War on Terror

Last week, it was announced that a District Court of Appeals had found that the classification of a Uighur held at Guantánamo Bay as an “unlawful combatant” was inappropriate; the Government needed to either revisit his classification or release him.   The appellant’s attorney was reported as looking forward to passing along the news…but was unable to do so since his client was being held in isolation, incommunicado.

The New York Times is reporting that the unclassified portion of the opinion has been released.  This passage in the story caught my eye:

With some derision for the Bush administration’s arguments, a three-judge panel said the government contended that its allegations against a detainee should be accepted as true because they had been repeated in at least three secret documents.

The court compared that to the absurd declaration of a Lewis Carroll character: “I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.”

“This comes perilously close to suggesting that whatever the government says must be treated as true,” said the panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is exactly why our government has a system of checks and balances.  If one branch of the government gets a little too full of itself, another can step in and impose some amount of reason, thereby reducing the chance our government devolves into a totalitarian regime.

I don’t object in principle to the idea that those who really threaten public safety should be detained.  However, the process by which the threat they pose is neutralized must permit a fair process to review the assessment of that threat.

You’d think that given after all this time, the process we have today wouldn’t rely on Executive fiat or the use of a tame, kangaroo court.

Apparently the federal courts would seem inclined to agree.

Threat Level has relayed a most interesting document:

AT a recent counter-terrorism and fusion center conference earlier this spring, intelligence and law enforcement officials were given a number of tools to help them fight terror attacks, including a dictionary of street gang slang that was compiled by Woodman State Jail in Texas. Somehow that document fell into the hands of THREAT LEVEL.[...]

The document (.pdf) warns to use “extreme care and caution in the display and use of this book. Do not leave it where it can be located, accessed or utilized by any unauthorized person.”

A couple of examples of this forbidden knowledge of terroristic language:

Y’ALL….(Street)….Short for “You All”.

YULE….(Occult)…..The Sabbath celebrated on the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

Congratulations.  Almost everybody who grew up in the south, or is a pagan, is apparently a terrorist threat.

Your tax dollars at work, ladies and gentlemen.

Seen at SCOTUSBlog:

In a stunning blow to the Bush Administration in its war-on-terrorism policies, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign nationals held at Guantanamo Bay have a right to pursue habeas challenges to their detention. The Court, dividing 5-4, ruled that Congress had not validly taken away habeas rights.  If Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.

The Court stressed that it was not ruling that the detainees are entitled to be released — that is, entitled to have writs issued to end their confinement. That issue, it said, is left to the District Court judges who will be hearing the challenges. The Court also said that “we do not address whether the President has authority to detain” individuals during the war on terrorism, and hold them at the U.S. Naval base in Cuba; that, too, it said, is to be considered first by the District judges.

I had thought from my old Social Studies classes that the rights enumerated by the Bill of Rights were inalienable rights applicable to all people.  Heck, we fought a civil war 140-plus years ago over the question of whether those rights should belong to just some folks, or all…and the “all” crowd won.

It’s nice to see a bit of that upheld, despite Washington’s best efforts to the contrary.

I don’t necessarily object to the idea that folks who really are set on doing Americans harm should be detained.  I also don’t necessarily object to the idea of radical measures being taken during a legitimate emergency.

However, it’s been almost seven years since 9/11.  You’d think that our political leaders have had ample opportunity to work out how to provide such protection without throwing away the rights our ancestors died to protect.

One other comment that merits highlighting:

Even though the two political branches — the President and Congress — had agreed to take away the detainees’ habeas rights, Kennedy said those branches do not have “the power to switch the Constitution on or off at will.”

Thank-you Justice Kennedy, for pointing out something that should have been obvious all along.

Seen in the Washington Times:

False identifications based on a terrorist no-fly list have for years prevented some federal air marshals from boarding flights they are assigned to protect, according to officials with the agency, which is finally taking steps to address the problem. [...]

“In some cases, planes have departed without any coverage because the airline employees were adamant they would not fly,” said the air marshal, who asked not to be named because the job requires anonymity. “I’ve seen guys actually being denied boarding.”

Having a no fly list is not necessarily a bad thing.  After all, it makes sense that you’d keep folks who might want to turn aircraft into manually-guided cruise missiles off those aircraft.

The problem with the no-fly list arises from the hassles faced by folks who are confused as being a suspect on the list.  It seems to be rather challenging to prove that you are you rather than someone with a similar name, in a manner to appease paranoid bureaucrat.

That folks working in a different branch of the air-security theater are getting snagged by the no-fly list, is just very amusing to me.

An odd anecdote I came across in the Seattle Times:

It turns out the feds have been monitoring Interstate 5 for nuclear “dirty bombs.” They do it with radiation detectors so sensitive it led to the following incident.

“Vehicle goes by at 70 miles per hour,” Giuliano told the crowd. “Agent is in the median, a good 80 feet away from the traffic. Signal went off and identified an isotope [in the passing car].”

The agent raced after the car, pulling it over not far from the monitoring spot (near the Bow-Edison exit, 18 miles south of Bellingham). The agent questioned the driver, then did a cursory search of the car, Giuliano said.

Did he find a nuke?

“Turned out to be a cat with cancer that had undergone a radiological treatment three days earlier,” Giuliano said.

