The Obama Administration has expanded the use of CIA and military drones, especially in Pakistan, and CIA Director Panetta is positive about their use:

“CIA Director Leon Panetta gave an interview to the Washington Post claiming that the “secret war” of drone assaults in Pakistan is having a major impact on al Qaeda.”

During his Presidency, Bush authorized the use of drones but President Obama has significantly expanded their use. There were objections to the use of drones during the Bush years and also after Obama took office, with many liberals complaining that drones increased civilian deaths and were used in countries with which the U.S. is not at war. In January, the ACLU announced an effort to obtain specific information about drone attacks:

“The ACLU is asking the government to release basic information about its use of drones to execute targeted killings. The group believes that “the use and proliferation of this tactic must be the subject of public scrutiny and debate.” The strikes are reportedly being carried out both by US military forces and the CIA.

The request is seeking information, including who may be targeted and the geographical limits on where drone strikes may occur. It wants information about the scope and consequences of drone strikes, including a breakdown of the total number of people killed, the civilian casualty toll, the number of people killed who were fighters with the Afghan Taliban or al-Qaeda in Afghanistan or who had some other terror-related affiliation or status.

“The public has been kept in the dark and is therefore unable to assess the wisdom or legality of the strikes,” the group claimed.”

The ACLU’s request was directed at the CIA and 3 government Departments — Defense, Justice, and State. Politico reports the CIA responded and the ACLU is pursuing an intra-agency appeal. The ACLU also sued to compel disclosure by the other agencies earlier this week.

– DRJ

Attorney General Eric Holder says Osama Bin Laden will never be captured alive:

“Attorney General Eric Holder told Congress on Tuesday that Osama bin Laden will never face trial in the United States because he will not be captured alive.

In testy exchanges with House Republicans, the attorney general compared terrorists to mass murderer Charles Manson and predicted that events would ensure “we will be reading Miranda rights to the corpse of Osama bin Laden” not to the al-Qaida leader as a captive.

Holder sternly rejected criticism from GOP members of a House Appropriations subcommittee, who contend it is too dangerous to put terror suspects on trial in federal civilian courts as Holder has proposed.”

Days after 9/11, President Bush called for Bin Laden to be taken “Dead or Alive.” Liberals criticized his rhetoric. Remind me again why the Obama Administration is so much more nuanced and articulate than President Bush?

– DRJ

How does a major newspaper decide whether to report wartime news whose release may jeopardize American interests or lives? New York Times‘ Editor Bill Keller says it depends on many factors, apparently including whether the newspaper has a friendly or acrimonious relationship with the President:

KELLER: No, we get asked to withhold information, not often but from time to time. Sometimes it’s a no-brainer, you know we have reporters embedded in military operations – obviously they don’t file information that would put troops at risk. We’ve had other stories that were much more controversial where we decided that we would publish. This one was not, honestly, a very hard call. Obviously we were eager to break the story, it represented a lot of resourceful reporting by Mark and Dexter, but there was no obvious public interest reason to rush the story into print and you know we are responsible people; we didn’t want to compromise what sounded like a possible intelligence coup.

HEADLEE: And certainly, the story retains just as much power more than a week later as it would have had you broken it right at the time, is that kind of your thought process?

KELLER: Yeah, I think that’s kind of the thought process. What actually happened, was yesterday our stringers in Pakistan and Afghanistan started calling our bureaus there and saying, we’re hearing reports that Mullah Baladar is in Pakistani custody, we took that to the White House and they said, yeah we understand it’s not holdable anymore.

HEADLEE: Right, so you published it. Now you visited the White House in 2006 while President Bush was in office and you were getting ready to publish a story about domestic wire tapping and very famously you were told if you published that story you’d have blood on your hands. Is that the kind of dire warning you got from the Obama White House?

