A New York judge is effectively putting the kibosh on provision 1021 of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) by ruling that the government may not lock up American citizens without due process.
The controversial provision would allow the government to imprison anyone suspected of, or even associated with, terrorism.
Bob Van Voris and Patricia Hurtado at Bloomberg report U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled against President Obama, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, and the Department of Defense and in favor of a group opposing provision 1021 of the NDAA.
The opposition, including former New York Times reporter Christopher Hedges, filed the complaint January 13.
The plaintiffs contend a section of the law allows for detention of citizens and permanent residents taken into custody in the U.S. on “suspicion of providing substantial support” to people engaged in hostilities against the U.S., such as al-Qaeda.
“The statute at issue places the public at undue risk of having their speech chilled for the purported protection from al-Qaeda, the Taliban, and ‘associated forces’ – i.e., ‘foreign terrorist organizations,’” Forrest said in an opinion yesterday. “The vagueness of Section 1021 does not allow the average citizen, or even the government itself, to understand with the type of definiteness to which our citizens are entitled, or what conduct comes within its scope.”
At a Senate Judiciary Committee oversight hearing Wednesday morning, Senator Lee questioned FBI Director Mueller on the potential for indefinite detention of U.S. citizens under the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act.
Shortly after the blogger bowling bash at Blogcon,last night, while Blogconners were sipping cocktails at Fitzgerald’s Irish Pub, none other than The Daily Caller’s, Matthew Boyle pointed me to this important story on Fast and Furious that I somehow managed to miss, last week. I figure if I missed it, some of you did too….
Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican and Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, has yet to charge Attorney General Eric Holder for contempt of Congress for failing to supply Mr. Issa’s committee with thousands of pieces of documentation relating to the Justice Department’s gun walking operation known as “Fast and Furious.”
Rep. Issa told me on Tuesday night to expect movement on the contempt charge towards A.G. Holder very soon.
“We’re going through a process,” said Congressman Issa. “That process is going to take weeks but not months more.”
This comes after a year of threats made by Chairman Issa to hold officials of the Obama Justice Department in contempt for their obstruction of justice surrounding the Fast and Furious scandal, unless they cooperated more fully..
Pavlich asks: “will perjury charges follow charges of contempt? After all, Holder has changed his testimony about what he knew and when he knew about Fast and Furious multiple times, under oath in front of Congress.”
Another question to ask – will enough Democrats join Republicans on holding Holder’s feet to the fire, to shake the MSM loose from their ennui on the Fast and Furious scandal? – And could a vote of “no confidence” also be looming?
Final question: Will Attorney General Eric Holder become such a drag on the Obama administration that he’ll be asked to step down before the election, or will he brazen it out to the bitter end?
The Department of Justice is using the liberal “watchdog” group Media Matters for America to deflect questions about the Fast and Furious scandal, including those regarding a gun that might have been used in the murder of a U.S. Border Patrol agent.
A new book raises questions as to whether the FBI hid the existence of a weapon recovered at the scene of murdered U.S. Border Patrol agent Brian Terry. Conservative commentator and author Katie Pavlich lays out evidence she says points to a FBI cover-up to protect a confidential informant in her recently released book, Fast and Furious: Barack Obama’s Bloodiest Scandal and Its Shameless Cover-up,
In response to an inquiry from the Free Beacon, a Justice Department spokeswoman said in an email that she “was told to direct your questions to the FBI, and also to provide you with a link to this story: http://mediamatters.org/research/201204190011”
The link was to a story at the George Soros-funded Media Matters for America supposedly refuting many of Pavlich’s claims. Media Matters is a partisan organization whose founder, David Brock, is also running a pro-Obama super PAC.
Lt. Col. Ralph Peters joined Megyn Kelly on FOX News,yesterday, to discuss the publication of photos of U.S. soldiers posing with the bodies of suicide bombers. His reaction was one of outrage – but not at the soldiers, he was fuming at “the generals whose strategy has failed, the cowardly, cowardly White House just trying to kick the can down the road to November, and blame the establishment media that really loves, loves to trash our soldiers and Marines.”
