Does anyone besides me wonder what would have happened between March, 2003 and now, had Bush not made the decision to take out Saddam and instead focused solely on finding and taking out Osama?

Only the most incompetent of the incompetent could fail to find Osama in five years time. September 11, 2006, which is coming right up upon us, has our leaders in a tizzy. Doesn't it ever occur to them that they wasted three years playing neo-con games in Iraq when they could have invested the manpower and less money in finding Osama and breaking up al Qaeda?

Instead we have a neutered Saddam languishing in a courtroom, while violence in Baghdad has escalated past anyone's expectations.The U.S. repsonse: re-employ 3,700 more of our youth to Baghdad, not to fight our war, but to fight the crazy insurgents.

Bush has been an utter incompetent at dealing with terror threats. Condi Rice has been totally ineffectual at negotiations for a middle east peace plan.

Is there anything this adminstration can do competently and correctly? It sure doesn't seem that way.

[larger version]

U.S. officials say a dry run was planned in the British terror threats. No specific date was believed to have been planned. As to the method,

The F.B.I. and homeland security memo said the plotters expected to use peroxide-based explosives that are "sensitive to heat, shock and friction and can be initiated simply with fire or an electrical charge and can also be used to produce improvised detonators." Other officials in London said the plotters planned to smuggle the liquids in drink bottles.

Leave it to President Bush to treat the news as a political opportunity to push his warrantless surveillance progam.

Update: Crooks and Liars has the video of Bush speaking to the threat.

******
Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff today tied the British aircraft terror threats to al-Qaeda.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the plot appeared to have been engineered by al-Qaida, the terrorist group that hijacked two planes from Boston on Sept. 11, 2001, and flew them into the World Trade Center towers in New York.

Things are not progressing smoothly at U.S. airports, so if you are traveling, be forewarned.

Growing lines of irritated travelers snaked through U.S. airport terminals Thursday as people waited hours to reach security checkpoints, where they were ordered to dump their water bottles, suntan lotion and even toothpaste following the discovery of a terror plot in Britain.

by TChris

With the primary season upon us and the November elections quickly approaching, it's time to raise the threat alert -- to red for flights originating in Britain. New travel restrictions are being implemented in response to the reported arrest of 21 terrorists who were plotting to blow up airplanes in flight from London to the United States.

In the United States, federal officials put in place new regulations barring passengers from carrying any liquids, gels or lotions onto planes, except for baby formula or prescription medicines.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said the restrictions reflected the belief of investigators that the plotters planned to bring liquids on board, "each one of which would be benign, but mixed together could be used to create a bomb.''

Chertoff acknowledged the lack of evidence of any similar plots within the U.S.

by TChris

Abdel-Jabbar Hamdan was a fundraiser for Holy Land Foundation, an Islamic charity. The government shut down HLF, contending it was a front for Hamas. It then detained Hamdan -- for two years -- because it viewed him as a threat to national security.

The government has never been able to produce evidence that Hamdan is a threat to anyone. While the government claims that Hamdan is deportable because he overstayed a student visa that was issued 27 years ago, Hamdan appealed the deportation order, and most immigrants in his shoes would be released pending the outcome of that appeal. It took two years for Hamdan to finally win his release, over the government's objection.

Why was Hamdan treated differently?

by TChris

Intent on circumventing the Supreme Court's pronouncement that detainees are entitled to meaningful trials, the Bush administration is drafting legislation that would rig the trials in the government's favor. Hearsay would be acceptable proof and defendants could be excluded from their own trials. Coerced confessions would be admissible unless the judge thought they were "unreliable."

Rather than requiring a speedy trial for enemy combatants, the draft proposal says they "may be tried and punished at any time without limitations." Defendants could be held until hostilities are completed, even if found not guilty by a commission.

In other words, the administration wants to continue business as usual: indefinite detentions that may eventually lead to a secret trial with no right to confront an accuser.

by TChris

The ACLU has appealed the dismissal of a lawsuit it brought on behalf of Khaled el-Masri (TalkLeft background collected here).

