This vainglorious administration is so self-absorbed that it refuses to keep secrets if it can in any way benefit politically from them regardless of the cost. Obama is so bent on preening he seems not to have any concern at all for those who actually make the sacrifices. First Joe Biden outs SEAL Team 6 as those who participated in the Bin Laden raid and then Leon Panetta outed the doctor who helped provide intelligence for the raid. That was catastrophic for the doctor.

First he and his wife were fired for engaging in a “fake” vaccination program.

In a notification issued in this regard, the health department said that Afridi’s services were terminated under the Efficiency and Disciplinary (E and D) Rules for being involved in anti-state activities, the Express Tribune reports.

Earlier, 15 lady health workers who were part of the alleged fake vaccination campaign, were were also sacked from their jobs.

It was reported earlier this month that Dr Afridi was dismissed from his post, along with four LHVs.

Earlier, Dr. Shakeel’s wife, Imrana Ghafoor was also removed from her post. She was the principal of the Government Girls Degree College in Darra Adam Khel.

Now he has been jailed for 33 years for treason:

PESHAWAR, Pakistan — A Pakistani surgeon recruited by the CIA to help find Osama bin Laden was on Wednesday sentenced to 33 years in prison for treason, officials said.

Shakil Afridi, who was sacked as a government doctor two months ago, was found guilty under the tribal justice system of Khyber district, part of Pakistan’s semi-autonomous tribal belt.

In addition to his jail sentence, he was fined 320,000 rupees ($3,500). The doctor had worked for years as a surgeon in lawless Khyber, part of the Taliban and al-Qaeda infested tribal belt.

Afridi was not present in the court and not given a chance to defend himself, officials said. Under the tribal system, he would not have had access to a lawyer.

“He has been sentenced for 33 years on treason charges and has been moved to Peshawar central jail after the verdict was announced by the local court,” said Mohammad Siddiq, spokesman for the administrative head of Khyber.

In January, U.S. Defence Secretary Leon Panetta confirmed Afridi had worked for U.S. intelligence by collecting DNA to verify bin Laden’s presence and expressed concern about Pakistan’s treatment of him.

He was arrested shortly after U.S. troops killed the al-Qaeda leader on May 2, 2011 and in October a Pakistani commission recommended that he be tried for treason.

Golly, given this event who wouldn’t want to want to come to the aid of America? The left has not had word of complaint- not about this nor about the unprecedented access to classified material offered to filmmakers in the process of Obama idolatry.

Contrast that to the phony kerfuffle over Valerie Plame and the scorn wrongly heaped upon George Bush.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie Bomber convicted of killing 270 and diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2008, was released in August of 2009 under compassionate grounds (where’s the compassion toward the victims?) due to “a Scottish law that allows terminally ill prisoners to die at home. When he was freed, Mr. Megrahi was expected to live three months.”

Instead of 3 months, he enjoyed almost 3 years of freedom, not including the 3 years it took before he was indicted, 8 more years before Qaddafi surrendered him for trial, followed by 2 more years before conviction on 2001.

All in all, he lived 22 years longer than the 259 unfortunates aboard Pan Am Flight 103 and the 11 on ground; and 7 months longer than Qaddafi. A peaceful end in contrast to their violent deaths:

On Dec. 21, 1988, a bronze hard-shell Samsonite suitcase was loaded onto an Air Malta plane bound for Frankfurt. From Germany, the suitcase was transferred onto a flight to London. Upon arrival, the bag was placed inside the forward cargo bay of a Boeing 747 jumbo jet.

Bound for New York, Pan Am Flight 103 held 189 Americans, including a group of Syracuse University college students returning home for the holidays from a semester abroad.