KELLER: No, first of all this didn’t even get to my level, they dealt with Dean Baquet, the Washington bureau chief, I mean obviously if they felt they needed to call me, I’m always willing to take a call, but it didn’t even rise to that level. Back in 2006 the conversations were professional and civil, but in the end when we didn’t agree to hold the story as they wanted us to, it was a kind of firestorm of criticism from the White House aimed at the Times. So far anyway we haven’t had that acrimony with this administration, nor as far as I know have other news organisations.”

It sounds like the New York Times‘ editors didn’t [like and/or] trust Bush and that contributed to why they refused his requests, but they [like and/or] trust Obama so they are more willing to accommodate his requests. I don’t know if that’s consistent with journalistic standards but it’s understandable. We are more likely to believe people we trust.

It’s also useful because it explains why subscriptions are dropping at newspapers like the New York Times but not at sources like the Wall Street Journal. It’s about trust.

– DRJ

Amid reports that American military forces in Afghanistan are hampered by the rules of engagement, the AP reports the Taliban is using Afghan women and children as human shields:

“This is the biggest offensive since the 2001 U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan, and a test of President Barack Obama’s strategy for reversing the rise of the Taliban while protecting civilians.

As Marines and Afghan soldiers press their offensive, they have been forced to hold their fire because insurgents are shooting from inside or next to mud-walled compounds where civilians are present — and restraint slows their advance.

Brig. Gen. Mohiudin Ghori, the brigade commander of Afghan troops in Marjah, said in some cases women and children may have been ordered to stand on a roof or in a window of buildings where Taliban fighters are shooting.

Ghori said troops have to decide between firing on insurgents among civilians, or advance much more slowly to keep women and children out of the crossfire.

“They are trying to get us to fire on them and kill the civilians,” Ghori said.

Journalists embedded with the Marines have seen such cases: a neighborhood is alive with children, then the next minute the streets are empty and gunshots ring out. As the troops advance, children reappear, peering and grinning through half-closed doors.

Rocket-propelled grenades have been fired from behind groups of civilians, who scamper away as the Marines point their weapons toward the source of fire. Marines have come under fire in poppy fields as they are being tended by farmers.

“I myself saw lots of people that were shot, and they were ordinary people,” said Afghan soldier Esmatullah, who did not give his rank and like many Afghans goes by one name. Taliban “were firing at us from people’s homes. So in returning fire, people got shot,” he said.

NATO has confirmed 15 civilian deaths in the operation. Afghan rights groups say at least 19 have died.”

It’s interesting that the AP has finally decided to point out how hard it is to fight unconventional wars by conventional rules. What happened to the AP’s insight when Americans were fighting in Iraq?

– DRJ

An AP report from the Badula Qulp area, West of Lashkar Gah in the Helmand province of Southern Afghanistan:

“Close to the road and relative safety, soldiers saw a man in black walking. He was unarmed. They watched him in their scopes but did not shoot. Western forces in Afghanistan are operating under rules of engagement, or ROE, that restrict them from acting against people unless they commit a hostile act or show hostile intent. American troops say the Taliban can fire on them, then set aside their weapon and walk freely out of a compound, possibly toward a weapons cache in another location.

“The inability to stop people who don’t have weapons is the main hindrance right now,” McMahon said after the firefight. “They know how to use our ROE against us.”

– DRJ

As Le-gal In-sur-rec-tion predicted, more civil rights for terrorists means more dead terrorists:

“I predicted that once we lost the ability to effectively interrogate detainees, more terrorists would be killed because there was no logic to capturing terrorists you could not interrogate …

There was a corollary to the scenario in my post, which is that there also would be a lower incentive for friendly governments to capture terrorists and turn them over to us. That is how we obtained possession of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and many others.

And now it has come to pass, Under Obama, more targeted killings than captures in counterterrorism efforts.”

Last May, President Barack Obama pledged to restore the “moral authority that is America’s strongest currency in the world” by closing Guantanamo. He also said that locking up terrorists in Guantanamo had “became a symbol that helped al Qaeda recruit terrorists to its cause.”

I support killing terrorists but if locking up terrorists destroys America’s moral authority and helps recruit terrorists, how are assassinations around the world any better?

