The Washington Post reports that the FBI has found a surprising number of illegal combatants have been found to have previous arrest records in the United States.

In the six-and-a-half years that the U.S. government has been fingerprinting insurgents, detainees and ordinary people in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Horn of Africa, hundreds have turned out to share an unexpected background, FBI and military officials said. They have criminal arrest records in the United States.

There was the suspected militant fleeing Somalia who had been arrested on a drug charge in New Jersey. And the man stopped at a checkpoint in Tikrit who claimed to be a dirt farmer but had 11 felony charges in the United States, including assault with a deadly weapon.

The records suggest that potential enemies abroad know a great deal about the United States because many of them have lived here, officials said. …

As they analyzed the results, they were surprised to learn that one out of every 100 detainees was already in the FBI’s database for arrests. Many arrests were for drunken driving, passing bad checks and traffic violations, FBI officials said.

“Frankly I was surprised that we were getting those kind of hits at all,” recalled Townsend, who left government in January. They identified “a potential vulnerability” to national security the government had not fully appreciated, she said.

The people being fingerprinted had come from the Middle East, North Africa and Pakistan. They were mostly in their 20s, Shannon recalled. “One of the things we learned is we were dealing with relatively young guys who were very committed and what they would openly tell you is that when they got out they were going back to jihad,” he said. “They’d already made this commitment.”

The London Times reports that the US has essentially won the war in Iraq.

American and Iraqi forces are driving Al-Qaeda in Iraq out of its last redoubt in the north of the country in the culmination of one of the most spectacular victories of the war on terror.

After being forced from its strongholds in the west and centre of Iraq in the past two years, Al-Qaeda’s dwindling band of fighters has made a defiant “last stand” in the northern city of Mosul.

A huge operation to crush the 1,200 fighters who remained from a terrorist force once estimated at more than 12,000 began on May 10.

Operation Lion’s Roar, in which the Iraqi army combined forces with the Americans’ 3rd Armoured Cavalry Regiment, has already resulted in the death of Abu Khalaf, the Al-Qaeda leader, and the capture of more than 1,000 suspects. …

uri al-Maliki, Iraq’s prime minister, who has also led a crackdown on the Shi’ite Mahdi Army in Basra and Baghdad in recent months, claimed yesterday that his government had “defeated” terrorism.

“They were intending to besiege Baghdad and control it,” Maliki said. “But thanks to the will of the tribes, security forces, army and all Iraqis, we defeated them.”

The number of foreign fighters coming over the border from Syria to bolster Al-Qaeda’s numbers is thought to have declined to as few as 20 a month, compared with 120 a month at its peak.

Brigadier General Abdullah Abdul, a senior Iraqi commander, said: “We’ve limited their movements with check-points. They are doing small attacks and trying big ones, but they’re mostly not succeeding.”

Major-General Mark Hertling, American commander in the north, said: “I think we’re at the irreversible point.”

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But Barack Obama insists that he’ll withdraw anyway.

Earlier in the day as he flew from Montana to Missouri, Obama told reporters he was surprised at how the media has “finely calibrated” his recent words on Iraq, and reaffirmed his commitment to ending the war if elected.

“I was a little puzzled by the frenzy that I set off by what I thought was a pretty innocuous statement,” he said. “I am absolutely committed to ending the war.”

On Thursday in North Dakota, Obama said that “I’ll … continue to refine my policy” on Iraq after an upcoming trip there. With a promise to end the war the central premise of his candidacy, the Obama campaign has struggled over the past two days to push back against Republicans and others who say his recent statement could be a softening or change in policy.

Obama has always said his promise to end the war would require consultations with military commanders and, possibly, flexibility.

“The tactics of how we ensure our troops are safe as we pull out, how we execute the withdrawal, those are things that are all based on facts and conditions,” he said. “I am not somebody — unlike George Bush — who is willing to ignore facts on the basis of my preconceived notions.”

s

CBS News:

Al Qaeda has successfully established a network for recruiting boys as young as 12 from across central Asia as it seeks new volunteers to enlarge its team of prospective suicide bombers and militants fighters, senior security officials from the Middle East have revealed to CBS News.

News of al Qaeda venturing into the former Soviet central Asian republics with a population that has a largely Muslim heritage marks a significant addition to reports earlier this year that the hardline group had recruited young boys in the Pak-Afghan border region.

Last May, a senior Pakistani security official showed a rare video clip to CBS News documenting a boy, barely 12 years old, using a machete to severe the head of a middle-aged man whom militants probably suspected as being a spy for the U.S.

John Donovan responds with a rant to liberal canards about the Iraqi Army.

Why haven’t we gotten a better Iraqi Army for all the money we’ve spent?”

Ummmmm — huh?