The jet was cruising at 31,000 feet at 7:03 p.m. when a bomb hidden inside the Samsonite bag exploded. All 259 aboard died, and 11 people on the ground were killed when flaming chunks of the plane plummeted into the bucolic village of Lockerbie.

~~~

When he arrived in Tripoli in 2009, he was greeted by hundreds of jubilant Libyans, including some who wore shirts depicting his face. Others in the crowd waved Scottish flags, an apparently taunting gesture.

He earned a reputation as a national hero, and babies were reportedly named after him. He was granted an exclusive audience with Gaddafi.

The decision to allow his release enraged many of the families of Lockerbie bombing victims. President Obama called Mr. Megrahi’s release “a mistake.”

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi was born April 1, 1952, in Tripoli. He studied in the United States during the 1970s and spoke fluent English. He received an engineering degree from Benghazi University in Libya.

Survivors include his wife, Aisha, and five children.

At home in Libya for the past two years, Mr. Megrahi lived in a resplendent villa in Tripoli, complete with a garden and swimming pool.

Until his death, Mr. Megrahi maintained his innocence, claiming that he was the victim of an international conspiracy.

“You judge me falsely,” Mr. Megrahi once told an American interviewer. “My life is clean.”

What if he were innocent? Unfortunately, the secrets and details of the plot to bomb Pan Am Flight 103 probably dies with Qaddafi and Megrahi.

Seattle Times:

After treatment at Tripoli’s most advanced cancer center, al-Megrahi lived with his family at a villa in Tripoli at the government’s expense. As civil war engulfed Libya in 2011, Western calls for his return to prison increased, especially after Gadhafi was overthrown and later killed by revolutionary forces.

Tripoli’s new leaders refused to return him but amid international pressures signaled a willingness to get to the bottom of the Lockerbie case, still unresolved after nearly a quarter of a century of struggle among nations and investigations that spanned the globe, touching on Iranians, Syrians, Palestinians and Libyans.

The enigmatic al-Megrahi had been the central figure of the case for decades, reviled as a terrorist, but defended by many Libyans and even some world leaders as a victim of injustice whose trial, 12 years after the bombing, had been riddled with political overtones, memory gaps and flawed evidence.

His first cousin was Sa’id Rashid, a senior officer of Jamahiriya el-Mukhabarat, the Libyan intelligence service, and a member of Gadhafi’s inner circle. Al-Megrahi was also a senior intelligence officer and director of the Center for Strategic Studies in Tripoli.

U.S. intelligence officials said he became chief of security for Libyan Arab Airlines as a cover for his secret work as a military procurer, enabling him to travel widely, often using aliases and false passports. As tensions between the United States and Libya mounted in the 1980s, prosecutors said, al-Megrahi was enlisted for an act of terrorism.

It was to be the worst in British history and a devastating strike against America.

~~~

While they had no direct proof, investigators believed the suitcase with the bomb had been fitted with routing tags for baggage handlers, put on a plane at Malta and flown to Frankfurt, where it was loaded onto a Boeing 727 feeder flight that connected to Pan Am 103 at London, then transferred to the doomed jetliner.

After a three-year investigation, al-Megrahi and Al-Amin Khalifa Fhimah, the Libyan airline station manager in Malta, were indicted for mass murder in 1991. Libya refused to extradite them, and the United Nations imposed eight years of sanctions that cost Libya $30 billion.

Al-Megrahi lived under armed guard and worked as a teacher. Negotiations led by former President Nelson Mandela of South Africa produced a compromise in 1999 — the suspects’ surrender, and a trial by Scottish judges in the Netherlands.

The trial lasted 85 days. No witness connected the suspects directly to the bomb.

But one, Tony Gauci, the Maltese shopkeeper who sold the clothing forensic experts had linked to the bomb, identified al-Megrahi as the buyer, although he seemed doubtful and had picked others in photo displays.

The bomb’s timer was traced to a Zurich manufacturer, Mebo, whose owner, Edwin Bollier, testified that such devices had been sold to Libya. A fragment from the crash site was identified by a Mebo employee, Ulrich Lumpert.

Neither defendant testified. But a turncoat Libyan agent testified that plastic explosives had been stored in Fhimah’s desk in Malta, that al-Megrahi had brought a brown suitcase and that both men were at the Malta airport on the day the bomb was sent on its way.

On Jan. 31, 2001, the three-judge court found al-Megrahi guilty but acquitted Fhimah. The court called the case circumstantial, the evidence incomplete and some witnesses unreliable, but concluded that “there is nothing in the evidence which leaves us with any reasonable doubt as to the guilt” of al-Megrahi. Much of the evidence, however, was later challenged as unreliable.

It emerged that Gauci had failed repeatedly to identify Megrahi before the trial and had selected him only after seeing his picture in a magazine and being shown the same picture in court. The date of the clothing sale was also in doubt.

Investigators said Bollier, whom even the court called “untruthful and unreliable,” had changed his story repeatedly after taking money from Libya, and might have gone to Tripoli just before the attack to fit a timer and bomb into the cassette recorder. The implication that he was a conspirator was never pursued.

In 2007, Lumpert admitted that he had lied at the trial, stolen a timer and given it to a Lockerbie investigator. Moreover, the fragment he identified was never tested for explosives residue, although it was the only evidence of possible Libyan involvement.

The court’s inference that the bomb had been transferred from the Frankfurt feeder flight also was cast into doubt when a Heathrow security guard revealed that Pan Am’s baggage area had been broken into 17 hours before the bombing, a circumstance never explored.

Hans Koechler, a U.N. observer, called the trial “a spectacular miscarriage of justice,” words echoed by Mandela. Many legal experts, authors and investigative journalists challenged the evidence, calling al-Megrahi a scapegoat for a regime long identified with terrorism.