– DRJ

Former Vice President Dick Cheney is scheduled to appear on ABC’s “This Week” and the White House is responding:

“Former Vice President Cheney will appear on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday, and it’s a safe bet what he will say: President Barack Obama projects weakness to terrorists and puts American lives at risk.

It’s the kind of brutal charge — nuance-free and politically explosive — that has become a Cheney specialty since he left office 13 months ago.

Cheney’s broadsides on Afghanistan policy, detention and surveillance policies, and Obama’s general philosophy about the U.S. role in a dangerous world inevitably dominate the news. No other figure in Republican politics has equal ability to drive debate on national security, rally Obama critics and force the administration to respond. On Sunday, Vice President Joe Biden will be countering Cheney on NBC’s “Meet the Press” and CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

After providing a long list of sources that attack Cheney’s motives, Politico turned to two amusing sources for commentary on Cheney and the war on terror — Keith Olbermann and Andrew Sulllivan:

“In interviews for this article, some of Cheney’s harshest critics said the origins of his Obama criticism may be more psychological than political. MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann said in an e-mail to POLITICO that Cheney has been “shrill, totally unpatriotic and sounding more concerned with torture and interrogation than with results and intelligence.”

“I think he may believe that only his vision can save America, and thus anything, including lying to America, is justifiable,” Olbermann wrote. “This is, I believe, called ‘a Messiah Complex.’”

Andrew Sullivan, who writes “The Daily Dish” blog on The Atlantic.com, wrote in an e-mail for this story: “Cheney’s unprecedentedly aggressive approach … reflects his own knowledge that he has committed war crimes of a very grave sort, war crimes that at some point could lead to prosecution and will undoubtedly lead to historical infamy.”

“If that becomes the prevailing narrative — because it is true — he will go down in history as a man who betrayed the very core principles of Western civilization out of panic and then covered it up,” Sullivan continued. “So he has to change the subject and launch this kind of P.R. campaign to throw everyone off the scent. … Cheney is cornered. He knows justice is coming, and he knows that one day the full truth will come out and there will be no hiding. Until then, he will fight and fight and break every taboo that respect for the Constitution and for civil discourse requires.”

Critics like Sullivan and others want the media to “take away Cheney’s megaphone” by denying him coverage for his views, a tactic that (so far and to its credit) the Politico is resisting.

Nevertheless, it’s too bad the Politico didn’t include responses from a few Cheney supporters or “Obama critics” so this article would have more balance, especially since some of the responses were apparently the result of email correspondence. Surely there are a few conservatives and former Bush Administration personnel on the Politico’s contact list.

– DRJ

UPDATE — ABC News’ report on Cheney’s appearance:

“If [the administration is] going to take credit for [Iraq's success], fair enough … but it ought to come with a healthy dose of ‘Thank you, George Bush’ up front and a recognition that some of their early recommendations with respect to prosecuting that war were just dead wrong,” Cheney told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl.
***
“Obama and Biden campaigned from one end of the country to the other for two years criticizing our Iraq policy,” Cheney said. “If they had had their way, if we’d followed the policies they’d pursued from the outset or advocated from the outset, Saddam Hussein would still be in power in Baghdad today.”

The Obama Administration has determined that some detainees really are too dangerous to be released:

“Administration officials tell ABC News that the Guantanamo Detainee Review Task Force has determined that about 50 Guantanamo detainees should be held indefinitely for prolonged detention and that 35 detainees should be prosecuted under military or civilian trials. The indefinite detention of the 50 detainees was first reported by the Washington Post.

The task force has determined that there are too many difficulties in prosecuting their cases but determined that the men are too dangerous to be released. Many in this category allegedly spent time at al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan prior to the 9/11 attacks or were linked to the Taliban and continued to fight with the groups during the U.S. offensive in 2001.”

Here is the Washington Post article that originally reported this story.

At some point, the Obama Administration may realize America is at war.

