens of lawyers from his firm were among the 500-plus civilian lawyers representing the 244 or so remaining detainees (on top of military-court-appointed defenders). Even now, his Covington colleagues continue to allege rampant torture at Gitmo. They’re fighting hard to have detainees tried through the US court system—essentially given the same rights as US citizens. And their arguments and plans hinge largely on having Holder issue a bad report card.
Wikipedia's description of "lawfare" jibes with what A.G. Holder and his posse at Covington & Burling were doing to America:
Lawfare is a form of asymmetric warfare. Lawfare is waged via the use of international law to attack an opponent on moral grounds, with an objective of winning a public relations victory.
Lawfare is one of several alternative war-making concepts outlined in the 1999 Chinese book Unrestricted Warfare, which is principally concerned with the new variety of offensive actions available to an international actor that cannot confront another power militarily.
In the book, Lawfare is described as "International Law Warfare" and is mentioned alongside several other means by which offensive action may be carried to the enemy without force of arms. In a more detailed aside, it is further described as "Seizing the earliest opportunity to set up regulations." The book notes that powerful nations take a prerogative to make their own rules, but at the same token bind themselves with them. A second actor could circumvent these regulations because it is not similarly bound by them. Thus, it would be a serious disadvantage to the powerful nation, allowing the smaller nation comparative freedom.
That the result of the pro-terrorist left's lawfare is more terrorists being killed on the battlefield is a consequence they are willing to accept. That the Islamic terrorists they are waging lawfare for are predisposed to dying for the cause helps make things easier.
Dead men tell no tales, and dead terrorists share no intelligence. That's just the way Obama and his leftist administration seem to like it.
Yep.
Not knowing your ass from a hole in the ground does tend to result in a series of conundrums.
No doubt about it. Obama wants the earmarked terrorists dead, because dead men tell no tales. I could clearly outline for you just want this anti-American, Muslim, POTUS Obama has in mind, but, for once, you figure it out. And....believe me the bottom line for our safety ain’t good!!!! Oh, America, when are you going to wake up???
Ironic that the individual I associate using the law to his advantage to wage a revolution is Ghandi.
If India had be ruled by Germany rather than Britain, we probably never would have heard of Ghandi.
Ghandi’s advice that Jews would be more ethical if they threw themselves off cliffs instead of fighting back at the Polish Ghettos makes Ghandi’s course of action clear.
...the Obama administration is opting to kill terror targets rather than capture and interrogate them. Some might see that as a good thing. However, without saying it directly, The Post reports that the lawfare campaign by the pro-terrorist left against U.S. detention and interrogation policies under the Bush administration has succeeded in seriously hurting our intelligence gathering abilities under the Obama administration...Yeah, the Obama administration *could use* some intelligence...
When one thinks one has near infinite cycles of karma to get everything straight, becoming everybody else in the process, one tends to be less caring about individual rights issues.
From bad theology comes bad advice.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.