GUANTANAMO BAY, Cuba, July 15 -- Salim Ahmed Hamdan, an alleged al-Qaeda driver who faces a historic military trial next week, testified Tuesday that a female interrogator elicited information from him using sexually suggestive behavior that he called "improper."

Hamdan, a former driver for Osama bin Laden who is accused in a terrorism conspiracy, told a military court that during questioning in 2002, a female interrogator "came close to me, she came very close, with her whole body towards me. I couldn't do anything. I was afraid of the soldiers."

"Did she touch your thigh?" asked Hamdan's attorney Charles Swift.

"Yes. . . . I said to her, 'What do you want?' " Hamdan said at a pretrial hearing. "She said, 'I want you to answer all of my questions.' "

"Did you answer all of her questions after that?" Swift asked. Hamdan said he did.
Talk about PC run amok. And -- beyond the point that apparently it worked -- are we now going to classify "suggestive behavior" as torture?

In fact, we have no idea as to the context of the "improper" brush of Hamdan's leg, which could have been completely innocent and a total fantasy by Hamdan -- and I can't believe we've really gotten to this point where such trivial matters become "news" -- but one can bet that for a true-believing Islamofascist like Hamdan the very fact that the US military had the audacity to send a female interrogator is, to him and those like him, "improper."

So we're now at the point where rather than ridiculing this sexist, gynophobic, oppressive and illiberal Islamic fundamentalist culture we will instead respect it and submit to it all in the name of cultural awareness, diversity and political correctness. Absolutely bassackwards ridiculous!

Labels: guantanamo, intelligence, interrogation, Islamic extremism, war on terror

Critics of the Bush Administration's antiterror policies often cite the attitudes of our European allies as models of wisdom and effectiveness. And sometimes these critics are right, though not in the way they imagine.

Only a day before the Supreme Court handed down yesterday's Boumediene decision (see here) – which gives alien detainees access to American courts and American rights that they had sought to destroy – the British parliament voted to extend the time terrorist suspects can be held without charge to 42 days from 28. In the U.S., it's 48 hours.

Meanwhile, in Germany, the government of Angela Merkel last week approved a draft law widening the powers of the federal police to monitor homes, telephones and computers. Germany's regional police already enjoy some of these powers. But German federalism makes it difficult for law enforcement to act effectively when terrorists cross provincial borders, a loophole the old Baader-Meinhof gang was notorious for exploiting. This is the very problem Berlin now seeks to correct.

The British bill barely carried in parliament and faces an uphill challenge when it goes to the House of Lords. But it has the support of 69% of the public – not much of a surprise in a country where the chief of domestic intelligence (MI5) has publicly estimated that at least 2,000 people pose a serious threat to national security. The German bill, too, will be fiercely debated as it works its way through its various readings. But what a contrast to the attitude of Democrats in the U.S. Congress, who have refused to extend liability protection to phone companies that assisted the government in wiretapping foreign terrorist suspects in the immediate aftermath of September 11.

It has been nearly seven years without a major terrorist attack on American soil. Europeans have not been so lucky (though they've had several lucky escapes). Maybe that's why they're becoming more "American" in taking a hard line on terrorists, even as America's own Supreme Court moves in the opposite direction.

--WSJ

Labels: guantanamo, interrogation, war on terror

In previous rulings this same Supreme Court asked Congress and the president to create a system to hold and try illegal combatants during wartime. They did so with two laws, the 2006 Detainee Treatment Act and the 2006 Military Commissions Act. Now the court says, "just kidding," as Justice Scalia sarcastically rebuked in his dissent of the 5-4 ruling. The Court's majority opinion, written by the five liberal justices, is completly at odds with historical legal precident on this issue. Keep reading.