Peters: My take on this is that there’s a terrible scandal here Megyn, but it has nothing to do with our troops in combat. Those troops escaped a suicide bomber, bad judgment, took some dumb pictures, and no terrorists were harmed in the taking of those snapshots. The real scandal is that the LA Times, desperate to survive, creates a scandal, publishes the pictures over the Pentagon’s objections. The real scandal is that the establishment media leaps on another chance to trash our troops. The worst of the scandal is that our leaders, in and out of uniform, rush to condemn our troops. No explanation, no context. And I suggest that White House Spokesman Jay Carney join the military and see what it’s like himself before he condemns our troops.
I’m especially appalled that those in uniform, Gen. Allen, our commander in Afghanistan, just jump to trash our troops. Look, he needs to put it in context. Megyn, the “greatest generation” sent Japanese skulls home to their girlfriends. I’m not condoning it, but I’m trying to make the point that our soldiers out on the front line, and our Marines, are under tremendous stresses. War is not a ladies auxiliary tea party, and it’s all too easy for people comfortable in Los Angeles or New York or the White House to condemn the troops without context. Those troops should be given company level letters of reprimand and moved on.
And, by the way, if our strategy and doctrine is so pathetically weak that it can be derailed, destroyed, shattered by a few burning Korans or a few photographs — the dead body parts of terrorists — well that’s not much of a strategy or a doctrine. So, I’m furious, not at the troops who did something dumb, but I’m furious at the moral cowardice of military leaders who never stick up for our troops but protect their own careers. Do I sound angry? As a 22-year-old former Army enlisted man and officer, I’m angry as can be because Gen. Allen needs to get it through his head that a leader is responsible for everything his troops do or fail to do. That’s the military code. Don’t blame the troops out doing the tough work. Blame the generals whose strategy has failed, the cowardly, cowardly White House just trying to kick the can down the road to November, and blame the establishment media that really loves, loves to trash our soldiers and Marines.
Tarana still cries sometimes when she remembers that day, but she managed an occasional shy smile in an interview with AFP at her modest home on Tuesday, as she cuddled her sisters, who were both wounded in the blast.
That her picture has been featured on newspaper front pages around the world means little to her, she says, with a small shrug and a fleeting smile.
The soldiers seen in the unfortunate pictures the Obama administration is apologizing for, had just narrowly avoided a similar fate.
Please tell me, that just because we’re actually “negotiating” with those animals, and we’re “better than them” (NO KIDDING), we don’t feel the need to actually apologize to the Taliban when our soldiers celebrate not being blown up by them. Let’s hope and pray that the apologies are simply a matter of obligatory diplomacy toward the Afghan people as a whole, and not meant to appease savages who will never be appeased.
Pssssst TSA: Doesn’t this sorta defeat the purpose?!
According to Judicial Watch,Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is actually considering waving airport pat downs for Muslim women who consider them offensive. I consider them offensive – do I get an exemption, too?
The demand came last week from the politically-connected Muslim rights organization that serves as the U.S. front for the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas. Calling the searches “invasive” and “humiliating,” the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) advises Muslim women wearing religious head covers known as hijabs to reject full-body checks before boarding planes.
Those who are selected for the secondary screenings should remind Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers that they are only supposed to pat down the head and neck and that they should not subject Muslim women to a full-body or partial body pat-down, according to CAIR’s advisory. It further says that, instead of a body search, Muslim women can request to check their own hijab and have officers perform a chemical swipe of their hands.
While Americans are forced to deal with the degrading searches, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano is actually considering exempting Muslims as per CAIR’s demands. Madame Secretary confirmed this week that there will be “adjustments” and “more to come” on the issue of Muslim women in hijabs undergoing airport security pat-downs.