A boy stands stands in front of the main headstone in the Lockerbie memorial garden in Lockerbie, Scotland. Families of victims of the 1988 bombing stood sharply divided over reports that the former Libyan agent jailed for life for the attack is to be freed. David Moir-Reuters

New, more comfortable leg shackles, used to restrain detainees are shown in a room where detainees meet their lawyers in the maximum security Camp Six at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Station in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba September 4, 2007. REUTERS/Joe Skipper

Lawfare Blog has a roundup of some of the latest news regarding the “GWoT”:

The New Yorker’s Amy Davidson interviews Ali Soufan, the author of The Black Banners, on former CIA official Jose Rodriguez. And Jane Sutton of Reuters reports that defense counsel for the alleged 9/11 co-conspirators have requested that Rodriguez be called to testify in the military commission case.

Attorney for Abu Zubaydah Joseph Margulies has this op-ed in the LA Times urging the U.S. to charge his client with a crime. And CBS News interviewed Margulies as well.

In a Senate Judiciary Hearing, FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III said that the FBI is investigating how details about the Al Qaeda plot that was thwarted was leaked to the Associated Press. Michael Schmidt at the New York Times reports. And Corey Flintoff at NPR attempts to answer the question of why terrorists target planes, collecting responses from a number of analysts and scholars.

I’ve been going through The Black Banners, Courting Disaster, Hard Measures, The Interrogator (by Glen Carle), John Kiriakou’s The Reluctant Spy, The Hunt for KSM, and other related material to try and make sense of the discrepancies, alternate perspectives and accounts. So I’ve looked forward to Ali Soufan’s interview by Amy Davidson in wake of Rodriguez’s book.

Will Rodriguez answer back with a rebuttal?

Recent article co-authored by Glenn Carle. Unfortunately, all this opinion piece seems to do is launch into is the same broad-brushed hyperbole that sees no difference or distinction between the CTC’s EIT program and the Spanish Inquisition’s torture program. Danielle Celermajer and Glenn Carle want to talk in excess about the subject of torture. So…what exactly does their favorite pet peeve topic have to do with enhanced interrogation techniques? It’s like they’re piggybacking the controversy over the CIA’s CTC program to plug Carle’s book and the tortured topic of torture.

On a side note, check out Hank Crumpton’s new book, The Art of Intelligence:

At the heart of Mr. Crumpton’s memoir, “The Art of Intelligence,” is an engrossing tale of how a seasoned CIA officer spearheaded the first campaign in America’s war on terror. Under his direction, in the fall of 2001, small teams of CIA operatives and U.S. Special Forces, together with Afghan allies, came to kill thousands of al Qaeda and Taliban combatants and to break their hold on Afghanistan in less than three months. Even though Osama bin Laden slipped away, and the Taliban eventually returned to foment a new insurgency in Afghanistan, this ground-breaking campaign was a success beyond all reasonable expectations.

Daily Beast has an excerpt, recounting “the full story of the first American to die in combat in Afghanistan—and how his wife responded.”

It’s worth the read…and the remembrance.

The date of the terrorist attack is frozen on a calendar covered in ash at a bank on Broadway, about a block from the World Trade Center. The bank has not reopened. (By David Karp, AP)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Do you recall a time, a few years back, when the media wouldn’t shut up about a supposed outing of an agent? Yup, the left and the media were pissed.

I bet you could just imagine the firestorm of coverage that would result if instead of a former Secretary of State leaking a name it was our President….right?

Guess not:

Just a week ago the establishment media was aflutter with news that a CIA double-agent had thwarted a new type of underwear bomb attack targeting U.S. flights in a plot devised by al-Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula.

But as the week progressed, a developing bombshell story got buried under President Obama’s gay marriage announcement. Not only is the supposed CIA asset not a CIA asset at all, but the entire operation was exposed prematurely and the double-agent’s life was immediately threatened by an intelligence leak that very well may have come out of the White House for political gain.

As the story broke, the establishment media was more than happy to attribute the intelligence coup to the CIA and the Obama administration, describing the mole as a “CIA informant.”

It turns out that wasn’t true. The double-agent hadn’t been recruited and placed by the CIA, but by British intelligence, who also managed the operation. In fact, the Americans had only recently been made aware of the joint British-Saudi effort.

The leaks about the operation from the American side have infuriated British intelligence officials, who had hoped to continue the operation. The leaks not only scuttled the mission but put the life of the asset in jeopardy. Even CIA officials, joining their MI5 and MI6 counterparts, were describing the leaks as “despicable,” attributing them to the Obama administration.

