Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Show Trial
In my initial posting on the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Trial, I asserted that "there’s an incredibly good chance that Mohammed and his comrades will go free. The fact that KSM was repeatedly waterboarded would seem to taint any subsequent evidence, including his own confession." This was based on the presumption that the whole point of trying KSM in a civilian court ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 18, 2009 13:04
75 Gitmo Detainees in Limbo
Marc Ambinder finds a hidden news story in this WaPo report by Perry Bacon: Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions. About 90 others have been cleared for repatriation or resettlement in a third country, and about 75 more have been deemed too ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 18, 2009 12:08
Terrorism vs. Crime
[caption id="attachment_43970" align="alignright" width="298" caption="From left: Ali Abd al-Aziz Ali, Waleed bin Attash, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Mustafa Ahmad al-Hawsawi and Ramzi Binalshibh. (AP)"][/caption] Responding to Attorney General Eric Holder's explanation that Khalid Sheik Mohammed is being tried in civilian courts because the 9/11 victims were mostly civilians and because the attacks took place on U.S. soil whereas his compatriots who attacked ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 17, 2009 12:07
Was Fort Hood Massacre ‘Terrorism’?
Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim who killed 14 people. Does that make him a terrorist? Some think so. Sen. Joe Lieberman called the Fort Hood massacre an act of "Islamist extremism" - even as top Army brass warned Sunday against guessing at a motive, fearing backlash against Muslim soldiers. "There are very, very strong warning signs here that ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on November 9, 2009 09:29
Biden Right on AfPak
Ariana Huffington has generated quite a bit of buzz for her unlikely-to-be-taken suggestion that Vice President Biden resign in protest if President Obama sends more troops to Afghanistan. The cuteness of the suggestion has unfortunately overshadowed the opening paragraph in Holly Bailey and Evan Thomas' Newsweek piece on "A Day in the Life of Joe Biden" (HTML title: "Joe Biden, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 15, 2009 16:24
Fighting the Taliban by Lowering Taxes
Matthew Yglesias suggests that one thing that could aid the fight in Afghanistan would be to lower tariffs against Afghan goods and motivate our allies to do the same.If I’m reading these slides right then textile products made in Afghanistan are not eligible for duty-free sale in the United States. Changing that rule might encourage some factory-building in Afghanistan. Similarly ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on October 5, 2009 09:23
Obama Lowering Afghanistan Ambitions?
Obama administration officials are now admitting what has been apparent for weeks: that they are giving serious consideration to radically downsizing the Afghanistan mission. Peter Baker and Elisabeth Bumiller break the story in this morning's NYT, noting that a combination of factors have President Obama strongly reconsidering the Biden Plan, which he rejected as recently as March, which calls for ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 23, 2009 14:11
The Neuroscience of “Enhanced Interrogation”
Wired reports that studies show that "enhanced interrogation", far from being a reliable source of information, can actually make someone less of an intelligence asset because the stress involved changes the biochemistry of the brain:“There is a vast literature on the effects of extreme stress on motivation, mood and memory, using both animals and humans,” writes Shane O’Mara, a stress ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 22, 2009 11:23
Commemorating Anniversaries
Today, as you've doubtless realized, is the 8th anniversary of the al Qaeda attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon and the thwarted attack on a destination we'll likely never know. It is, for those of us too young to recall the JFK assassination or Pearl Harbor, the most significant public event of our lifetimes. We'll all remember "where ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 11, 2009 09:04
An FBI Interrogator on the Effectiveness of Torture
Ali Soufan, a former FBI agent and an expert on al-Qaeda operations who has interrogated al-Qaeda members reviews the claims that the Bush Administration's torture techniques were effective and finds them wanting:The inspector general’s report distinguishes between intelligence gained from regular interrogation and from the harsher methods, which culminate in waterboarding. While the former produces useful intelligence, according to the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 10, 2009 09:55
How Torture Undermines National Security
Via Patrick Appel, former FBI counterintelligence agent Asha Rangappa explains how the use of torture can undermine the United States' ability to both obtain information and recruit double agents.A second and arguably more important goal of the FBI is to persuade some of these people, or "targets," to change sides and share the information they have about their own governments ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 4, 2009 13:23
Catching Terrorists Not DHS’ Job?
Chris Battle is surprised how often he hears the question "How many terrorists has the Department of Homeland Security caught?" He argues that DHS' job is prevention, not apprehension; that's what the FBI does. The implication of the question – usually the questioner already knows the answer – is that the failure to catch members of al Qaeda during the ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on September 4, 2009 09:41
Lockerbie Bomber Released
As has been anticipated, the man who murdered 270 people by bombing Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland in 1988, has been given a compassionate release from prison so that he may spend his dying days with his family. [caption id="attachment_40972" align="aligncenter" width="550" caption="Abdel Basset al-Megrahi (L) walks up the stairs to a waiting jet at Glasgow airport August 20, ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on August 20, 2009 12:35
“United States” a Terrorist Target
The Department of Homeland Security is removing the words "United States" from a New York border station for fear that it will make the station a terrorist target. Four years ago, when the federal General Services Administration unveiled its plans for a new border-crossing station here in northeastern New York State, the design was presented as part of the agency’s campaign ...Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 29, 2009 10:31
Scheuer: Only Osama Can Save Us
Imperial Hubris and Through Our Enemies' Eyes author Michael Scheuer, a former senior CIA official, tells Glenn Beck that the America's only hope is for Osama bin Laden to detonate "a major weapon" here to get a "grass roots movement" going. Words fail me.Posted in Outside The Beltway on July 1, 2009 15:23