In the meantime her agency is targeting a San Diego man who received worldwide media coverage for refusing to let a TSA agent conduct a thorough body search that he felt amounted to a “sexual assault.” Referring to his genitals, the man told the TSA officer; “you touch my junk and I’m going to have you arrested.”
The head of TSA in San Diego called a press conference this week to announce that the agency has launched an investigation into the 31-year-old software programmer who was not allowed to board the plane. The feds plan to prosecute and fine him thousands of dollars for making them look bad. Actually, the official charge is leaving the airport’s security area without permission, which is prohibited to prevent terrorism.
This is how completely upside down this country’s national security posture has become. The people who frankly, should be receiving the most attention at airport screenings may get exempted from the offensive grope and grabs, while innocent toddlers in wheelchairsget worked over.
The “Don’t Touch My Junk” guy is a national hero. In saner times, he would be given a medal for refusing to submit to an insane, and unjust policy.
When I saw the video of US soldiers urinating on Taliban corpses, the other day, I was neither shocked, nor outraged. I did think it showed a certain lack of discipline, and I wondered why the soldiers would videotape themselves doing such a thing and then post it on YouTube. That turned out to be a very bad move.
Media Matters appears fixated on a mission to try and silence the free speech of Big Journalism editor Dana Loesch, while also engaging upon a campaign to somehow damage her with CNN. True to their Leftist origins, it never seems enough for them to disagree, or even take offense, at someone, or something, they invariably resort to attempting to silence them. Such thuggish tactics have no place in media, least of all in America.
Here’s what Dana said:
“Now we have a bunch of progressives that are talking smack about our military because there were marines caught urinating on corpses, Taliban corpses. Can someone explain to me if there’s supposed to be a scandal that someone pees on the corpse of a Taliban fighter? Someone who, as part of an organization, murdered over 3,000 Americans? I’d drop trou and do it too. That’s me though. I want a million cool points for these guys. Is that harsh to say? Come on people, this is a war. What do people think this is?”
As a response, a number of left-wing media outlets, most notably Politico, have drummed up more phony indignation than they’ve ever been able to summon against anything the monstrous Taliban have done to our troops or to innocent Afghans.
CNN hired Loesch, a co-founder of the St. Louis Tea Party Coalition, to join the “Best Political Team on Television” in February of last year. “I’m excited to be working with CNN and am appreciative of their efforts to showcase diverse political thought on their airwaves,” Loesch said at the time. “I look forward to the discussions.”
CNN, which has looked to bring in voices from across the political spectrum, also prides itself on being positioned in the center of the more ideologically driven Fox and MSNBC networks.
But here is where Byers reveals his true agenda:
I’ve reached out to CNN to ask for their response to Loesch’s comments, andwhether or not it will have any impact on her role at CNN.
The emphasis there is mine but the subtext is all Byers, and how painfully obvious that subtext is. Byers is pushing to have Dana taken off the air or punished. But his true agenda is something bigger than that. What Byers and Politico really want is for Dana to be marginalized and her conservative voice silenced. This is obvious for two reasons. First off, what Dana said is completely defensible (especially in an era where Bill Maher, Whoopi Goldberg, and Michael Moore are cherished as MSM talking heads), and secondly, I know the Media Matters/Color of Change playbook when I see it.
I, like most people, understand on a purely intellectual level that what the soldiers did was wrong, and think they should be punished for it. But on a more human -emotional level, I not only don’t fault these soldiers, like Dana, I sympathize. They deal with these savages on a day to day basis and have seen their comrades blown to pieces by them. War is hell, especially in a backwards and barbaric country like Afghanistan where there are much worse atrocities going on than corpses being peed on.
Media outlets that have nothing to say about those atrocities, yet react to soldiers urinating on corpses like it’s one of the worst crimes against humanity ever witnessed, need to have their outrage meters recalibrated. Something is clearly wrong, there.
I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.
All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?
The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.
As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.
You think Bill Maher was a hero after 9/11 for saying terrorists are brave, and Dana Loesch is a villain for insulting them. (He agrees with her on this one, BTW.)