To reach yesterday's decision, Justice Kennedy also had to dissemble about Justice Robert Jackson's famous 1950 decision in Johnson v. Eisentrager. In that case, German nationals had been tried and convicted by military commissions for providing aid to the Japanese after Germany's surrender in World War II. Justice Jackson ruled that non-Americans held in a prison in the American occupation zone in Germany did not warrant habeas corpus. But rather than overrule Eisentrager, Mr. Kennedy misinterprets it to pretend that it was based on mere "procedural" concerns. This is plainly dishonest.

By the logic of Boumediene, members of al Qaeda will now be able to challenge their status in court in a way that uniformed military officers of a legitimate army cannot. And Justice Scalia points out that this was not a right afforded even to the 400,000 prisoners of war detained on American soil during World War II. It is difficult to understand why any terrorist held anywhere in the world – whether at Camp Cropper in Iraq or Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan – won't now have the same right to have their appeals heard in an American court.

Article I, Section 9 of the Constitution contains the so-called Suspension Clause, which says: "The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it." Justice Kennedy makes much of the fact that we are not currently under "invasion or rebellion." But he ignores that these exceptions don't include war abroad because the Framers never contemplated that a non-citizen, captured overseas and held outside the U.S., could claim the same right.

Justice Kennedy's opinion is full of self-applause about his defense of the "great Writ," and no doubt it will be widely praised as a triumph for civil liberties. But we hope it is not a tragedy for civil liberties in the long run. If there is another attack on U.S. soil – perhaps one enabled by a terrorist released under the Kennedy rules – the public demand for security will trample the Constitutional delicacies of Boumediene. Just last month, a former Gitmo detainee killed a group of Iraqi soldiers when he blew himself up in Mosul. And he was someone the military thought it was safe to release.

Justice Jackson once famously observed that the Constitution is "not a suicide pact." About Anthony Kennedy's Constitution, we're not so sure.
What's truly ironic is that these five justices may themselves be targets of terrorists one day released prematurely from Guantanamo. Recall Spanish authorities charged 32 Islamic extremists for their failed plot to bomb Spain's National Court (their equivilant of the Supreme Court). In a lesson of the folly of appeasement, which is something that these justices should have considered, this bombing plot occurred after Spain's withdrawl from Iraq. In other words, Spain's forign policies are irrelevant to the bombing radicals, rather to the Islamicists, Spain's liberally-constitutional parlimentary style of government (i.e, not being a sharia-law state) is their true crime.

Labels: guantanamo, interrogation, war on terror

Have a little fun real quick, input into Google: +"stunning setback" guantanamo. You can do the same with "stinging rebuke," etc.

Page after page of uncreative reporters parroting one another on today's "stunning setback" and so on of a Supreme Court ruling a right of Guantanamo detainees to challenge their imprisonment in federal court.

WSJ: The much-anticipated decision, which broke 5-4, opens the door to the first-ever independent review of the reasons hundreds of men have been held at the offshore naval base for as long as six years. Reporter Jess Bravin writes that it is the third ruling in four years to reject the White House's claims of power over prisoners it deems enemy combatants. Taken together, the rulings repudiate President Bush's view that the 9/11 attacks imbued him with authority to set aside civil liberties akin to that President Lincoln assumed in the Civil War and President Roosevelt asserted during World War II.
Whether one agrees with the decision or not it's ridiculous to call yet another 5-4 decision, in which Justice Kennedy swings left, as a rebuke or that Bush's war decisions are somehow grossly different than Lincoln or Roosevelt.

A rebuke is 9-0, or 8-1 or at least 7-2. Heck, one might even make the argument with a 6-3 ruling, where at least one conservative justice sides with the 5 liberals. This decision is nothing but a typically partisan one in a series of 5-4 partisan rulings. Had there been one more conservative on the court, and that ruling been in favor of Bush by 5-4, you can wager your next paycheck that the media and opponents would paint the decision as partisan.

(Just as they did the 2000 election, for they never would have labeled that 5-4 decision as a "stunning rebuke" of Gore. However, the 7-2 Supreme Court decision that the Florida Supreme Court's method for recounting ballots - in just three Democratically controlled counties - was unconstitutional -- that's a stunning rebuke! Got it?)

