Terrorism

It seems that the attack on a military recruiting station in Arkansas was in fact terrorism (motivated by political/religious reasons).  This doesn't surprise me a bit.  Those eager to condemn Obama for permitting the first terrorist attack on US soil should take note that this is hardly the first such attack.

Ride Fast and Cryptic Subterranean have been having a bit of discussion about torture, and Ride Fast seems to me to be missing an important point.  He's arguing that a captured terrorist should be treated like either a criminal (given the full protections of our criminal law) or an enemy soldier (and given the full protections of the Geneva conventions).  I think one distinction is obvious; if you're talking about a US citizen or other legal resident in US territory, you need to treat them according to criminal law.  We may be at war, but we are not under martial law.

However, the discussion seems to be missing one major point on terrorists captured outside of US territory.  The Geneva Convention protects uniformed enemy soldiers.  Soldiers who are not in uniform have no protections under those rules and can be summarily executed.  That we are not doing that says quite a bit for our restraint.

By definition, terrorists act outside the rules of war.  They wear no uniforms, hide within civilian populations, and strike at civilian targets.  They act without the approval or acknolwedgement of any government.  They receive no protections from the laws of war which they have chosen to ignore. 

That doesn't mean I think they necessarily should be shot out of hand, nor that our government can act entirely without a conscience.  I believe the 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment, including torture, but not all "harsh interrogation techniques" are torture. 

I do think it's a mistake to invoke the Geneva Conventions designed to protect uniformed enemy soldiers in defense of terrorists.  The protections granted to prisoners of war are granted in return for honorable behavior by those soldiers in the conduct of their war.  Terrorists have chosen to take a tactical advantage by disregarding those rules, and as such, do not deserve their protection.

It's also a mistake to call the patriots who founded our own nation "terrorists".  Although there were undoubtedly cases where the rules of war (not the Geneva Conventions specifically, as those are a 20th-century idea) were broken, for the most part our Revolution was fought by a uniformed army (supplemented by militia forces), against uniformed soldiers, under the auspices of a revolutionary government. 

That said... do carry on.

... and no, I don't mean our foreign policy.  This is happening right at home:

"The hope is that they will nab an actual terrorist or prevent a putative jihadi from becoming one," says David Cole, a law professor at Georgetown University and co-author of Less Safe, Less Free, a new book detailing the ways 9/11 has transformed domestic law enforcement. "It makes sense in general ?but when you're pressing people to undertake conduct they would have never undertaken without an informant pushing them along, there is a real question if you're creating crime, not preventing crime."

Where's the line?  How can we tell the difference between a terrorist plot stopped in the nick of time, and a terrorist plot that was created by the law enforcement organizations involved?   When you get down to it, someone who is willing to look into a video camera and declare jihad on America probably deserves a bit of law enforcement scrutiny.  But does it really make sense to devote extensive law enforcement resources to encouraging them?

The next Wednesday, the two men met with Cap in a parking lot under the gaze of agents from the JTTF. As Shareef swapped the used speakers for four nonfunctioning grenades and a 9mm handgun with neutered ammunition, he was swarmed by law enforcement. News of the bust traveled the world over. "It had all the makings of a holiday bloodbath," Fox News breathlessly reported. Shareef was charged with the ultimate crime in the so-called War on Terror: attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.

Here we have those four terrifying words: Weapon of Mass Destruction.  Granted, we're dealing with something a little more dangerous than a simple handgun.  On the other hand, shouldn't a weapon of mass destruction involve... well... mass destruction?  Four grenades just don't qualify. 

There are some successes:

In Buffalo, the FBI spent eighteen months tracking the "Lackawanna Six" ?a half-dozen men from the city's large Muslim population who had been recruited by an Al Qaeda operative in early 2001 to undergo training in Afghanistan. Only two lasted the six-week course; the rest pretended to be hurt or left early. Despite extensive surveillance, the FBI found no evidence that the men ever discussed, let alone planned, an attack ?but that didn't stop federal agents from arresting the suspects with great fanfare and accusing them of operating an "Al Qaeda-trained terrorist cell on American soil." Fearing they would be designated as "enemy combatants" and disappeared into the legal void created by the Patriot Act, all six pleaded guilty to aiding Al Qaeda and were sentenced to at least seven years in prison.