As the stillborn investigation into the leaks continues (stillborn, because if the leaks are in fact traced to the White House, there will be no repercussions), the zeal with which the establishment media trumpeted the supposed CIA coup won’t likely be surpassed by the more important story of how the Obama administration attempted to score political points at the expense of one of the most important intelligence operations since 9/11.

Wait, for “political gain?”

Wasn’t the left and the media very upset that non-spy Valerie Plame’s name was uttered by Richard Armitage for “political gain?”

Weren’t there hearings and trials and all that? Or was I just imagining that?

And here we had a Yemeni deep cover agent that we may get once in a generation:

One US official has noted that “this operation could have gone on for some time … when it was cut off by a leak”. Even once the agent turned up in Saudi Arabia, it was clear that his intelligence was helping to target a spate of crucial drone strikes within Yemen – including one that killed AQAP’s head of external operations, a man responsible for the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000.

If the group learnt of their member’s defection from the media, who knows what countermeasures they took? How did that stymie further arrests or airstrikes? AQAP’s chief bomb-maker, Ibrahim Al-Asiri, might even have escaped as a result.

After all, the agent was reportedly evacuated from Yemen two weeks before the appointed date for his attack. He might have remained quietly operational for that entire period, contacting his colleagues and passing on their location. This leak appears to have frustrated a painstaking and risky operation, of the sort that cannot come around very often.

But the Obama administration deliberately scuttled that huge undercover operation, and put the life of a British agent in jeopardy to boot. For what? To boost his re-election hopes. This wasn’t some non-spy desk jockey at the CIA. This was someone who had infiltrated al-Qaeda for god’s sake!

But the MSM and the left are ignoring it.

At least one Democrat lawmaker isn’t

Senator Diane Fienstein:

“AQAP is the number-one threat to our country. … The leak really did endanger sources and methods, and the leak, I think, really has to be prosecuted.”

Congressman Peter King:

“This was more secret than any operation I’m familiar with — even more classified than bin Laden. … That’s why I’m saying the FBI should do a full and complete investigation, because this really is criminal in the literal sense of the word to leak out this type of sensitive, classified information on really almost unparalleled penetration of the enemy.”

Congressman Mike Rogers:

“This has been a damaging leak. We shouldn’t underestimate what really happened here. When you jeopardize our foreign-service liaison partners, any of them that may or may not have been involved, or you jeopardize the conclusion of wrapping up all of the people involved, that’s dangerous to our national security.”

Paging Patrick Fitzgerald….paging Patrick Fitzgerald

Exit thought….ya think they will make a movie about this?

Just what planet are these kangaroos from:

Click here to view the embedded video.

THE Kuala Lumpur Tribunal on War Crimes sat for five days in the courtroom at the Al-Bukhary Foundation to listen to charges against George W. Bush, Richard B. Cheney, Donald H. Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzalez, David Addington, William Haynes II, Jay Byber and John Choon Yoo of the United States for the torture of detainees held in the Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo detention camps.

Many would ask of what use is this hearing by a toothless tribunal.

The answer is that the international community has failed in the proper implementation of international laws to which all countries have officially subscribed. Worse still, the laws are applied only against weak countries and their leaders who are judged and punished.

~~~

The prosecution team of the Kuala Lumpur Tribunal cited the Geneva Convention on torture 1949, the Convention against Torture 1984, Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter, the US Constitution itself and the rules of conduct of the US military to prove that the treatment of the prisoners constituted torture as understood and accepted by international laws.

The acts were cruel, inhuman and degrading. The accused were proven to have authorised, connived in the commission of acts of torture and cruel, degrading and inhuman acts against victims in violation of international laws, treaties and conventions.

The prosecution also gave details of the action by the accused, through their memos, approvals and directives for the torture of the prisoners.

Former president George W. Bush declared that al-Qaeda was not a party to the conventions or agreements and was, therefore, not protected by them. Further, it was argued that should these prisoners capture American personnel, they would treat their captives in the same way.

The defence in mitigation said that the situation after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers rendered existing conventions, treaties and laws invalid. The accused were entitled to act in contravention of all laws, treaties and conventions.

After four days of hearings, the tribunal adjourned to consider the verdict. On the fifth day, that is, 24 hours after the hearings ended, the tribunal gave a 19-page written judgment, finding that the prosecution had established beyond reasonable doubt that the accused had “engaged in a web of instructions, memos, directives, legal advice and action that established a common plan and purpose, joint enterprise and/or conspiracy to commit the crimes of torture and war crimes, including and not limited to a common plan and purpose to commit the following crimes in relation to the “war on terror” that was launched by the US and others in Afghanistan and Iraq:

TORTURE;

CREATING, authorising and implementing a regime of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatments;

VIOLATING, customary international law;

VIOLATING, the Conventions against Torture 1984;

VIOLATING, the Geneva Convention III and IV 1949;

VIOLATING, the common article III, the Geneva Convention of 1949; and

VIOLATING, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the United Nations Charter.“

Yes, we cannot enforce the decisions of the Kuala Lumpur tribunal. But the world must know through the hearings that the leaders of a country that frequently takes the high ground to lecture the world on human rights, the rule of law, etc are no better, but are worse than the many leaders and countries they condemned as not adhering to acceptable behaviour, practice and respect for the norms of modern civilisation.

Malaysia had the Internal Security Act. Malaysia did detain people without trial. But it should be noted that there is a law providing for this. The US government of former president Bush detained people before there was any law providing for such detentions.

Malaysia never sanctions torture. Certainly, the Malaysian government never spelt out the kind of torture that could be inflicted on the prisoners. But the US leaders knowingly sanction torture and describe the kind of torture to be carried out, even as they condemn others of being oppressive against their own people.

It is a pity that not many people attended the hearings. They would be horrified at what the leaders of the foremost democracy in the world have sanctioned and are guilty of.

That in this day and age, there are still leaders of governments who break laws and legalise behaviour incompatible with modern civilisation is mind chilling. That this country is the greatest military power in the world is truly frightening.