Even worse, to compare Bush's detention of 300 men -- who were armed, wore no uniforms, followed no Geneva conventions or recognized rules of war -- to Roosevelt's extreme imprisonment of 110,000 Japanese-Americans (that is to say, citizens of the US) is nothing more than historical masturbation -- pleasurable to the revisionist but fantasy nonetheless.

Labels: guantanamo, interrogation

ADEN, Yemen -- Almost eight years after al-Qaeda nearly sank the USS Cole with an explosives-stuffed motorboat, killing 17 sailors, all the defendants convicted in the attack have escaped from prison or been freed by Yemeni officials.

Jamal al-Badawi, a Yemeni who helped organize the plot to bomb the Cole as it refueled in this Yemeni port on Oct. 12, 2000, has broken out of prison twice. He was recaptured both times, but then secretly released by the government last fall. Yemeni authorities jailed him again after receiving complaints from Washington. But U.S. officials have so little faith that he's still in his cell that they have demanded the right to perform random inspections.

Two suspects, described as the key organizers, were captured outside Yemen and are being held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, beyond the jurisdiction of U.S. courts. Many details of their alleged involvement remain classified. It is unclear when -- or if -- they will be tried by the military.
Ya know... maybe if "allies" like Yemen proved to be more reliable in their counterterrorism policies the United States wouldn't feel the need to even have Guantanamo.

Labels: guantanamo, Islamic extremism, terrorism, war on terror

I don't know if it's for real or if he's just swinging right for the rest of the primary race, but John McCain had some encouraging words regarding today's remarkably bi-partisan 68 to 29 vote to reauthorize the warrantless international wiretap laws and protections for companies that assisted the government in that surveillance. In a blog-call, McCain also commented on recent news that six 9-11 conspirators would be tried by military tribunal at Guantanamo.

Jennifer Rubin asked about Obama's vote against telecom immunity in the FISA bill, specifically whether this raised doubts about Obama's judgment. McCain said he wouldn't judge Obama's judgment, and then pointed out all the things he'd been wrong about, with specific attention to Iraq:

I don't know if he has the judgment or not, but I can tell you that he was wrong. He was wrong when he called for immediate timetables and withdrawal from Iraq. He was wrong when he said we couldn't win militarily, he was wrong when he said the Iraqi government couldn't function politically, which they are beginning to do. I won't make a comment as to whether he has the judgment, all I can say is we will all be responsible for our record, particularly on national security issues.
On telecom immunity he said simply, "look, when the federal government goes to a corporation or an enterprise and says 'we want you to help us in the war on terror'...should it astonish anyone that they cooperated?"

Ed Morrissey got a good laugh out of McCain by suggesting George Romero--the man responsible for Night of the Living Dead--should do the documentary on McCain's campaign. He also asked if McCain had met with Governor Romney, to which McCain responded that the two staffs were trying to coordinate a meeting. Further, McCain said he believes he is "gradually improving" his ties with the party's conservative base, that he wants a united party, and that everyone will have a seat at the table in a McCain administration.

I asked the Senator whether he would have any reservations about the execution of the six detainees on trial at Guantanamo Bay for their role in the 9/11 attacks, whether he is comfortable with the current legal regime for trying detainees, and whether the interrogation techniques used there cast doubt on the fairness of the trials. His response:

No. I would not have concerns. I rely to a large degree on my friend Lindsey Graham, who is a JAG lawyer and who has been intimately involved in this whole process. These are not individuals who deserve the protections of the kind of judicial process that a citizen of the United States would have. We did not give those rights and privileges in the Nuremberg tribunals...these tribunals as far as I can tell...are appropriate and they are the way to address these particular cases...and there's nothing in the Geneva Conventions or any other rule of law that I've ever seen that said that the same rights and privileges apply to them as apply to American citizens.
That will be music to conservatives ears.
This is encouraging. My only warning is that previously McCain has made comments that seemed to imply that he did believe that Geneva Conventions could apply to illegal combatants (i.e., terrorists).

