Al Qaeda's Allies in Congress!

September 22, 2006: If U.S. politicians John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham prevail in their political battle with the American government over military tribunals, the United States could effectively find itself returned to the policies of the Clinton Administration, when convicting terrorists often compromised the gathering of intelligence. How? Because one of the provisions in the McCain-Warner-Graham legislation would require that terrorists be shown all the evidence against them. Despite their noble intentions, their legislation, if passed, will increase the chance that a terrorist attack will succeed in the future.

How does the proposal place intelligence gathering at risk? The answer is in the discovery process, which requires the government to turn over information pertaining to witnesses, potential witnesses, and the government's case in general. In 1995, such information was turned over to lawyers representing Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind cleric and leader of the terrorists involved in the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. At least one of the documents ultimately found its way to al Qaeda headquarters in the Sudan. That document contained a list of people who were on the government's radar screen – and thus alerted al Qaeda to the possibility of surveillance.

Once a person, group, or country find out that they are of interest to an intelligence agency, two things happen. First, they tend to become very careful with regards to communications – they take steps to throw off surveillance efforts, and they will even shift to means that cannot be intercepted (like couriers or flying for face-to-face meetings). Second, they begin to wonder how the information is acquired – and try to cut off the flow. If they find out enough of what an intelligence agency knows, they will have an idea of who might be a source… and that suspected source's ending will not be happy.

Compromising methods of gathering intelligence, and the sources of intelligence creates a chilling effect. If a source wants to be extracted, intelligence he might have gathered in the future is lost. The same loss of intelligence happens when a source stops cooperating for fear of exposure, which happened in 1995 after then-Congressman Robert Torricelli burned a CIA source. Cooperation with other intelligence agencies will also suffer – as they act to protect their methods and sources from being exposed.

The loss of sources, increased caution by terrorists, and a reduction in cooperation from other intelligence agencies will combine to leave the American intelligence community hamstrung. What's at stake there? For an example, cooperation among American, British, and Pakistani intelligence agencies was crucial in thwarting the plot to destroy a number of airliners over the Atlantic last August. Other attacks have also been thwarted by information obtained by the intelligence community, which has been given a much freer hand since the attacks of September 11, 2001. A lack of cooperation – preventing intelligence agencies from connecting the dots – could have easily allowed those attacks to succeed.

Five years after the attacks, which were brought about by hamstringing the intelligence community and treating terrorism as strictly a law-enforcement issue that required compliance with various protections that only compromised methods and sources of intelligence gathering, Senators McCain, Warner, and Graham are about to force the military to do the same thing if they want to keep terrorists on ice. In this case, one of the critical lessons of 9/11 is being ignored. – Harold C. Hutchison (haroldc.hutchison@gmail.com)

http://www.strategypage.com/htmw/htinte ... 60922.aspx


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Our noble lawmakers spent a month on discussing "how to protect the enemy."! McCain and his cronies are a blight and a shame on this country.

Good post, nitty gritty, but for me...Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.

The greatest thing about America is that or has been that we place our principles above safety.

A defendant must have access to the discovery process. Gangs have it; criminals have it; everyone has it. Suspected terrorists who were turned in for "money" need it more than anyone to ensure we do not punish innocent people.

If we just enforce our laws...to the letter....we'll be safer in my view than denying basic civil rights to someone.

If the President was really concerned about our safety, he would have secured the borders and ejected every single illegal alien from our soil in 2001.

Some things ... just aren't negotiable .... and in my opinion, due process of law in the United States is one of them.

The US Government needs to find a legal way within our laws to comply with the discovery process; protect our agents; and prosecute criminals including those with "links" to al-qaeda according to the rule of law.

Here's some food for thought on this issue from Thomas Sowell.

UB

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Thom ... d-wringing


When you enter a boxing ring, you agree to abide by the rules of boxing. But when you are attacked from behind in a dark alley, you would be a fool to abide by the Marquis of Queensbury rules. If you do, you can end up being a dead fool.

Even with a nuclear Iran looming on the horizon and the prospect that its nuclear weapons will end up in the hands of international terrorists that it has been sponsoring for years, many in the media and in the government that is supposed to protect us have been preoccupied with whether we are being nice enough to the terrorists in our custody.


Senate Armed Services Committee members, from left, chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I., and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. confer during a markup meeting on detainee legislation on Capitol Hill in Washington Thursday, Sept. 14, 2006. (AP Photo/Dennis Cook) The issue has been brought to a head by the efforts of Senators John McCain, John Warner, and Lindsey Graham to get us to apply the rules of the Geneva convention to cutthroats who respect no Geneva convention and are not covered by the Geneva convention.