You insist you don’t sympathize with terrorists, but you fly into a rage when somebody insults them.
Your reply to criticism of Obama is “Oh yeah, well, who killed Bin Laden?”, but you become furious when Bin Laden’s pals are humiliated.
Let this be a lesson to everyone: If you want to pee on a dead terrorist, first wrap him in an American flag. Then Keith Olbermann, Eric Boehlert, and other leading lights of liberalism will cheer you on.
My entire point of the past two days was to highlight the absurd reaction from militant troop-bashers to these Marines. In my Twitter timeline yesterday progressives called our military “killers, kids, barbaric trash, murderers …” The only time soldiers are celebrated by the left is when they engage in protests like OWS. The rest of the time they’re demonized. They get the red carpet rolled out for them, too.
And let’s not forget how lefty bloggers like Markos Moulitsas feels about dead American military contractors. His excuse for his “screw them” comment? He was angry about soldiers getting killed. You know what? So am I. But I blame the people who are trying to kill them–not the people they are trying to protect. And I won’t condemn American soldiers on the battlefield.
This is nothing but an exercise in situational, exploitative outrage, and it completely proved the point I was making. The phrases “defile” and “desecration” popped up in my replies on Twitter every minute or so. If “desecration” is a concern for progressives, where was their outrage when the remains of over 200 Air Force members were dumped in a landfill? I’ve seen more outrage towards our troops over this incident than I have ever seen towards the Taliban themselves who’ve beheaded soldiers (American and Afghan), raped and tortured women, sent out suicide bombers, and carried out horrific attacks.
Iran is conducting anti-U.S. operations from Latin America, including military training camps in Venezuela, and expanding its reach across the border from the U.S. in Mexico, according to footage unveiled late Thursday by the largest Spanish-language network in the United States, Univision.
The documentary showed a former Iran senior official accepting a plan to launch from Mexico a cyber war on the United States, one that would cripple U.S. computer systems, including the White House, the FBI, the CIA and several nuclear plants. The official, former Iranian Ambassador to Mexico Mohammad Hassan Ghadiri, was shown accepting the offer from undercover Mexican university students. A trailer to the documentary can be seen here.
The documentary also showed the undercover Mexican students presenting plans for the cyber attack to Venezuelan officials in Mexico. The Venezuelan official was very receptive to the plot, saying that she was close to Venezuela’s hard-leftist President Hugo Chavez and that she would love to share the information with him as soon as possible. The same happened with Cuban officials in Mexico, who were equally interested in a plot against the United States.
The students in the documentary appeared to have conducted a sting operation similar to the reports carried out by the American journalist James O’Keefe in the U.S.
The documentary, called “The Iranian Threat,” said that undercover journalists were also able to infiltrate Iranian military training camps working from mosques in Venezuela, though it showed no actual footage of the camps. Univision alleged there were links between the alleged camps and a radical Muslim implicated in the 1994 Buenos Aires bombing of a Synagogue that killed 85 and wounded hundreds. The Iranian lives in Argentina, a country which also has strong ties to Chavez.
Ties between the hard line Islamist government in Tehran and the anti-American government of President Hugo Chavez have been growing for years, including a weekly secretive Cairo-Tehran flight that is of grave concerns to U.S. officials.
Matthew Boyle has been on the ” Retire Holder” beat for The Daily Callerfor the past several weeks. The latest call for the embattled Attorney General to step down comes from SC Rep Gowdy, who says Holder “needs to go now.”
South Carolina Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer on Friday morning that Attorney General Eric Holder “needs to go now.”
Gowdy, who has been intimately involved with the House oversight committee investigation into Operation Fast and Furious, became the 54th congressman to demand Holder’s resignation. Gowdy adds that he backs Wisconsin Republican Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner’s suggestion “100 percent” that impeachment proceedings may be necessary to remove the attorney general from office.
Hemmer asked if the oversight committee has the power to impeach Holder. Gowdy responded, “Absolutely.”
