Strange not that actual diplomacy worked, but that it was tried at all!
US senators to ice new sanctions if Iran ends enrichment (via AFP)
US senators have vowed to stay the implementation of new Iran sanctions if Tehran takes verifiable steps such as immediately halting uranium enrichment, ahead of a new round of talks on its suspect nuclear program. In a letter sent to President Barack…
Last Friday lawyers for Ali Al-Timimi, a Virginia man serving a life sentence for supporting jihad against the U.S., pushed to obtain more information from the federal government on evidence pertaining to the cleric Anwar Al-Awlaki’s recruitment as a U.S. government informant a decade ago.
According to Al-Tamimi’s defense lawyer Jonathan Turley, recently-released FBI files suggest that Al-Awlaki may have been acting as an “asset” for some government agency. In response to Turley’s request for this crucial evidence government prosecutors insisted that they had no obligation to provide the detail of its dealings with Al-Awlaki: “Mr. Turley has no right to know [whether the government] had an asset into Awlaki at that time. Mr. Turley has no right to know if Mr. Awlaki was an asset at that time!”
Leonie Brinkema, the presiding U.S. District Court Judge on the case, has not been inclined to grant motions filed by Muslim scholar Ali Al-Timimi seeking more details on the government’s relationship with Al-Awlaki. Further, last Friday Brinkema suggested that part of the answer to these concerns is so highly classified that she is the only person at the court who is allowed to see it, and that even a number of other personnel with “Top Secret” clearance were not allowed to see the documents pertaining to these concerns.
Four American citizens were killed in drone strikes. In other news:
Several hours ago, Barack Obama nominated David Barron, author of the notorious OLC memos authorizing the assassination of an American citizen with the kind of “due process” the Executive Branch gives, by itself, in secret, to serve on the First Circuit.
Yet even while Obama moved to make Barron a lifetime appointed judge, the FOIA suits to liberate the troubling opinion Barron authored continues at a snail’s pace. CIA filed an intransigent opinion back in August in the more general suit (that would, however, probably return Barron’s opinions). In a response a few weeks ago, the ACLU suggested that such frivolous claims could only serve to forestall the time when it will have to release the assassination-related documents.
http://youtu.be/b0ieHxvUX34
Maybe this will get some traction:
Sen. Patrick Leahy, the powerful chairman of the chamber’s Judiciary Committee, on Tuesday strongly endorsed a series of sweeping restrictions on U.S. surveillance programs — from ending the bulk collection of Americans’ phone call logs to creating new oversight mechanisms to keep the National Security Agency in check.
In a speech at Georgetown University Law Center, the Vermont Democrat said the government “has not made its case” that the ability to collect Americans’ phone records en masse under the PATRIOT Act is “an effective counterterrorism tool, especially in light of the intrusion on Americans’ privacy rights.”
As the senator criticized the program, authorized under Section 215, he also pledged to explore “possible structural changes” to the secret court that reviews government surveillance requests. And Leahy said he planned to work with his Republican colleagues in the House to rein in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which governs the NSA’s ability to tap Internet communications as it scours for foreign terror suspects.
Leahy’s speech Tuesday marks his committee’s return to the thorny, complex surveillance debate, sparked by contractor Edward Snowden. Even as Snowden’s leaks continued to make headlines, lawmakers disengaged as they turned their attention to Syria and the debt ceiling.
In an exclusive interview with Oprah at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, the normally confident Bush dropped his Texas-sized swagger and expressed contrition for not recognizing the threat sooner.
“To be honest with you Oprah, Bin Laden wasn’t really on my radar,” he explained. “I was so focused on Saddam Hussein that I couldn’t see anything else. My CIA guys would come in and say ‘Bin Laden’s prepping an attack,’ ‘Bin Laden’s prepping an attack,’ and I was pretty much like ‘Whatever. What do you got on Saddam?’
“There was a general lack of awareness. I’m pretty sure Condi Rice didn’t even known who Bin Laden was. I had heard of him, but he sounded like more of a two-bit criminal to me so I didn’t take him seriously. And that malunderestimation (sic) really cost us as a nation….
The most visible critique has been that of Bush himself for continuing to read the children’s book “My Pet Goat” to an elementary school classroom for seven minutes after an adviser told him “the nation is under attack.” But perhaps more significant were the multiple unheeded warnings from the intelligence community that Bin Laden was determined to strike inside the United States.