This anecdote was shared at a community meeting that Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat attended. The meeting was held to address concerns by San Juan County, Washington residents over being harassed by border agents to prove immigration status. (San Juan County is made up of a group of islands between Vancouver Island, British Columbia, and the mainland of Washington State.)

I suppose that it’s a good thing that the feds are monitoring for the sorts of contraband that are legitimately concerning. However, I also have to admit that I share Mr. Westneat’s concerns about the pervasiveness of government monitoring.

However, I do take comfort from another comment in the story. Deputy Chief Giuliano, the number 2 guy for that stretch of the U.S.-Canadian frontier, has his own reservations about the authority he seemingly could wield:

Yet even he, a federal agent for 35 years, is queasy about the snooping’s reach. He said he opposes parts of the Patriot Act, namely the section that expands warrantless searches.

“I think we can do this without tossing out our checks and balances,” he said.

It seems that Osama has been in hiding at Barad-dûr.

A post on a mailing list I follow directed my attention to an article at the PakTribune:

[S]ources said that all arrangements had been finalised for a massive offensive against the militants hiding in the Mehsud-populated areas of South Waziristan and in this regard thousands of fresh Pakistan Army contingents were taken to Razmak in North Waziristan who, at any time, could enter the nearby Makin area.

According to military spokesman Maj Gen Athar Abbas, from 50 to 60 militants were killed near Ladha Fort while 20 to 30 militants were killed in fighting near Chagmalai. Maj Gen Abbas said dozens of militants moved to Ladha Fort at 10 am on Friday and attacked the military base. Only small arms and rockets were used in the attack, he added.

I did not create the map, I swear.

Seen in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer:

Travelers at Sea-Tac and dozens of other major airports across America are being scrutinized by teams of TSA behavior-detection officers specially trained to discern the subtlest suspicious behaviors.

TSA officials will not reveal specific behaviors identified by the program—called SPOT (Screening Passengers by Observation Technique)—that are considered indicators of possible terrorist intent.

But a central task is to recognize microfacial expressions—a flash of feelings that in a fraction of a second reflects emotions such as fear, anger, surprise or contempt, said Carl Maccario, who helped start the program for TSA.

I’ve been calling Homeland Security folks the “Geheimstaatspolizei”, in honor of the authoritarianism they remind me of. However, now, I’m wondering if I might need to re-christen those “behavior-detection officers” as “thought police”.

In all seriousness, this is probably not a bad thing, particularly if it steers airport security theater away from hassling business travelers, frisking little old grandmothers, and seemingly pulling aside folks of middle-eastern and south-Asian descent out of an abundance of paranoia; and instead focuses security folks attentions into identifying folks with nefarious plans in mind..it will be a good thing.

Periodically, I run into a discussion along the lines of “wouldn’t it be nice if we could have an open border with Canada”, due to our cordial relations and the hassle of border-crossing these days. Homeland Security concerns aggravated by differences on immigration policy are the reasons usually given for why Canadian border liberalization seems unlikely to occur.

For example, consider this post from ABC News’ Blotter:

According to Canadian news accounts, Justice Michael Phelan’s ruling struck down an agreement that once barred thousands of refugees seeking asylum in Canada. The judge said the United States does not protect refugees fleeing political persecution and torture, which international conventions require.

Instead, it adheres to rigid policies which may result in mistreatment, including forcing victims of abuse to return to the countries in which they were mistreated, he said.

As a result, the United States can no longer be considered a safe place for refugees, Phelan ruled. His ruling nullifies an existing U.S.-Canada agreement saying that if a refugee is turned away from one country, he or she cannot seek refuge in the other. The agreement was intended to reduce so-called “asylum shopping,” in which immigrants attempt to obtain refugee status from multiple countries.

While American border paranoia is understandable, it’s a sorry day when other countries openly note that the U.S. may no longer be a good destination for refugees looking for safety and opportunity.

Seen in the Times, a summary of a recent Muslim magazine interview with +Rowan, which apparently covered several topics:

[Archbishop Rowan Williams] said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity”.

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”[...]

Given the schism that seems to be almost underway within the Episcopal Church USA…and the Anglican Communion as a whole, to a certain extent… it’s interesting seeing the Archbishop not mincing words.

Seen on the newswires:

The Bush administration cannot legally detain a U.S. resident it believes is an al-Qaida sleeper agent without charging him, a divided federal appeals court ruled Monday. The court said sanctioning the indefinite detention of civilians would have “disastrous consequences for the constitution — and the country.”[...]

“To sanction such presidential authority to order the military to seize and indefinitely detain civilians, even if the President calls them ‘enemy combatants,’ would have disastrous consequences for the constitution — and the country,” the court panel said.

And sanity prevails!

I don’t think anybody disputes that it’s a good idea to detain suspect terrorists before they do harm, assuming the suspicion is based on something more substantive than administrative paranoia.

However, one of the principles that our country is built on is that even the most vile individual is entitled to due process. In this case, you can’t just “disappear” the suspect; he/she is entitled to defend him/herself.

It’s been 5½ years since 9/11. You’d think that during those 5½ years legislation could have been passed, procedures implemented, and if necessary staffing changes made that would permit the preservation of civil rights without sacrificing national security.