First, *we* didn’t get an Army — Iraq did. Sure, we foot the bill — just like we foot the bill for most of NATO during my growing-up years (pssst — Marshall Plan, remember?), and for a lot of our other allies during their growing or reconstruction spurts (*waving hi to all our buddies in South Korea and Japan*) — and Iraq is now an ally.

Second, everything else. Let’s take a look at the Army Iraq got.

Light infantry, with a decent mech capability and recent airmobile experience.

Operates jointly with allies as necessary or solo as required.

Battle-tested in urban warfare against urban guerrilla terrorists (hey, there’s a catchy term from the past – urban guerrilla. You know, what Weather Undergrounders like Bernardine Dohrn and Bill Ayers were calling themselves before they decided to stop planting IEDs *in US cities* and go work for the Lightwalker).

The New Army kicks butt, takes names and, when it runs out of paper, stops taking names — because it was recruited, trained and organized while its officers, NCOs, soldiers and recruits were being bombed, shot, rocketed, kidnapped and executed en masse by the same scuzzballs who demand that *we* roll over and die because our existence offends their tender Wahabi sensibilities.

The New Army has some tough people, in my book, and I’ve got a real small book. They appreciate the hell out of what we’ve done for them — remember all those articles in the MSM about the cash donation the Iraqi *Army* made to California Wildfire Relief? About passing the hat for us while they and their families were getting killed just because they wanted an Iraq with a future?

Huh? There *weren’t* any?

Why am I not surprised.

The New Yorker accompanies George Packer’s article predicting that, in the light of American success in pacifying Iraq subsequent to his attacks on Hillary from the left in the primaries, Obama will have to change his position on immediate withdrawal with the above cartoon.

The image is not the most accurate or clear, and George Packer’s article makes no reference to it, but (if I am identifying it correctly) the drawing seems to imply that Obama is in the uncomfortable position of Neville Chamberlain being obliged by untoward and unforeseen developments (i.e. US success) to accept humiliating compromise in an attempt to achieve an honorable peace.

The metaphor, therefore, treats the Bush Administration’s efforts in Iraq as equivalent to Hitler, failing to withdraw all US forces immediately as surrendering Czechoslovakia to Nazi Germany, and the moonbat hyper-pacifist left as equivalent to Western Democracy. Quite a metaphor!

The poisonous politics of Washington turned even more toxic yesterday, when William Delahunt, democrat congressman from Massachusetts’ 10th District (Martha’s Vinyard, Nantucket, Cape Cod, and the South Shore) expressed satisfaction that Congressional Hearings on treatment of illegal combatant detainees had made Vice Presidential Chief of Staff David Addington visible to al Qaeda.

Addington declined to discuss in open hearings conversations within the administration about interrogation techniques and associated legalities, alluding to other statements by himself and by the President expressing the inadvisability of public exposure of the secret deliberations of the US Government to the enemy in time of war. “Al Qaeda may watch C-Span,” Addington concluded.

To which Delahunt responded:

“I’m sure they [al Qaeda] are watching, and I’m glad they finally have a chance to see you, Mr. Addington, given your penchant for being unobtrusive.”

1:16 video

Mr. Delahunt’s disapproval of the Bush Administration’s treatment of illegal combatant prisoners, captured bearing arms against the United States or conspiring to attempt the mass murder of American civilians, is so great that he wishes for al Qaeda to avenge itself on an Administration official.

Democrats have a long record of criminalizing policy differences. The expression of an implicit invitation to foreign enemies in time of war to kill policy opponents represents a new level and a new kind of politics.

George Friedman, of the Stratfor subscription service, refects on the probable realities behind the headlines.

On June 20, The New York Times published a report saying that more than 100 Israeli aircrafts carried out an exercise in early June over the eastern Mediterranean Sea and Greece. The article pointed out that the distances covered were roughly the distances from Israel to Iranian nuclear sites and that the exercise was a trial run for a large-scale air strike against Iran. On June 21, the British newspaper The Times quoted Israeli military sources as saying that the exercise was a dress rehearsal for an attack on Iran. The Jerusalem Post, in covering these events, pointedly referred to an article it had published in May saying that Israeli intelligence had changed its forecast for Iran passing a nuclear threshold — whether this was simply the ability to cause an explosion under controlled conditions or the ability to produce an actual weapon was unclear — to 2008 rather than 2009.

The New York Times article, positioned on the front page, captured the attention of everyone from oil traders to Iran, which claimed that this was entirely psychological warfare on the part of the Israelis and that Israel could not carry out such an attack. It was not clear why the Iranians thought an attack was impossible, but they were surely right in saying that the exercise was psychological warfare. The Israelis did everything they could to publicize the exercise, and American officials, who obviously knew about the exercise but had not publicized it, backed them up.

Allahu Akhabar! Rusty Shackleford has an (inadvertently very funny) Islamist recruitment 0:36 video. They would never recruit Ace with this one.