But we'll see if the music is consistant assuming he's the nominee.

Labels: 2008, 9-11, geneva, guantanamo, interrogation, mccain

This week, retired Gen. Wesley Clark and UCLA law professor Kal Raustiala penned what might be the least persuasive op-ed of the new millennium in the New York Times. Clark and Raustiala argue that we shouldn't treat members of al Qaeda as enemy combatants because such a designation is too high a compliment. "Labeling its members as combatants elevates its cause and gives al Qaeda an undeserved status," they argue. Therefore, they conclude, "the more appropriate designation for terrorists is not 'unlawful combatant' but the one long used by the United States: criminal."

They do not address the fact that under our system of law, "criminal" is the most advantageous designation a terrorist can get. It comes with all sorts of rights and rules terrorists can exploit: Miranda, speedy trials, the right to see classified evidence, the benefit of a reasonable doubt, the right to remain silent, etc.

We did not designate al Qaeda "enemy combatants" to elevate their status but to lower it. Under current treaty obligations, if we viewed al Qaeda as actual soldiers, they would be entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions even though they reject those conventions themselves.

And if we treated them like criminals under American law, we'd have to launch CSI: Kabul, collecting evidence for every "arrest." Clark and Raustilia say al Qaeda terrorists are more like pirates. But last I checked, Blackbeard wasn't interested in imposing a worldwide theocracy, and his henchmen weren't keen on blowing themselves up to achieve it.

If treating terrorists like any other criminals is such a good idea, why don't they recommend such an enlightened approach to Israel? After all, when Hezbollah rains down rockets on your cities, the sagacious response is to issue an arrest warrant and convene a grand jury.

We obviously need rules for dealing with people we capture, which is precisely what the Bush administration has been trying to establish. But saying that we should treat terrorists like criminals is to argue for doing less than nothing.
-- Jonah Goldberg, NRO

Labels: enemy combatants, gitmo, guantanamo, intelligence, interrogation

In fact, granting unwarranted legal rights [to unlawful combatants] would put soldiers and civilians at risk by rewarding their treachery with privilege. Unlawful enemy combatants — individuals who do not adhere to the traditional laws or customs of war — have never been entitled to Prisoner of War status or the full protections of the Geneva Conventions, let alone unfettered access to U.S. courts. When only one side plays by the rules on a battlefield, that side is likely to disproportionately suffer from illegal acts of war.
-- James Jay Carafano, Heritage Foundation

Sadly, that doesn't seem to bother some of our elected officials, including, astonishingly, a Democratic representative from New York. Get a load of this jaw-dropping response:

A few weeks ago, former White House aide Bradford Berenson testified before the House Judiciary Committee about the much-debated question of whether suspected-terrorist detainees should have habeas-corpus rights.
During one exchange, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D., N.Y.) had this to say: "I don't see how you can pick up someone in New York and say that his rights are different or less because he's accused of being an enemy combatant, based on whatever information, as opposed to his being accused of being a murderer. . . ."

Berenson responded: "[W]e need to be clear about what that means. It means that if we had captured Mohammed Atta on September 10th, we would have had no choice but to treat him as a criminal defendant, which would have meant no interrogation, no intelligence, and the World Trade Center is coming down."

Nadler interjected, "That's exactly right."

Labels: democrats, folly, geneva, guantanamo, intelligence, interrogation, terrorism

What's going to truly kill more people, the strawman of supposed civil liberties infringements, or the small cells of terrorists who actually do infringe upon our civil liberties (that is, murder us)?

Bradford Berenson, former associate White House council, details the dangers of allowing theoretical dangers to trump real danger, in this case commenting upon the Fourth Circuit Court's decision to nullify the term "enemy combatant" in the Ali Saleh Kahlah Al-Marri case.