Kuwaiti-born Masri says he was abducted in Macedonia in December 2001, then drugged, beaten and flown by the CIA to Afghanistan, where he was held as a terrorism suspect for five months.

The government persuaded the judge that allowing the case to move forward would jeopardize national security -- a convenient defense that shields government actors from accountability for their monstrous misbehavior.

"If this decision stands, the government will have a blank check to shield even its most shameful conduct from accountability,'' said ACLU attorney Ben Wizner.

Update: While the "state's secrets" defense was rejected (at least for now) in this lawsuit accusing AT&T of helping the government conduct illegal eavesdropping, the defense prevailed in a different suit against AT&T that was dismissed today.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales testfied before a Senate Committee today about the NSA warrantless electronic surveillance program. He made a startling admission: It was Bush himself who blocked Justice Department lawyers in the Office of Professional Responsibility from obtaining security clearances to conduct the investigation of the program that members of Congress had requested.

President Bush personally blocked a Justice Department investigation of the anti-terror eavesdropping program that intercepts Americans' international calls and e-mails, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said Tuesday.

Bush refused to grant security clearances for department investigators who were looking into the role Justice lawyers played in crafting the program, under which the National Security Agency listens in on telephone calls and reads e-mail without court approval, Gonzales told the Senate Judiciary Committee. Without access to the sensitive program, the department's Office of Professional Responsibility closed its investigation in April.

I wrote about Congressman Hinchey's request at length back in May, linking to several of the letters exchanged between the OPR and Hinchey, it's a pretty good backgrounder if you want some history.

Note that the May 11 letter from Hinchey to the OPR directly asks, "Who made the decision not to give you clearance?"

Murray Waas has an excellent article that just came out about today's disclosure by Gonzales.

by TChris

In this Daily Kos diary, Sen. Russ Feingold explains why the Hamdan decision "undercuts the Administration's already weak legal argument in defense of its warrantless wiretapping program."

The New York Times calls out Bush for his executive arrogance, as displayed this past week regarding Guantanamo and the NSA warrantless wiretapping program.

Over and over again, the same pattern emerges: Given a choice between following the rules or carving out some unprecedented executive power, the White House always shrugged off the legal constraints. Even when the only challenge was to get required approval from an ever-cooperative Congress, the president and his staff preferred to go it alone. While no one questions the determination of the White House to fight terrorism, the methods this administration has used to do it have been shaped by another, perverse determination: never to consult, never to ask and always to fight against any constraint on the executive branch.

The White House said today it would consider allowing the FISA court to review its warrantless electronic monitoring program. The devil is in the details:

Specter said President Bush has agreed to sign legislation that would authorize the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to review the constitutionality of the National Security Agency's most high-profile monitoring operations.

Specter said the court would make a one-time review of the program rather than performing ongoing oversight of it.

An administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the bill's language gives the president the option of submitting the program to the intelligence court, rather than making the review a requirement.The official said that Bush will submit to the court review as long the bill is not changed, adding that the legislation preserves the right of future presidents to skip the court review.

A one time review is not oversight. Here are the uncontroverted facts (pdf) about the NSA program. More details of the proposed legislation, according to Specter from the Washington Post article.

Bump and Update: A big thanks to the Wall St. Journal which has agreed to put the full article online for free. You can read it here.

*******
Original Post

Stories like these make me so angry. The Wall St. Journal (subscription only) reports:

Last November, when Yassine Ouassif crossed into Champlain, N.Y., from Canada, border agents questioned him for several hours. Then they took away his green card and sent him home to San Francisco by bus, with strict instructions: As soon as he got there, he was to call a man named Dan.

Ouassif met with Dan, who of course was an FBI agent, and Dan (Fliflet) told him:

Mr. Fliflet told the 24-year-old Moroccan that he'd been monitoring his friends and him for many months, Mr. Ouassif recalls. Mr. Fliflet made him an offer: Become an informant and regularly report to the FBI on what his Muslim friends in San Francisco were saying and doing. In exchange, he would get back his green card. He could resume his education, bring his Moroccan wife to America, and pursue his dream of buying a car, moving to Sacramento and becoming an engineer.