“I hope it doesn’t get to that,” Gowdy added. “I hope he gets the message.”
Chairman Issa had resisted making the assertion that Fast and Furious was an attack on the 2nd Amendment because it is such a serious – surreal charge. Would the top law enforcement officer of the United States really do such a thing? It’s almost unthinkable. But look at Holder’s history of lies and corruption, and the nefarious cabal of leftists with whom Obama surrounds himself, and the awful truth becomes fathomable.
While mounting evidence now shows otherwise, Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer told Congress back in February 2011, that he knew nothing about the gun walking tactics which had been used in Operation Fast and Furious.
His contention was that he only learned of the tactics once Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry had been killed in December 2010. only learned of the tactics once Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry had been killed in December 2010.
More recently, however, Breuer has decided he knew about the gun walking aspects of Fast and Furious as early as April 2010. But he continues to carry water for the DOJ by saying that although he knew, he never took the time to tell Holder about the gun walking.
How many lies can these people tell before someone changes the locks on their office doors and takes away their parking credentials?
Senator Charles Grassley, for one, has had enough, and just today officially called for Breuer’s resignation from the Senate floor.
The Justice Department had publicly denied to Congress that ATF would ever walk guns. Yet the head of the Criminal Division, [Lanny] Breuer knew otherwise and said nothing.
It is past time for accountability at the senior levels of the Justice Department. That accountability needs to start with…Mr. Breuer. I believe it is time for him to go.
There’s blood in the water, now – expect a frenzy of calls from Congress for Breuer’s head. They are getting closer….
Yesterday, on Fox News Megyn Kelly presided over a rare instance in which a liberal and conservative lawyer actually agreed with each other. Jay Sekulow of the ACLJ and former federal prosecutor for the Southern district of NY, John Flannery both called for accountability in the Justice Dept. for Fast and Furious, especially in regards to Breuer whose actions can no longer be defended.
Texas Sen. John Cornyn has criticized an alleged sting operation in which U.S. narcotics agents laundered drug proceeds for Mexican drug cartels in hopes of tracing the money up the organizations’ chain of command.
Cornyn said the tactic “bears eerie similarities” to the gun-trafficking scheme known as Operation Fast and Furious.
Sunday’s New York Times reported that undercover agents mostly from the Drug Enforcement Administration have laundered millions in drug proceeds to cartels across the border to learn more about the organizations’ leadership and assets.
Cornyn suggested the DEA tactic parallels the “gun-walking” in Fast and Furious, in which Phoenix field agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives did not intercept illegally bought guns but instead followed the trail of them in hopes of building a case against cartel kingpins.
Speaking to reporters by phone, Cornyn said he also remains concerned that Mexican authorities might not have received enough information about the Fast and Furious gun sting or the alleged drug-money laundering scheme.
“This is enormously unhelpful in terms of disrupting that very important relationship between the U.S. government and law-enforcement agencies, and President [Felipe] Calderón and the law-enforcement agencies in Mexico to combat and suppress the cartels,” Cornyn said. ”It’s really been a disaster.”
“This conspiracy was conceived, was sponsored and was directed fromIran” by officials there, Mr. Holder said during a Justice Department news conference to announce a criminal indictment against two men. He vowed to “hold Iran accountable.”
Whatever. Will he hold the Mexican drug cartel (that his ATF armed to the teeth with American weapons) accountable, too?
When the subject turned to Fast and Furious, Holder downplayed the controversy, saying it would let it ”detract us from the important business we have to do here at the Justice Department, including matters like the one that we have announced today.”
“What a great way to sidestep the fact that he’s being delivered a subpoena for Fast and Furious,” Rush said, a reference to a report that GOP Rep. Issa is calling for more information from Holder regarding what he knew (and when) about the DOJ’s failed gunwalking program, and could send subpoenas this week.
“So here comes Holder. What nice timing; give him something to distract everybody away from Fast and Furious. That’s exactly what this is. … What great timing. … No question in my mind what Holder’s press conference is about.”