Hat tip to Dr. Mercury.

When Bush Administration policy opponent Richard Armitage’s disclosure of Valerie Plame Wilson’s job in the course of gossiping with Robert Novak was apparently subsequently confirmed to Novak by administration officials interested in pointing out the partisan planning behind former Ambassador Wilson’s junket to Niger, the revealing of Mrs. Wilson’s CIA employment was treated by the left as major crime, despite the fact that Mrs. Wilson was not a covert agent in the terms defined by the Intelligence Identities Protection Act of 1982.

Valerie Plame Wilson was working in the Counterproliferation Division of the Agency, liaisoning with other American and international agencies and publicly chairing meetings discussing that international problem. No evidence has ever been brought forward to indicate that she was doing anything likely to provoke a special personal animosity directed at herself on the part of terrorist organizations.

But for a Sunday headline, the New York Times today gleefully revealed the name, career background, role as targeting officer and interrogator of major al Qaeda prisoners, and current employment of a former CIA officer who certainly could be a particular target for revenge on the basis of his service, rejecting pleas on behalf of Mr. Martinez’s personal safety from the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency himself.

Gen. Michael V. Hayden, director of the C.I.A., and a lawyer representing Mr. Martinez asked that he not be named in this article, saying that the former interrogator believed that the use of his name would invade his privacy and might jeopardize his safety. The New York Times, noting that Mr. Martinez had never worked undercover and that others involved in the campaign against Al Qaeda have been named in news articles and books, declined the request.

The irony is that the American left is perfectly capable of successfully indicting, prosecuting, and convicting political opponents on the basis of supposititious intelligence crimes, armed with control only of the media, while the Bush Administration is demonstrably unable to deter, prevent, or punish genuine intelligence leaks obviously rising to the level of violations of federal statutes, while theoretically in control of the entire Executive Branch, including the Intelligence agencies doing the leaking and the Department of Justice.

Hilzoy thinks she can, but her arguments amount only to extravagant assertions that everyone, everywhere, and at all times, in peace and in war, tra la! has the same judicial rights and the same access to US courts as a US civilian accused of a domestic crime in peacetime residing in the United States.

who has habeas rights? And where do they extend? The court’s answer to the first question (who?) is, basically: everyone has them. (Meaning: if you are detained by the US government, in circumstances in which habeas rights would normally obtain, your lack of citizenship is no obstacle.)

Shooting at US forces in Afghanistan or conspiring in Karachi to arrange attacks on the civilian populations of US cities are the kinds of circumstances in which people normally enjoy the protections of US citizenship and the protection of US courts? Apparently that’s what Hilzoy, a graduate of Princeton, thinks.

Hilzoy:

if we accept the government’s argument, we would concede that it can legally do what it has tried to do in fact: to create a legal black hole in which it can act outside the law and the Constitution. We cannot do that.

This is, to my mind, the most important holding in the opinion. It defends the separation of powers against an attempt by the Executive to free itself from the constraint of law. That is immensely important.

From Hilzoy’s perspective, there is no legal distinction whatsoever between the United States and foreign soil, no issues of distance, remoteness, or lack of US sovereignty matter. There is no difference between US citizens and aliens, and there is no difference between peace and war.

One expects Hilzoy (and perhaps Justice Kennedy, too) to leap in front of the muzzle of some frontline marine’s rifle, crying out: “Don’t you shoot that chap in the turban (the one firing the AK47)! He’s entitled to counsel, a fair trial, and a full course of appeals before he can be punished. Don’t you go violating his rights, you brute.

In JOHNSON v. EISENTRAGER, 339 U.S. 763 (1950), the Supreme Court ruled:

1. A nonresident enemy alien has no access to our courts in wartime.

2. nonresident enemy aliens, captured and imprisoned abroad, have no right to a writ of habeas corpus in a court of the United States.

3. The Constitution does not confer a right of personal security or an immunity from military trial and punishment upon an alien enemy engaged in the hostile service of a government at war with the United States.

observing:

We are here confronted with a decision whose basic premise is that these prisoners are entitled, as a constitutional right, to sue in some court of the United States for a writ of habeas corpus. To support that assumption we must hold that a prisoner of our military authorities is constitutionally entitled to the writ, even though he (a) is an enemy alien; (b) has never been or resided in the United States; (c) was captured outside of our territory and there held in military custody as a prisoner of war; (d) was tried and convicted by a Military Commission sitting outside the United States; (e) for offenses against laws of war committed outside the United States; (f) and is at all times imprisoned outside the United States.