They went to Afghanistan, were trained by Al Qaeda, and returned.  At that point the only logical thing to do is assume they have become agents of the enemy, which means you invoke counterintelligence doctrine -- surveillance, to identify their other contacts, and eventually rounding up the ring.  That the people in question were too pathetic to finish the training courses they signed up for and did not appear to be subsequently planning and attack is almost irrelevant. 

But there are also failures:

In Brooklyn, a Guyanese immigrant and former cargo handler named Russell Defreitas was arrested last spring for plotting to blow up fuel tanks at JFK International Airport. In fact, before he encountered the might of the JTTF, Defreitas was a vagrant who sold incense on the streets of Queens and spent his spare time checking pay phones for quarters. He had no hope of instigating a terrorist plot of the magnitude of the alleged attack on JFK ?until he received the help of a federal informant known only as "Source," a convicted drug dealer who was cooperating with federal agents to get his sentence reduced. Backed by the JTTF, Defreitas suddenly obtained the means to travel to the Caribbean, conduct Google Earth searches of JFK's grounds and build a complex, multifaceted, international terror conspiracy ?albeit one that was impossible to actually pull off. After Defreitas was arrested, U.S. Attorney Roslynn Mauskopf called it "one of the most chilling plots imaginable."

Perhaps the plot was so "chilling" because it had been created by the finest minds of the FBI.  Here's another chilling plot:

The next morning, I meet with three members of the Field Intelligence Group. The FIGs are designed to create a centralized approach to intelligence, both domestic and foreign. In northern Illinois, the group analyzes information from around the world, as well as that supplied courtesy of Operation Virtual Shield, the surveillance initiative designed to make Chicago one of the most-watched cities in the world. Thousands of cameras deployed on street corners, train platforms and buses now provide a nearly comprehensive visual record of all public movement in Chicago.

"A nearly comprehensive visual record of all public movement in Chicago."  An agency that combines information from foreign intelligence and domestic surveillance.  And for what?  In return for constant surveillance of ordinary citizens and how many millions of taxpayer dollars, how many terrorists have been captured?

And it gets worse.

Many of the callers who contact the JTTF are intentionally misleading, hoping to take revenge against a boyfriend, neighbor or co-worker. Such hoaxes are so routine, in fact, that the JTTF's public-relations officer keeps a separate file stuffed with press reports of invented pipe bombs and unattended suitcases and lunch trucks packed with explosives.

Turn in your friends and neighbors for fun and profit?

If this was a serious operation you'd think that some of these would be prosecuted as deliberate hoaxes.

"Have you ever found a terrorist cell?" I ask.

"That's kind of a vague question," Gutierrez says. "There are certain things we can't talk about, because it leads to more."

Yeah.  More questions.

I firmly believe that there are people who hate the United States and mean us harm.  Some of them even live here.  Most of them don't. 

The idea of terrorists, of whatever stripe, in possession of a nuclear weapon scares me.  But nuclear weapons require the resources of a nation-state to develop or acquire.  But you know what doesn't scare me?

The two officers tell me about a close call at the Taste of Chicago food festival last year. Millions attend the annual street feast, with Chicago-style sausage and pizza and tamales on sale in booths along the lakefront.  There was a radiological hit on one of the sniffers... For an hour, the JHAT frantically tried to determine if Chicago had been struck by a "dirty bomb"... Finally, after an anxious hour... the cause of the positive alert was determined.  "Someone who had chemotherapy had just done a poop," DeRosa says.

THAT doesn't scare me.

We have entered the realm of Orwell's perpetual war.  Pray we can find our way out.

Neither of these is the real story of this case. Rather, the story is the definitive proof Moussaoui's case provides that the U.S. government?pre-PATRIOT Act, pre-NSA wiretaps and all?had and missed clear opportunities to stop 9/11. The FBI uniquely and repeatedly punted carefully gathered evidence of an attack in favor of adherence to bureaucratic hierarchies and power trips.

The testimony of FBI agent Harry Samit forever buries the quaint notion that 9/11 was unforeseen and unpreventable. Beginning with Moussaoui's August 16, 2001 arrest Samit mounted a global and indefatigable investigation of the man and concluded that an attack involving hijacked airplanes was imminent.