~~~

The Kuala Lumpur War Crimes Tribunal is a court of conscience. It may not have the power to have its findings implemented. But there can be no doubt that without the hearing before the tribunal, the crimes of the leaders of powerful countries will never be exposed to the world.

The findings of the court will be communicated to all governments, will be broadcast to the whole world through the Internet, and via international non-governmental organisations.

The people of the US are well known for their insularity. They know little about the world beyond their borders. They believe that they are always right.

Recall as well that former president Bush cancelled his trip to Switzerland last year due to threats from human rights groups. In 2009, Spanish prosecutors sought to indict “the Bush Six”. In 2008, Vincent Bugliosi came out with a book, detailing a legal framework for how he’d go about prosecuting George W. Bush. In 2006, filmmakers fantasized about the assassination of President Bush.

At least there’s some level of consistency here in their condemnation:

“Right now Guantanamo is still open, people are still being held there and are still being tortured there.”

In response to questions about the difference between the Bush and Obama Administrations, he added: “If President Bush was the President of extra-judicial torture then US President Barak Obama is the President of extra judicial killing through drone strikes. Our work has only just begun.”

After the guilty verdict reached by five senior judges was delivered, Mohamad said: “Powerful countries are getting away with murder.”

One of the most typically heard human rights-related comments about the Tribunal’s recent success in the post 9/11 reign of terror leads the comments on Press TV’s breaking news coverage of this event: “Obama and his cohorts need also to be tried for crimes against humanity.”

Thoughts?

Thomas Ricks quips,

But — it happened in your backyard, dude.

Or maybe even the frontyard?

To be fair, Pakistan has been instrumental in some of the successes we have enjoyed in the GWoT, such as the capture of AZ and KSM.

During the arraignment hearings, this comment was drowned out by white noise when the court security officer thought classified information might be mentioned. However, upon review, The Pentagon office in charge of the military commission tribunals decided nothing compromising was revealed and released a transcript on Wednesday.

Schwartz’ “big boy pants” was a snide reference to Jose Rodriguez (who proudly linked it onto his book’s Facebook wall) and his 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl in which Rodriguez said,

Jose Rodriguez: We needed to get everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed.

Lesley Stahl: Their big boy pants on–

Jose Rodriguez: Big boy pants. Let me tell you, I had had a lot of experience in the agency where we had been left to hold the bag. And I was not about to let that happen for the people that work for me.

Lesley Stahl: There wasn’t gonna be any deniability on this one?

Jose Rodriguez: There was not gonna be any deniability. And I tell you something. In August of 2002, I felt I had all the authorities that I needed, all the approvals that I needed. The atmosphere in the country was different. Everybody wanted us to save American lives.

I believe that the mention of torture and the apparent religious observations are merely ploys.

Debra Saunders alludes to the following passage on page 82-83 of Hard Measures:

Also found at the site was a spare prosthetic leg belonging to AQ operative Walid bin Attash. Sadly, bin Attash wasn’t connected to it at the time. Some of our people discovered that bin Attash had frequented online dating websites and described himself as someone who “Loves to travel- sometimes at a moment’s notice.” It took us six more months, but finally we captured him in Karachi in April 2003 and put a serious dent in his social life.

Debra Saunders writes:

On Saturday, Attash was one of five defendants charged with 2,976 counts of murder for their role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. It would seem that Attash has grown very devout at Guantanamo Bay. His civilian attorney Cheryl Bormann wore a hijab and abaya at the military pre-trial hearing. She even suggested that female prosecutors dress in more “appropriate” fashion in deference to the defendants’ “fear of committing a sin under their faith.” According to news reports, distaff prosecutors wore military uniforms with knee-length skirts.