It was a brutal weekend for the Obama administration: Gunwalker continued unraveling at a faster pace, with new developments suggesting that Attorney General Eric Holder may not be the only Obama appointee destined for a political fall and possible criminal charges.
In an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Darrell Issa revealed for the first time that the Drug Enforcement Administration was far more involved in running the operation than the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives:
It wasn’t an ATF operation. They were part of that. It was a joint operation in which DEA knew more than ATF.
This directly conflicts with prior statements by DEA Administrator Michele Leonhart — she claimed that the DEA only played a supporting role and that her DEA agents in El Paso and Phoenix were only “indirectly involved in the ATF operation through DEA-associated investigative activity.” She further absolved her agency by claiming that “DEA personnel had no decision-making role in ATF operations” associated with Fast and Furious.
I don’t know how I missed this when it came out last May in the wake of the killing of Osama Bin Laden: “Bastard in the Sand,” a parody set to the tune of Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind.” But I’m glad I finally got to watch it.
Newsbusters reposted the video for the 10th anniversary of 9/11. A very fitting tribute to the man, I think:
Lyrics:
Goodbye, Al Qaeda’s Rose
Your beard never seemed too clean to me
So I’m glad they washed you off
Before they dumped you in the sea.
In the afterlife
Six dozen virgins sure sounded swell
So it must’ve burned your ass
When you ended up in hell.
It seems to me you lived your life
Like a bastard in the sand
Never knowing when the U.S. Navy SEALs would land
They caught you by surprise inside your secret base
Could’ve shot you anywhere
But why not in the face?
Goodbye, Al Qaeda’s Rose
To the world you were mad
And to your kids and 22 wives
You were also a deadbeat dad.
Multi-million dollar bounty
Placed on your head
You were wanted ‘dead or alive’
But in the end we went with ‘dead’.
The Heritage Foundation, has been busy reminding Congress of the importance of “staying the course” in the War on Terror, writes The Foundry:
In the past 10 years, at least 40 terrorist plots have been foiled due, in large part, to our enhanced counter-terrorism efforts. But despite this progress, efforts are underway to undermine some of this progress by rejecting the very policies that have kept us safe.
The Administration now seeks to treat terrorism under a law enforcement paradigm that failed to protect Americans from terrorism when it was adopted by the Clinton Administration before 9/11. In addition, the White House intends to follow a “small footprint” strategy for overseas operations, relying primarily on Special Forces operations, covert action, and strikes with unmanned aerial vehicles.
The President’s strategy cedes the initiative to America’s enemies and provides them the opportunity to reconstitute both their moral and physical assets.
Recently, Allen West spoke at a Center for Security Policy event in New York City, where he spoke on the national security threats America faces. This is long, and includes the question and answer period, but worth listening to in full. Your eyes and ears are hungry for this.
There’s not a more knowledgeable person in Congress on the subject of national security, especially vis a vis threats from the Middle East, than Congressman West. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you — Allen West is a blunt man…he doesn’t cushion his words with PC garbage.
West: You can not have negotiations with a group of individuals that are the antithesis of everything you believe in.”
“You can turn around an economy…You can make the American people as prosperous as they want to be, but if stuff starts going boom, again, it makes not a hill of beans.”
“There are a group of people out there who are stuck on stupid, and you’re not going to get through to them…there’s a 60-65% who get it, and the other 30-35% we just have to save from themselves.”
I second that call from the member of the audience who asked, “Allen West for President?”
These are the people with whom the Obama administration has reportedly been negotiating– hoping for a “reconciliation and reintegration’ process” to facilitate a political deal to ease Obama’s exit strategy which is all about keeping his campaign promises to get us the heck out of there.
I just want to know — how do you negotiate with animals who would do something like this? How do you reconcile with such unimaginable evil?
An eight-year-old girl was killed when a bag of explosives given to her by Taliban insurgents exploded as she approached a police outpost in southern Afghanistan.
