Congratulations, Secret Service! No brawls with whores during Obama’s whistle-stop in Kabul. OK, it wasn’t an overnight visit…
*
It was inspiring to hear Obama invoking the usual idealism during his spiel from Bagram Air Base. The event was nicely managed insofar as there were no blood-piercing screams during his speech from detainees being tortured.
Oh – that’s right. There isn’t any more torture in Afghanistan….
*[another excellent cartoon from the Washington Post’s Tom Toles]
Via Glenn Greenwald, Daneil Denvir writes about former Governor Ed Rendell trying to explain why he shouldn’t be indicted for providing “material support” to the Iranian cult terrorist group MEK:
One 10-minute speech earned Rendell $20,000, and he frequently flew to Europe to call for MEK’s removal from the terror list. That would appear to fall within the extraordinarily broad definition of “material support” used by theObama administration.
Rendell calls that “ludicrous.” He says, “The only thing we’ve done is spoken out on their behalf. And you certainly can’t in any way encumber free speech in America. You know that ? you’re a journalist.”
I do sort of know that?you shouldn’t be able to encumber free speech. But the Supreme Court did just that, and Muslims have been prosecuted for doing less: a satellite TV salesman sentenced to five years for broadcasting Hezbollah’s TV channel; a man indicted for favorable web comments on shooting U.S. soldiers.
…“Whatever one’s views are on this ruling, it is now binding law. To advocate on behalf of a designated Terrorist group constitutes the felony of ‘providing material support’ if that advocacy is coordinated with the group,” writes Salon blogger and constitutional law attorney Glenn Greenwald. “They’re providing more substantial ‘material support’ to this Terrorist group than many people ? usually vulnerable, powerless Muslims ? who are currently imprisoned for that crime.”
…“If you indict me, [Rendell explained] I hope you know, you have to indict 67 other Americans who did the same thing, including seven generals … [who] served in Iraq. You’d have to indict James Jones, President Obama’s first NSC chief adviser, you’d have to indict former Attorney General [Michael] Mukasey, former FBI Director Louis Freeh … the whole kit and caboodle.” That caboodle is voluminous and high-powered, including Tom Ridge, UN Ambassador John Bolton, Rudolph Giuliani and Howard Dean, among others.
Seriously, don’t tease me…
“You tell me that anyone has the right to restrict my freedom of speech and I’ll tell you you’re dead wrong,” Rendell insists.
I wish I were wrong. The Supreme Court’s three dissenters protested that the decision “gravely and without adequate justification injure[s] interests of the kind the First Amendment protects.” So it does. It’s a frightening law and a horrible ruling that pulverizes First Amendment free speech protections. But as long as political nobodies face prosecution for speech crimes, so should elites. Indict Rendell ? and Ridge, Mukasey, Giuliani, etc. ? or repeal this law.
See here for background on the push inside elite U.S. circles to get the MEK delisted from the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations.
It should be well known that the law simply doesn’t apply to elite members of the American political community. But I just think it’s fascinating that Rendell actually used the argument that, if you indict him, you’ll have to then apply the law to other important people! At least 67 of them! Oh, the unspeakable chaos!
Adam Serwer in Mother Jones has a nice sum-up of the highlights from the recent declassification of selected documents from the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound in Pakistan a year ago. The al-Qaeda leader’s internal documents and correspondences include asking for Anwar al-Awlaki’s resume, worrying about affiliate groups killing too many civilians, criticisms of the American media, and some seriously wounding criticisms of Vice President Joe Biden’s leadership capabilities.
Spencer Ackerman writes about the apparent motivation behind the administration’s declassification of the documents:
In an apparent attempt to sow discord within the ranks of al-Qaida’s remaining sympathizers, the U.S. government declassified personal communications from Osama bin Laden showing the terror leader fretting about the bloodthirsty movement he launched.
If al-Qaida affiliates keep killing Muslim civilians, bin Laden wrote to an aide shortly before the Navy SEAL raid that killed him, “they will spoil [things and] alienate the people, who could be won over by enemy after enemy…. Our brothers are making things worse by opening themselves up to evil and hostility!”
At the behest of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point released a declassified, translated version of 17 documents seized in the raid. SEALs left the Abbottabad compound seizing hundreds of bin Laden’s laptops, hard drives, cellphones and flash drives, a collection of thousands of pieces of data that U.S. intelligence officials have often described asa treasure trove of information about al-Qaida. Accordingly, the surprise declassification presents a selective narrative that the U.S. wants in circulation.
It is not difficult to see why. “The focus of his private letters is Muslims’ suffering at the hands of his jihadi ‘brothers.’ He was at pains advising them to abort domestic attacks that cause Muslim civilian casualties and instead focus on the United States, ‘our desired goal,’” the Center’s summary reads. “Bin Ladin’s frustration with regional jihadi groups and his seeming inability to exercise control over their actions and public statements is the most compelling story to be told on the basis of the 17 declassified documents.”
I’m just speculating, but it seems like emphasizing the lack of control al-Qaeda’s leadership had over these other terrorist groups really harms the administration’s primary legal justification for waging a global drone war against “al-Qaeda and its affiliates.” It’s been thoroughly explained elsewhere how loose are these supposed affiliations, but the administration should probably avoid providing more evidence for that if they want to keep illegally killing unidentified groups of people in Yemen, for example.
In Politico, Daphne Eviator of Human Rights First, contests the Obama administration’s legal justification for a borderless, undeclared drone war in multiple countries, which is that the AUMF grants them the authority to take lethal action against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.
Though international law recognizes that a state may go to war against armed terrorist groups, that’s called a “non-international armed conflict.” Because of the difficulty of identifying the enemy, different rules apply.
In a non-international armed conflict like this, the only “enemies” targetable are those “directly participating in hostilities” against the United States, or performing a “continuous combat function” with armed groups targeting the U.S.
Her arguments are even more starkly made in the context of the now public policy of conducting “signature strikes,” that is, targeting groups of unidentified individuals.
From the Tenth Amendment Center:
Los Angeles Event shows how States and Local Communities Can Stop NDAA Indefinite Detention
As Congress focused last week on the so-called “indefinite detention” provisions of the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), organizers of the “Nullify the NDAA” event in Los Angeles say that it’s states and local communities, and not Congress, who will ultimately put a stop to such powers.
Continue reading “Nullify the NDAA”
Former Secretary of State under President Clinton Madeleine Albright will be awarded “the highest honor” that America bestows upon civilians — the Presidential Medal of Freedom. No, really. The woman who expressed unapologetic approval of the murder of 500,000 children will be decorated with an award denoting something to do with human freedom.
See here and here for more on the Iraq sanctions of the 1990s.