Is the Attash in your book the same guy whose attorney feels she must cover her entire body? I asked Rodriguez. Yes, he answered. “These people are pretty hypocritical; one thing is their religious beliefs, the other thing is what they do.”

I’m sure a number of FA readers will disagree with me here, but al Qaeda theology is not the same religion as the Islam practiced by 1.5 billion. And a number of al Qaeda fighters aren’t even particularly pious, let alone religiously observant, except when it serves their agenda and interest to be so. The allure of violent jihad attracts a certain kind of personality; and some of those involved in the business of jihadism merely are in it for the adventurism of violence and not religion. Islam is and also isn’t the problem.

While Bormann may try to shame female prosecutors to take the veil, Rodriguez found that KSM preferred dealing with female CIA officers who wore work attire. At the end of one debriefing, Rodriguez writes, KSM called a female officer back and said, “There’s something else you should know.” KSM then described how “he had personally decapitated Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.” KSM was not remorseful.

At the end of the chapter on KSM in Rodriguez’s book, is this account (the most detailed one I’ve read) of where he threatens to murder one of his CIA debriefers:

One of our senior CTC officers spent some time at the black site and established what seemed to have been a good relationship with KSM, getting some very valuable information from him. His contact with KSM came long after the “difficult period” (as the detainees called it) when EITs were employed. When it was time for this officer to return to headquarters, he dropped by KSM’s cell to say good-bye. Mohammed surprised him by saying: “Have a safe trip.” Sensing that what he had just said might be taken as a sign of humanity, KSM quickly added: “It is not that I wish you well. But if I ever get out of here, I want to personally be the one to kill you.”

-
“Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, by Jose Rodriguez with Bill Harlow, Pg 96-97

Jose Rodriguez writes a piece today for CNN, covering the media carnival around the court circus:

While the antics of these al Qaeda terrorists were certainly colorful, I would like to take a moment to focus on the performance of an entirely different group, the journalists who covered the proceedings.