‘The insurgents handed over a bag with a homemade bomb to an eight-year-old girl and asked her to take it to police forces,’ the Ministry of Interior said in a statement.
‘As the girl was getting close to the police, it exploded and killed the girl.’ There were no police casualties.
In February, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said the US would no longer insist on preconditions such as the need for the Taliban to renounce al-Qaeda and accept the Afghan constitution. Such declarations could be made after a deal had been reached.
The pursuit of “reconciliation” in Afghanistan will be high on the agenda in talks between Mr Obama and Mr Cameron in London next week.
Earlier this month, Tara Servatius of Human eventstried to express her outrage and disgust over Obama’s “servile negotiations” with the Taliban.
Apparently, terrorist attacks on U.S. soil aren’t off-limits either. Incredibly, these “negotiations” with the Taliban began last fall, just five months after the attempted Times Square bombing attack by Faisal Shahzad, which was funded by the Taliban.
U.S. negotiators and their British counterparts aren’t even requiring that the Taliban embrace the Afghan constitution that our troops and many Afghans paid for with blood. Worse yet, they are aiming to turn control of the county at least partly over to the Taliban in a “shared power” deal, essentially throwing the Afghan people to the wolves.
Meanwhile our troops take bullets enforcing the Afghan constitution and continue to die fighting for what the Obama administration is giving away at the negotiating table. The Taliban killed four U.S. soldiers and 42 innocent civilians in bombings at hospital and construction sites this month, and was recently caught attempting to smuggle suicide bombers as young as 9 years old into the country.
No need to smuggle in trained suicide kiddies when you can just trick the little ones into it.
Taliban leaders have been openly baffled by the Obama administration’s determination to negotiate peace with them from the beginning.
An aide to Taliban leader Mullah Omar explained the group’s position in November: “All of these reports of peace talks are nonsense,” Mullah Aminullah told NBC News. “This is just propaganda by the U.S. and its NATO allies to hide their defeat on the battlefield. We are winning, why should we negotiate?”
The Taliban has been laughing since Secretary of State Hillary Clinton first proposed negotiating with the “moderate” members of the Taliban in 2009.
Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid called this a “lunatic idea,” insisting that there were no moderate Taliban.
Meanwhile Attorney General Eric Holder is pursuing criminal action against CIA employees involved in the enhanced interrogation techniques that helped lead us to Bin Laden. Former Attorney General Mukasey calls Holder’s decision to reopen the cases as “unconscionable” – a “demoralizing” decision that will have a stifling effect on intelligence gathering.
Following a speech at The Heritage Foundation, former Attorney General Michael Mukasey called Holder’s handling of matter “absolutely outrageous.” He said the cases involving CIA employees were settled by career prosecutors who determined the prosecutions should not go forward.
“The current attorney general, when he took office, without reading the memos, directed that those investigations be reopened,” Mukasey said. “I think that was an unconscionable thing to do — not only to the people involved, but also to the agency, which is demoralized by something like that. People were essentially told they can’t rely on opinions of the Justice Department.”
Mukasey added that Holder’s actions against the CIA operatives would stifle intelligence gathering by the United States.
“Regardless of the ultimate outcome, it’s going to do no good and demoralize that agency for a long time,” he said. “We’ve gone through these cycles before in which agency operatives go out on a limb and do things to help protect us and then are criticized for it. And we suffer for years afterward. I’m sad to say I think that’s going to happen this time, too.”
Mukasey was at Heritage to talk about the expiration of the PATRIOT Act and the action in Congress this week to extend it for four years. He addressed the importance of the law and explained why it protects civil liberties.
Earlier this month Mukasey appeared on Fox to discuss just how valuable those enhanced interrogations were:
“Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who had a trove of information, cracked like a damn, and when that damn broke, he disclosed enormous amounts of information that stopped ongoing projects that they had, and disclosed a lot of information, including some of the information that was part of the trail that led eventually to Bin Laden…”