Before Sept. 11 the White House had held only two meetings on the issue of terrorism, yet managed to find time for six meetings with Enron executives. Upon taking office in January 2001, the Bush Administration threatened to veto higher funding for counter-terrorism efforts, and cancelleda top secret program tracking Al-Qaeda operatives within the United States…
“You know Oprah, I’m a changed person,” he replied. “I’ve rededicated myself to my faith. I’ve become a vegan, and I’m going to therapy, which has really been helping. I’ve learned how to accept my failures and limitations. I wasn’t the best president, but that’s OK. I’m just working on trying to be a great husband and a good father. If I can do that I’ll be at peace with myself.”
Bush served as U.S. president from 2001 to 2009. He previously served as governor of Texas and co-founded an oil company that went bankrupt with one of Osama Bin Laden’s older brother.
This “experts” who want to egg us on to war.
O’Bagy, you may recall, wrote an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal recently, IDed as simply an expert with the “non-partisan” Institute for the Study of War. Her piece was allegedly based on up-close research, contending that the rebels in Syria were far more touchy-feely and moderate than their reputation as largely jihadists who like to meet atrocity with atrocity. In his first push for war, Secretary of State John Kerry cited her piece, then so did Senator John McCain and numerous other hawks.
Suddenly a media star, O’Bagy appeared on TV shows, referred to as “Dr. O’Bagy.” Few pointed out that the Institute was a typical hawkish neocon outfit that would be fully expected to produce pieces such as the one O’Bagy penned.
Then it all fell apart.
First, it turned out that part of her work had been paid for by groups supporting the Syrian rebels.
Then the depth of her experience in Syria and general expertise were called into question by journalists who had spent a great deal of time in the region. Reuters produced a piecechallenging her views on the “moderate” rebels.
Yesterday, the Institute fired the “Dr.” for lying about having a PhD.
The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process “minimization”, but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum, which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
On Obama’s speech:
Every time we celebrate a president who does things from The Gut, we get in some terrible trouble. The last guy celebrated how close to The Gut he actually operated, and we all know where that ended up…
…Barack Obama is not a man of The Gut, and it is driving official Washington crazy. This is a good thing, because resisting The Gut is what the Constitution is all about, especially in its war powers, which this president is conspicuously contemplative about exercising, at least in every context except launching drones.
It is a comforting — and comfortable — fiction to believe that the president’s decision to throw at least part of the decision to make war in Syria into the lap of the Congress is also a deft political move that will, in effect, exploit the “gap” between the hawkish wing of the Republican party and the isolationist wing thereof. I happen to believe that much of the congressional resistance to what the president wants will come because this particular president wants it. I also happen to believe that if the vote goes sour for him in the House, and the president lets the missiles fly anyway, you will see many motions for his impeachment set aloft simultaneously. I don’t know what it will take to get the country’s punditocracy to realize the simple truth that even crazoid vandals believe what they say, and will do what they say they will do…Hence, when the president announced that he was bringing Congress in on the decision to make war in Syria, a very loud howl arose from the Gut crowd that obeying even that most minimal of constitutional niceties — and I say “niceties” because the Constitution requires that the power to make war in all cases resides in the Congress — weakened not only his office, but also the country itself, as though the United States had lost some kind of military advantage because its president is less free to act than Bashar al-Assad…
…This is of a piece with his entire presidency, another example of his stubborn — and endlessly futile — belief that there is an opposition with whom he can bargain in anything resembling good faith. It just so happens that, in this instance, seeking congressional approval also conforms more closely to the Constitution than would his simply launching Tomahawks into Syria on his own. The capital responded in many cases as though the president had abdicated his fundamental responsibilities rather than fulfilled them, which he did, at least in part, and in a perfect demonstration of his conception of the office. The Gut is left behind in the green room, shouting its impotence at John McCain. Meanwhile, policy, or something like it, gets made.
The address this evening will be most interesting, indeed.
So even if Syria gives up their chemical weapons, we have to bomb them anyway because Iran!
WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States needs to strike Syria in part to send a message to its ally Iran over its nuclear program, President Barack Obama’s national security adviser said Monday.
Susan Rice, joining a major public effort by Obama to persuade a skeptical Congress, said the United States was morally bound to respond to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons.
Rice said that US action on Syria was also critical for the broader influence of the United States, which has joined Israel and European nations in warning Iran against developing nuclear weapons.
“We will not allow Iran to acquire a nuclear weapon,” Rice said at the New America Foundation, a think tank.