While most reporters have been careful to write that those who were arraigned are “alleged” to have committed terrorism (an allegation Mohammed has previously gleefully accepted), they are less careful when discussing the treatment these top terrorists received at the hands of the CIA.

~~~

The biggest myth is that the detainees were “tortured.” Some of the stories coming out of Gitmo this past weekend simply state that as a fact. There is no “allegedly” attached to the allegation in these stories. About 30 out of the 100 or so detainees that the CIA held were subjected to some harsh treatment.

But the Office of Legal Counsel in the Department of Justice assured us in writing that the treatment was specifically not torture.

From Hard Measures, pg 63:

Any interrogation program we developed had to be effective and legal. Assuring ourselves of the latter proved time-consuming. But as critically important as we felt it to be to get information that might help us thwart impending attacks, I insisted that we take no action unless and until we were assured, in writing, by the seniormost legal authorities, that we were not crossing legal red lines. Some of my most senior leaders in CTC argued that we couldn’t afford to wait for approval from policymakers. They felt the pressure of a possible second wave of attacks that might happen at any moment and knew that Abu Zubaydah had in his head information that could help us thwart them. But I said, no, we will not go ahead until we know we have the backing of our political leaders and a binding legal opinion from the Department of Justice.

And of course some political leaders, like they did in regards to previous statements they made on the question of Iraq and WMD including voting on AUMF, wish to rewrite history and absolve their hands, abandoning the soldiers out on the battlefield to take the heat and blame.

Rodriguez continues…

Many of the techniques were essentially bluffs — designed to get the attention of a detainee and perhaps scare him — but to cause no physical harm.

Some of the stories this weekend talked of “years” of abusive treatment these detainees endured. In fact, the enhanced interrogation techniques (EITs) that CIA used were applied at most for only 30 days. On average, it was much less.

Abu Zubaydah, the first detainee subjected to EITs, received them for less than three weeks. Mohammed’s period of harsh — but legal and necessary — treatment was even less.

The public impression, aided and abetted by the media, is that the practice of waterboarding was rampant.

In fact, only three detainees: Mohammed, Zubaydah and one other were ever waterboarded, the last one more than nine years ago. Many of the stories this weekend repeated the assertion that Mohammed was waterboarded 183 times. But 183 is a count of the number of pours of water from a plastic water bottle. Mohammed told the International Committee of the Red Cross in 2007 that he had been waterboarded five times.

If his story has now changed, it is only to match the media narrative.

In the end, it wasn’t even waterboarding that did him in. It was sleep deprivation.

(Senator Bill Nelson, btw, asked to be waterboarded and was denied).

Ali Soufan’s Black Banners is a very good read, with detailed accounts of his experience in investigating the bombing of the USS Cole in 2000 and his interrogation of HVDs, including Abu Zubaydah. He writes a very persuasive argument, speaking from a position of authority and not just from expertise in his field (I mention this because I’ve seen interrogators and former SERE instructors criticize the CIA program, only to succeed in revealing their ignorance of the actual program in so doing).

When I picked up Rodriguez’ book on the day of release (April 30th), upon first glance it seemed less impressive than Soufan’s. The latter is in smaller print and lots of pages; the former had larger printing and less pages (neither has any appendices, notes, or index at the end; although Black Banners does list some sources cited). My fear became that it might be a partisan read rather than a serious work of contribution to the ongoing debate. But once I delved in, I was reassured by the contents. Mr. Rodriguez writes very convincing arguments that challenges the narrative painted by Soufan’s account. What fascinates me is trying to reconcile both accounts, because I don’t think either person is intentionally lying or deceiving; in some cases, it’s a matter of differing perspectives; in others, it will require some sleuthing on the part of the reader to reconcile dates, fill in missing pieces, and determine for himself where the truth lies (*snicker*…see what I did? “Truth” and “lies”, side x side?…okay, nevermind).

There are a number of details in Rodriguez’ book regarding the capture and interrogation of AZ and KSM, as well as the CIA program that I’ve not seen revealed anywhere else. It definitely is a book that enriches the debate.

What is great about this book and Thiessen’s is that they directly challenge the narrative woven by the FBI and Soufan. And they extract the hysteria, hyperbole, and distorted mystique that has surrounded the nature and purpose of the EIT program and how it was implemented briefly upon 30 of the 100 HVTs who made it into the CIA program.

I believe that the mention of torture at the arraignment hearings is for the most part a ploy on the part of the HVDs about to be put on trial.

On a lighter note…

As President Obama and his administration are constantly telling us, the horrible economy is not his fault because he inherited the “Worst recession since the Great Depression”. One can certainly make that argument. You just can’t get it to stick.

If you could however, what you’d basically be saying is that that 3 ½ years after taking office the President of the United States is essentially helpless to impact the economy. “No, no, no!” his supporters would no doubt respond: “That’s not what we mean! The entire economy, nay the entire world’s economic system would have collapsed if President Obama had not saved us.” That’s simply a 2012 version of the absurd and decidedly non-empirical “Jobs created or saved” measure the administration proffered when it became obvious that their stimulus was a failure.

If the President is not responsible for the economy after three years in office, what are we to make of his taking credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden after just two? The financial meltdown began in 2007 and by 2009 we were officially out of the recession. Yet key pieces of intelligence that led to the CIA eventually locating bin Laden were discovered even earlier, in 2005 and 2007. In addition, critical to the success of the intelligence gathering process was information garnered from Khalid Shaikh Mohammed using the very “enhanced interrogation” techniques candidate Obama objected to.

As Obama seeks a second term so that he can begin to fix the economy, Vice President Biden is there to tell voters the only things they really need to know about the President’s first term: “bin Laden is dead and General Motors is alive”. The President apparently wants to take “credit” for GM as well, despite the fact that the ill advised rescue of the UAW… er… of GM began under President Bush also. But the bottom line is that General Motors is alive, has paid back its loans, and is profitable. Alive, like so many things with this administration, is a relative thing. Yes, GM did pay back its government loans, but the money used to do so came from… other government loans. And yes, the company is currently profitable, but that is in no small part because it received $45 billion in special tax benefits not typically available to companies emerging from bankruptcy. (I’d venture to guess that even the hapless Solyndra might eke out a “profit” if given tens of billions in loans and a $45 billion write off.) The lesson for America from GM and the administration is that it’s OK if a company doesn’t pay taxes so long as its union members get paid.