If this was just a case of a handful of headstrong senators, who want us to play by the Marquis of Queensbury rules while we are being kicked in the groin and slashed with knives, that would be bad enough. But the issue of applying the Geneva convention to people who were never covered by the Geneva convention originated in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Article III, Section II of the Constitution gives Congress the power to limit the jurisdiction of federal courts, and Congress has specifically taken away the jurisdiction of the courts in cases involving the detention of illegal combatants, such as terrorists, who are not -- repeat, not -- prisoners of war covered by the Geneva convention.

The Supreme Court ignored that law. Apparently everyone must obey the law except judges. Congress has the power to impeach judges, including Supreme Court justices, but apparently not the guts. Runaway judges are not going to stop until they get stopped.

In short, the clash between Senator McCain, et al., and the President of the United States is more than just another political clash. It is part of a far more general, and ultimately suicidal, confusion and hand-wringing in the face of mortal dangers.

The argument is made that we must respect the Geneva convention because, otherwise, our own soldiers will be at risk of mistreatment when they become prisoners of war.

Does any sane adult believe that the cutthroats we are dealing with will respect the Geneva convention? Or that our extension of Geneva convention rights to them will be seen as anything other than another sign of weakness and confusion that will encourage them in their terrorism?

No one has suggested that we disregard the Geneva convention for people covered by the Geneva convention. The question is whether a lawless court shall seize the power to commit this nation to rules never agreed to by those whom the Constitution entrusted with the power to make international treaties.

The much larger question -- the question of survival -- is whether we have the clarity and the courage to go all-out in self-defense against those who are going all-out to destroy us, even at the cost of their own lives.

There are too many signs that we do not and those signs are visible not only in our political and judicial institutions but throughout American society and western civilization.

Sheltered for years from terrorist dangers that we so much feared after the September 11th attacks, many have come to act as if those dangers do not exist and that we now have the luxury of dismantling the means by which they have been held at bay this long.

In a country where all sorts of individuals and organizations tap into our personal computers and our computerized medical, financial and other records, some have gone ballistic over the fact that the federal government tries to keep track of who is being phoned by international terrorist organizations.

No amount of security precautions can protect us from all the thousands of ways in which terrorists can strike at times and places of their own choosing -- and eventually strike with nuclear weapons. Our only hope is to get advance information from those we capture as to where other terrorists are and how they operate.

Squeamishness about how this is done is not a sign of higher morality but of irresponsibility in the face of mortal dangers.

Whatever Judy, that sounds really good until you see people having to make the decision to jump or burn! Idealism is well and good, reality is what we have to deal with, and in the end, I for one am for winning, I do not want to be bowing and forced to swear allegience to Islam at any cost, just my opinion. Idealism, I feel, may cost us our country in the end. Can we really afford to be so Nobel, and idealistic? Perhaps I am wrong, I don't feel that our constitution was written by our forefathers to cover islamic idiots who want to take my head off and force the world to convert to islam, personally I don't feel terrorist have the same rights under our constitution as I do! then again, I don't aspire to be a liberal, so I am not quite as concerned by their civil rights as they might be. :D My ancestors lost this country once, I am not quite so anxious to let it happen again esp. over the issue of what rights terrorist might have!

Thomas Sowell has it totally right! These criminally insane savages think we are a bunch of wimps because of our so-called "nobility." You remember when the British marched in straight lines and wore redcoats while the Minutemen lay in the brush and picked them off like ducks. Their nobility lost the war. You don't fight 7th century savages by playing by a set of rules which they think are silly. Our own soldiers are subjected to the same interrogation techniques as the terrorists. You do what you have to do in order to protect the American people. The argument, by McCain, that our soldiers will be treated better is totally delusional and just wishful-thinking. They have shown what they will do and we can die with our noble rules hanging on our severed heads. Reality is not very pretty or noble in war.

I understand nittygritty.

I might feel differently about it if we didn't have an individual like Bush orchestrating it. I do not trust him...at all....about anything.

And if the level of "intelligence" they are claiming to protect is no better than their "intelligence" justifying the invasion of Iraq, then I can not support anything they introduce that would change constitutional rights for terrorists or anyone they want to claim is "linked" to "al-qaeda."

I am for protecting our nation. I am for securing our nation and enforcing all US Immigration Law so these people are not in the United States and given the opportunity through access to blow our brains out.

To me, it makes no sense to withhold "information" from a defendant that is probably no more accurate than the "information" that led to the War in Iraq to begin with while at the same time letting every Tom, Dick, Harry, Juan and Muhammad that wants to come here to enter the US.

These people can not hurt US or blow our brains out or Fry US Nuke-Style if they are not inside the United States.

While they are wasting time and focus on a handful of people "linked" to al-qaeda and they may be...I'm not saying they aren't....they have now been neutralized; are in custody; and two things will happen. If the US Government has enough evidence to convict, then they will be convicted and remain in custody. If the US Government does not have enough evidence to convict, then they are probably innocent and will be released. And if they are released, they will be deported OUT OUT OUT of the United States unless they are American Citizens.