We have pointed out that the privilege of litigation has been extended to aliens, whether friendly or enemy, only because permitting their presence in the country implied [339 U.S. 763, 778] protection. No such basis can be invoked here, for these prisoners at no relevant time were within any territory over which the United States is sovereign, and the scenes of their offense, their capture, their trial and their punishment were all beyond the territorial jurisdiction of any court of the United States. …

To grant the [339 U.S. 763, 779] writ to these prisoners might mean that our army must transport them across the seas for hearing. This would require allocation of shipping space, guarding personnel, billeting and rations. It might also require transportation for whatever witnesses the prisoners desired to call as well as transportation for those necessary to defend legality of the sentence. The writ, since it is held to be a matter of right, would be equally available to enemies during active hostilities as in the present twilight between war and peace. Such trials would hamper the war effort and bring aid and comfort to the enemy. They would diminish the prestige of our commanders, not only with enemies but with wavering neutrals. It would be difficult to devise more effective fettering of a field commander than to allow the very enemies he is ordered to reduce to submission to call him to account in his own civil courts and divert his efforts and attention from the military offensive abroad to the legal defensive at home. Nor is it unlikely that the result of such enemy litigiousness would be a conflict between judicial and military opinion highly comforting to enemies of the United States.

Moreover, we could expect no reciprocity for placing the litigation weapon in unrestrained enemy hands. The right of judicial refuge from military action, which it is proposed to bestow on the enemy, can purchase no equivalent for benefit of our citizen soldiers.

So how does Justice Kennedy arrive at a different conclusion?

at least three factors are relevant in determining the Suspension Clause’s reach: (1) the detainees’ citizenship and status and the adequacy of the process through which that status was determined; (2) the nature of the sites where apprehension and then detention took place; and (3) the practical obstacles inherent in resolving the prisoner’s entitlement to the writ. Application of this framework reveals, first, that petitioners’ status is in dispute: They are not American citizens, but deny they are enemy combatants; and although they have been afforded some process in CSRT proceedings, there has been no Eisentrager–style trial by military commission for violations of the laws of war. Second, while the sites of petitioners’ apprehension and detention weigh against finding they have Suspension Clause rights, there are critical differences between Eisentrager’s German prison, circa 1950, and the Guantanamo Naval Station in 2008, given the Government’s absolute and indefinite control over the naval station. Third, although the Court is sensitive to the financial and administrative costs of holding the Suspension Clause applicable in a case of military detention abroad, these factors are not dispositive because the Government
presents no credible arguments that the military mission at Guantanamo would be compromised if habeas courts had jurisdiction. The situation in Eisentrager was far different, given the historical context and nature of the military’s mission in post-War Germany.

The only readily comprehensible distinctions Justice Kennedy makes are Bush has shilly-shallied around too long. There should have been more timely military trials and the Guantanamo Naval Station is somehow more under “the absolute and definite control” of the US Government than a prison operated by the US Army in Germany in 1950 was, while WWII involved a different historical context and mission, i.e. was the “Good War.”

(1) perhaps has some merit. (2) simply amounts to a rationalization.

Justice Kennedy’s arguments are weak, and they are clearly self-interested. What this is really all about, as in Rasul, is plain Judicial Branch imperialism and overreaching, the refusal to accept limits to jurisdiction or the supremacy of the Executive in time of war.

Justice Kennedy has produced a very irresponsible opinion, which will surely result in the release of some dangerous and fanatical enemies of the United States, very probably leading to further loss of American lives. Members of today’s American intelligentsia, even those sitting on the Supreme Court, are commonly incapable of seeing what was obvious even to the Ancient Romans, who closed the Temple of Janus in time of war to symbolize the fact that inter arma enim silent leges.

Justice Anthony Kennedy opined, awarding Habeas corpus protection to illegal combatant non-citizens captured overseas bearing arms against the United States in violation of the laws and customs of war.

Justice Kennedy’s ruling will undoubtedly open a Pandora’s box of legal argument and judicial obfuscation which will effectively paralyze the Bush Administration’s hesitant and overly scrupulous efforts to bring mass murderers operating entirely outside the law to justice.

Five of eight members of the Supreme Court have demonstrated themselves to be self-important nincompoops determined to assert judiciary authority over the executive and to strike poses, while demonstrating a truly horrifying obliviousness to legal and historical precedent and common sense.

All this is, of course, the fault of the Bush Administration, which carelessly also overlooked all precedent, and then tried to invent new forms of military justice conformable to the whims, notions, and fantastical scruples invented by its opponents in the establishment media. President Bush and the rest of the civilian administration should simply have avoided injecting themselves into the matter, and thereby allowing entry to lawyers and courts, at all. The administration should have relinquished all authority connected with prisoners captured overseas to the military authorities.

Those military authorities should have authorized local commanders quickly and on the spot by drumhead courtmartial to establish the status of these kinds of prisoners as illegal combatants required to be condemned to death by military custom and law, and those local commanders should have been instructed upon such determination to hang them.