The Fourth Circuit panel held that, despite President Bush's formal, written determination that Mr. Marri is an enemy combatant waging war against the U.S., he is instead a "civilian" who can only be treated as an ordinary criminal. It did not question any of the facts put forward by the government about Mr. Marri. Instead, the court held that foreign terrorists on our soil are categorically beyond the reach of American military power.

What about the Supreme Court's decision in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld just three years ago, which accepted that we are at war and held that even U.S. citizens may be detained as enemy combatants? According to the Fourth Circuit decision, that case was different because Yaser Esam Hamdi was fighting for the Taliban, carrying a gun on a traditional battlefield. What about the World War II precedent in Ex Parte Quirin, where the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the power of the military to try U.S. citizen Nazi saboteurs who came onto our shores disguised as civilians to commit acts of terrorism? That, too, was different according to the court, because those terrorists were working for "the military arm of an enemy government."

According to the Fourth Circuit decision, unless you participate in actual combat against the U.S. on something that looks like a traditional battlefield, or are allied with the armed forces of a foreign government, you can't be an enemy combatant, and the U.S. military is powerless to act against you, at least on U.S. soil. A mere al Qaeda terrorist who is a member of a sleeper cell is like Timothy McVeigh or the Unabomber -- a civilian, rather than a soldier, and can only be treated as such by our government. Only the tools of criminal law enforcement are available.

... The implications of this ruling are dramatic. Under it, if Mohammed Atta had been apprehended on Sept. 10, 2001, the military could not have taken custody of him and interrogated him. And absent the ability to charge him with an ordinary crime under the U.S. Code, even the civilian authorities could not have held him for long. The only option would have been for the police to arrest him and give him a Miranda warning and a lawyer. No pressure could have been exerted to extract intelligence that might have prevented the next day's attacks, and he would have been free to alert his confederates who were still at large planning those attacks. And if the evidence against him had been obtained without a warrant, come from a confession not preceded by Miranda warnings, or come in the form of a hearsay intelligence file from a cooperating foreign intelligence service whose assistance had to be kept secret, there would have been no choice but to release him. Under the al-Marri decision, the U.S. homeland becomes a relative safe haven for foreign terrorists on the global battlefield -- an out-of-bounds where the military cannot incapacitate them.

The court's ukase that people like Atta are -- as a matter of law -- just a law-enforcement problem takes us a long way back toward pre-9/11 thinking. It ludicrously misconstrues the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress just days after the towers collapsed, which plainly regarded the kinds of individuals who mounted the 9/11 attacks as presenting a military threat and committing acts of war against us.

The idea that the AUMF authorized the use of military force against the Taliban, who harbored al-Qaeda's leadership, but not the actual al-Qaeda terrorists who perpetrated the attacks, simply makes no sense. And the court's ruling ignores that al Qaeda clearly regards itself as making war on us, sending its holy warriors here not merely to transgress our laws but to attempt to destroy our nation and its global power. The 9/11 attacks were directed at the centers of American financial, military, and political might.

Labels: 9-11, al qaeda, civil liberties, guantanamo, intelligence, interrogation, straw man

Hollywood Interrogates Al Qaeda
By KYNDRA ROTUNDA
April 18, 2007; Page A16

CBS's hit series "Criminal Minds" recently aired an episode entitled "Lessons Learned," where FBI agents traveled to Guantanamo Bay and coaxed a confession from a known terrorist detainee that led to the prevention of an anthrax attack on a Northern Virginia shopping mall. The point of the story was that the regular interrogation tactics (pictured as brutal assaults on the prisoner) were not working, and that the military should adopt the enlightened methods of the crack interrogators from "Criminal Minds."

Having served as an Army Judge Advocate General's Corps officer in Gitmo, a legal adviser to criminal investigators pursuing leads in the war on terror, and a Military Commissions prosecutor, I have first-hand knowledge and experience about what happens there. And here is the ironic truth: The military has outlawed some of the "Criminal Minds" interrogators' tactics -- in response to pressure by the international community.