If they are convicted and remain in custody, they can not hurt US.

If they are acquitted and deported, they can not hurt US.

The people that can hurt US are the people flowing in every single day because our nation is not secured.

Denying civil rights to these people presently in custody is not going to make US safer...convicting or deporting them and keeping them out of the US will.

The US just let I think it was 40,000 Pakistanis enter the US last year.

Pakistan...where Osama bin Laden is located supposedly...where the Taliban is re-emerging.

Pakistan...where private schools teach Islamic Jihad in their schools and whose students think Osama bin Laden is a Robin Hood Type Hero Legend.

Most of the people directly or closely associated with 9/11, the terrorist attack that concerns everyone so much for obvious reasons are Saudis. Any Saudi can enter the US almost at will or whim.

I am convinced totally that if another terrorist attack occurs in the United States it will be performed by people other than those presently in US "custody". So how we treat those in "custody" has only to do with what kind of people we want to be and nothing to do with "security".

And while good interrogation tactics are very helpful in unravelling any plot and I support these to a reasonable and humane level, once you've gotten all the information you can legally and humanely retrieve...then the person needs to stand trial; be convicted or acquitted; then placed in custody or deported...according to our rule of law and the principles of US Criminal Law.

Since 2003, 28,000 American Citizens have been murdered or killed in drunk driving incidents by illegal aliens presenting a much greater safety and security threat to the American People than 9/11 or another terrorist attack. Are they Dead Fools? Or victims of an Administration gone totally insane?

I believe...the sole reason this Administration wants to change the rules of prosecution for suspects linked to al-qaeda is one-fold. They don't have the "goods" for a normal prosecution which means they can't prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt which under the laws of this nation, means they are innocent.

One may ask...then why would our Government want to continue to hold them? Insanity. Fear of being exposed. Concern that some of these people may "talk" about things that exposes certain things our government has been up to and done that they want concealed. Concern that some of their "agents" are double-agents or lied for money or that they are in fact al-qaeda operatives themselves.

This all smells like a very rotten bushel of potatoes and there is nothing stinkier.

If this government had not lied to us about War; if this government was not conspiring to merge our nation with Mexico and Canada; if this government was not working every single day to ready the world for the implementation of One World Government; if this government had conducted a thorough investigation of 9/11; if this government had sent 800 Rangers to the CIA Team at Tora Bora instead of 50 Delta Force when Osama bin Laden was there; if this government had raised the bounty from $25 mm to $50 mm on Osama bin Laden, Zwahiri and Zaqwiri; if this government had secured our borders after 9/11 instead of cutting border patrol agents; if this government had enforced US Immigration Law....I might....just might....view this differently.

I'm not willing to give a government I no longer trust more authority and more freedom to do things contrary to our beliefs, our ideals, and our best interest.

Denying suspects due process of law in a criminal prosecution will create more enemies of the United States. It shows that when the going gets tough, we really don't stand tall for our beliefs...and then confirms for our enemies that they were right about the United States, afterall and that the Yanks today are not the Yanks of yesterday and are just a bunch of phoney imperialists they've been claiming we are all along.

62 million people died in WWIII....23,000,000 Russians and 10,000,000 Chinese. And they would have all died for nothing but Tyranny of unimaginable proportions but for the United States...the "Yanks" and about 400 Wind Talkers from the Navaho Nation.

We win our victories when we do it right. We prevail when do it right. The objective is not to win a battle here and there, but to win the war. The war against al-qaeda is an ideological war. They are pressing US to change our nation. And since 2001 we have been playing right into their trap. Torture. Spying. War. All unjustified; all unwarranted...proving them RIGHT...every single day.

They don't want to "kill Americans". They just do that every once in awhile to see and show how we perform when we're scared.

And...in my opinion...we have not performed well at all. We have sacrificed our ideology exactly like they baited US to do and passed the Patriot Act...TWICE. We have been caught red-handed Torturing prisoners. We have invaded Iraq without provocation or cause and killed or caused the killing of 43,000 Iraqi Civilians; destroyed their buildings; their infrastructure; and destabilized their country which is now on the verge of Civil War; and now they have baited US to change our civil rights and deny defendants due process of law.

Trust this Government with prosecutions of defendants in Military Tribunals outside the rule of law and standard due process?

Not this American. Not this Time. Not with this Government. Not for this President.

8)

Many that were released, were found fighting for the Taliban in Afghanistan.

This is the way I see it, I do not trust anything an Arab says, be it here or over there.

I have seen them interviewed on TV, after 9/11, and they are so defensive, so combative, yelling at some of the reporters that questioned them, I just got fed up completely, with all of them.

I do not think they can tell the truth...or want to.

Interesting study done on pathological liars, they took MRI's of their brains and found more white matter located in the frontal lobe.....maybe we should give them all MRI's before they enter our Country.. :lol: :lol:

UB Exactaly!