– DRJ

The criminal trial of Dr. Aafia Siddiqui began last week in a New York City courtroom with jury selection and will continue Tuesday morning with opening statements. Pakistani-born Siddiqui attended Brandeis, is an MIT-trained neuroscientist, lived in Boston with her anesthesiologist husband, and is the mother of three children. Siddiqui was captured in Afghanistan with suspicious documents and is charged with trying to murder an American soldier outside Kabul, Afghanistan.

The parties offer vastly different profiles of Siddiqui. In this Guardian article, Declan Walsh summarized the prosecution’s facts that led to the charges against Siddiqui:

“On a hot summer morning 18 months ago a team of four Americans – two FBI agents and two army officers – rolled into Ghazni, a dusty town 50 miles south of Kabul. They had come to interview two unusual prisoners: a woman in a burka and her 11-year-old son, arrested the day before.

Afghan police accused the mysterious pair of being suicide bombers. What interested the Americans, though, was what they were carrying: notes about a “mass casualty attack” in the US on targets including the Statue of Liberty and a collection of jars and bottles containing “chemical and gel substances”.

At the town police station the Americans were directed into a room where, unknown to them, the woman was waiting behind a long yellow curtain. One soldier sat down, laying his M-4 rifle by his foot, next to the curtain. Moments later it twitched back.

The woman was standing there, pointing the officer’s gun at his head. A translator lunged at her, but too late. She fired twice, shouting “Get the fuck out of here!” and “Allahu Akbar!” Nobody was hit. As the translator wrestled with the woman, the second soldier drew his pistol and fired, hitting her in the abdomen. She went down, still kicking and shouting that she wanted “to kill Americans”. Then she passed out.

Whether this extraordinary scene is fiction or reality will soon be decided thousands of miles from Ghazni in a Manhattan courtroom. The woman is Dr Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist and mother of three. The description of the shooting, in July 2008, comes from the prosecution case, which Siddiqui disputes. What isn’t in doubt is that there was an incident, and that she was shot, after which she was helicoptered to Bagram air field where medics cut her open from breastplate to bellybutton, searching for bullets. Medical records show she barely survived.”

Early last week, one of Siddiqui’s defense attorneys claimed the prosecution’s evidence is not admissible and, in any event, Siddiqui didn’t do it:

“On Monday, defence attorneys asked US District Judge Richard Berman to bar testimony and evidence from Siddiqui’s capture in Afghanistan the day before the shooting. Prosecutors allege she was carrying a list naming the Stature of Liberty and other New York landmarks, and notes about chemical and biological weapons. Defence attorney Linda Moreno argued a jury should only consider whether her client fired a weapon – not her motive. She said there were no fingerprints or other forensic evidence to prove that her client had even picked up the weapon. “We’re saying she simply didn’t do it,” the lawyer said.”

On Wednesday, Judge Berman ruled admissible Siddiqui’s handwritten documents and any fingerprint evidence, but barred the prosecution from linking Siddiqui to any terrorist organization or offering printed materials in her possession that might suggest terror-related links or sympathies.

Collecting evidence and following traditional police procedures are difficult to do in war, and I suspect this case and the legal issues it presents will be a preview of the Guantanamo detainee trials yet to come.

– DRJ

PS — Don’t miss this October 2004 Boston Magazine article regarding Siddiqui written before the shooting incident.

ABC News reports a Michigan company that supplies high-powered rifle sights to the U.S. military inscribes references to New Testament Bible passages on the sights, including references to Second Corinthians, Revelation, Matthew and John:

“Trijicon confirmed to ABCNews.com that it adds the biblical codes to the sights sold to the U.S. military. Tom Munson, director of sales and marketing for Trijicon, which is based in Wixom, Michigan, said the inscriptions “have always been there” and said there was nothing wrong or illegal with adding them. Munson said the issue was being raised by a group that is “not Christian.” The company has said the practice began under its founder, Glyn Bindon, a devout Christian from South Africa who was killed in a 2003 plane crash.”

Using weapons with Biblical references raises military concerns that its actions will be viewed as a religious “Crusade” in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

– DRJ