On TV, an analyst observed the detainee's behavior from an adjoining room behind two-way glass for revealing body movements and language. Subtle movements and body language signaled which statements were true and which were false, leading to a breakthrough that saved lives. In reality, when such a tactic was used at Gitmo the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) called it "torture." Gitmo authorities used to employ Behavior Science Consultation Teams (BSCTs, pronounced "biscuits"), trained psychologists/psychiatrists who did exactly what the TV analyst did: used psychology to help interrogators learn the truth. But the ICRC considered their role in planning and assisting with interrogations "a flagrant violation of medical ethics." The military responded by curtailing the role of BSCTs.

On TV, CIA and FBI interrogators used the detainee's religion to gain leverage. The CIA interrogators refused to allow the detainee to pray; then the FBI allowed the prayers but adjusted them to manipulate the detainee's sense of time. Because of the manipulation, the detainee admitted responsibility for an attack that he incorrectly believed had already occurred, allowing the attack to be thwarted. In reality, the U.S. does not manipulate detainee's religious practices. In Gitmo, everything stops, including interrogations, so detainees can pray. The Islamic call to prayer is broadcast, several times a day, over loudspeakers. Everyone in and around the detention camp is forced to listen.

On TV, the interrogators give the detainee a prayer mat and point out the direction to Mecca to win his gratitude. In reality, the U.S. gives religious items such as prayer mats, prayer caps, prayer oil, prayer beads and Qurans to all detainees. They don't need anyone to point out the direction of Mecca because the U.S. paints black arrows on the ground pointing toward Mecca in every cell and around the camp.

In fact, at Camp Bucca, a U.S.-run detention camp in Iraq, the U.S. erected a tent as a makeshift mosque and designated it off-limits to prison guards so that detainees could pray in solitude. The detainees used their privacy to turn the "mosque" into a weapons cache, and then attacked the prison guards. This led to a battle for control of the camp that lasted four days.

Despite the debacle at Camp Bucca, the military still designates some items (such as the Quran) as "off-limits" to prison guards, even though detainees misuse the Quran to conceal illegal contraband, including prescription pills. U.S. forces in Gitmo go to these great lengths despite the fact that the Geneva Conventions provide for POWs to practice their religion only "on condition that they comply with the disciplinary routine prescribed by military authorities."

On "Criminal Minds," the detainee glanced toward bottles of water lining a table, and said, "They line it up to show what I cannot have." In reality, detainees at Gitmo receive ample food and water, including Halal meals and imported seasonal fruits and nuts from their native countries for special occasions.

While the crime show's creators must resort to fiction to depict interrogations, they don't have to fictionalize the contempt that most detainees show for Americans. Hollywood gets that part right. On TV, the fictional detainee said of killing innocent Americans: "There is no such thing, they were infidels . . . they hurt me by existing! The infidels will fall at the hands of the righteous, and that is when the jihad will end."

In reality, according to Gitmo's Web site, one detainee said, "The people who died on 9/11/2001 were not innocent . . . my group will shake up the U.S. and the countries who follow the U.S." Another told military police officers that he would "come to their homes and cut their throats like sheep." Yet another detainee threatened, "I will arrange for the kidnapping and execution of U.S. citizens living in Saudi Arabia. Small groups of four of five U.S. citizens will be kidnapped, held and executed. They will have their heads cut off." These real statements make one thing clear: life in Gitmo has not broken the detainees' spirits.

Hollywood sets unrealistic expectations for many things. The "Criminal Minds" episode represents one instance where truth is tamer, and many would argue stranger, than fiction.

Ms. Rotunda teaches at George Mason School of Law and is director of the law school's clinic that provides pro bono legal assistance to military families. She is currently writing a book about legal issues in the war on terror

Labels: al qaeda, geneva, gitmo, guantanamo, interrogation, tribunals