As we look forward to an exciting run up to the November election, the question is, how is it that a President seeking a second four year term isn’t responsible for the economy 3 ½ years after taking office, but somehow is supposed to be given credit for killing bin Laden a year earlier? Has the Presidency been reduced to a cafeteria plan where the man sitting in the Oval Office gets to pick and choose the issues for which he wants to be held responsible? Does the fact that he takes credit for something mean that we have to agree with his assessment? What about the things he demurs to take credit for? Are we forced to blame them on President Bush or can we pick any scapegoat?

Harry Truman famously had a sign that sat at the edge of his desk in the Oval Office that read “The Buck Stops Here”, in reference to which he once told Naval War College audience: “The President–whoever he is–has to decide. He can’t pass the buck to anybody. No one else can do the deciding for him. That’s his job.” I’m not sure what kind of a sign is sitting on Barack Obama’s desk, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it weren’t similar to that contemptuous sign you find posted on desks and doors of bureaucrats all across the country: “A lack of planning on your part doesn’t constitute an emergency on my part.” Only in President Obama’s case it reads: “A lack of economic opportunity on your part doesn’t constitute failure on my part.”

The reason for the over-the-top headline blurb is due to an FB friend who posted “Another win for Obama & his Military Intelligence Chief!” as a comment-response to my linking to the Long War Journal reportage of Quso’s recent vaporization.

No, I don’t see President Obama “spiking the football” on this; nor on the foiled Diaper Bomb Upgrade 2.0 plot (something he’s been accused of doing in regards to the one-year anniversary of Osama bin Laden’s death). But this certainly did

strike me:

The disclosure of the plot, first reported by the Associated Press, comes less than a week after the anniversary of the death of Osama bin Laden and amid recent efforts by the Obama administration to make its counterterrorism accomplishments a central issue in the presidential campaign.

White House officials previously said they were unaware of any terrorism plots tied to the one-year mark of bin Laden’s death. Despite Monday’s disclosure, a senior administration official said those assertions were accurate.

“We had no specific, credible information about active terrorist plots timed to coincide with the bin Laden anniversary and reiterate that this device never represented a threat to the public,” the senior official said.

Nevertheless, the detection of the alleged al-Qaeda plan appears to have set a series of counterterrorism operations in motion.

I’m grateful for the continuity of government that sees America being protected from its enemies regardless of the “R” or the “D” next to the name of the current PotUS. But, given this is an election year, and given how President Bush was harshly criticized by political partisans for creating a climate of fear with terror-alert warnings all apparently for political gain, I am bemused by these recent events.

I remember liberal BDSers scoffing conspiratorially how the terrorism threat from the al Qaeda network was overexaggerated and all for politics. How the GWoT was all a sham.

President Obama doesn’t have much on his near-four-year resume worth bragging about to the American public.

The one area of accomplishment he may well be able to boast of is in the area where he’s behaved most like his predecessor: The job of killing terrorists.

I expect President Romney will carry on with that American tradition in 2013.

While arguments are being made regarding the value of kills over capture…there’s also something satisfying about “swifter” forms of justice that do not drag out for years and years at taxpayers’ expense, along with making a mockery of our justice system.

After almost 12 years since the bombing of the USS Cole, Fahd al Quso has finally breathed his last:

Quso was traveling in a car with at least two other AQAP operatives when the unmanned Predators or Reapers fired missiles at his car, an intelligence official told The Long War Journal. Three AQAP operatives are believed to have been killed in the strike, which occurred at nighttime.

Quso has been sheltered by the Awlaki tribe, the same tribe that sheltered US cleric and AQAP ideologue and operational commander Anwar al Awlaki, who was killed in a US drone strike in September 2011.

The wanted AQAP leader has been the target of at least one other US airstrike, in July 2011. A convoy transporting Quso in Abyan province was hit by US aircraft, killing eight AQAP fighters. Quso survived the strike.

Previously, Quso was rumored to have been killed in a US Predator airstrike in Pakistan in September 2010. In October 2010, US intelligence officials warned The Long War Journal that the US had been unable to confirm Quso’s death. Al Qaeda did not release a martyrdom statement announcing Quso’s death.

On Dec. 7, 2010, the US State Department added Quso to the list of specially designed global terrorists, and the chief of State’s Terrorist Designations Unit told The Long War Journal that the US did not believe reports that Quso had been killed. Nine days later, Quso was interviewed by Al Sharq al Awsat and expressed surprise that people thought he had been killed in Pakistan.

Quso is considered to be a senior AQAP leader. According to the State Dept.’s designation in December 2010, he leads an al Qaeda cell in Yemen, and “is connected to other designated AQAP senior leaders, including Anwar al Awlaki [a top ideologue and propagandist], Nasir al Wuhayshi [AQAP's leader], and Said Ali al Shihri [AQAP's deputy leader].” In May 2010, Quso appeared in an AQAP propaganda video and threatened to attack the US and its interests abroad, including embassies and warships.

Quso is wanted by the FBI for his role in the October 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in the port of Aden, Yemen. The suicide attack on the warship killed 17 US sailors. Quso is also known to have provided funds to a key planner of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US. Quso was detained by Yemeni security forces after the Sept. 11 attacks, but escaped from prison in 2003. He was later recaptured in 2004, but released again by the Yemeni government in 2007, and quickly rejoined al Qaeda in Yemen.

Additionally, Quso has been identified as one of the AQAP operatives involved in the failed airline bombing attack over Detroit on Christmas Day, 2009.

It was only just last month that President Obama approved an expansion of signature drone strikes, especially in regards to Yemen.

And seeing as how much of the progressive base isn’t happy with it, he must be doing something right, after all.