I do not find this at all surprising.  It is easy for me to believe in government incompetence.  It is difficult for me to believe in government conspiracies (at least of the magnitude that 9-11 would have to be). 

According to the Privacy Digest, the National Counterterrorism Center (which maintains the terrorist watch list) has about 325,000 names on the list.  That's a lot of terrorists.  How many of them are really Ted Kennedy?

UPDATE: The Privacy Digest is so private that their permalinks don't work.  Nothing I can do to fix them.  I've fixed the link above to go to their main page, but eventually the entry I'm referring to will scroll off.  Oh well.

There is a consistent assertion seen in the media that the United States has not been the victim of terrorism at home since the 9-11 attacks (including the anthrax incidents at about the same time), although there have been thwarted attempts.  While I don't dispute that there have not been any additional attacks on the scale of 9-11, that doesn't mean that there is no terrorism.  It may simply mean that we aren't recognizing it as terrorism.  The sniper attacks in and around Washington, DC are a good example.  The media treated that as a criminal act rather than a terrorist attack.  Alphecca has more evidence that Al Qaeda's operational capability in America has been sufficiently degraded that their operatives are lost in the noise of common street crime.

Walking through New York's Penn Station the other day, I looked at the young men in military fatigues wielding machine guns and was struck by the thought that this was something I never thought I'd see in America. In Russia, where I lived until the age of 16, military men in city streets were a common sight. Later on, as an American vacationing in Europe several times in the 1980s and 1990s, I noticed the everyday precautions against terrorism -- the military patrols, the warnings that any package or bag left unattended in a public place would be destroyed, the metal lids screwed on trash cans -- and reflected on how different life was in the United States. That's one reflection we no longer have the luxury to make. Have we changed so much that we have lost ourselves?

F.B.I. agents fanned out in cities across the country, seeking to interview thousands of Iraqi immigrants, particularly those with military or technical backgrounds.

An Australian journalist was killed and two Western journalists were injured this afternoon when a sedan exploded at a Kurdish military checkpoint here.

FOX is reporting that terrorists have attacked a US base in Kuwait with grenades and small arms fire.

As the U.S. goes to war against Iraq, authorities agree the terror threat to America is at an all-time high. As Vice President Dick Cheney warns, ıItıs not a question of IF terrorists will strike America again but WHEN.ı Recently Ambassador Cofer Black ı the State Departmentıs top anti-terrorist official - was even more blunt. He declared we now face the ıcertainty of multiple terrorist attacks in the U.S.ı On March 18th, 2003, the FBI also confirmed that there were Iraqi agents now in the U.S. prepared to strike.

Got a car? Sell it. Trade it in. Buy a boat. Buy a plane. Buy a hot air balloon. Train to become a long-distance swimmer. Make friends with someone who has a bomb shelter. Move to the backwoods of Arkansas. Or the bayous of Louisiana. Because with the national terror alert system level now at "burnt orange? -- somewhere between red, the highest level of threat, and orange, the second-highest -- it might interest you to know that in the event of an attack on the metro area, the contingency plan, in most scenarios, is to ban all of us from the major roads and highways on Long Island.

Family members of a suspected operative of Al Qaeda insisted that the federal authorities were looking for the wrong person.

Fox News is reporting on a search for 6 Iraqi individuals in Mexico, with "toxic materials requiring temperature control." They were trying to cross the border into the US illegally with the help of "coyotes" who normally assist Mexican illegals to cross the border into the US.

You would think that in a war on terrorism, as America moved to invade Iraq, and as the nation shifted in and out of Code Orange terror alerts, the federal government would make certain to secure our aircraft carriers, the place where we launch our space shuttles, and our largest nuclear missile base. You would be wrong.

Without much help from the federal government, local officials say they will be left with no choice but to drain city budgets as they prepare for the threat of terrorist attacks. "The big frustration is that we're fighting a war in the Middle East and a war in our cities, trying to defend ourselves against terrorism, and the cities are not getting financial support to do their share of it," Fort Worth Mayor Kenneth Barr said. Barr's comments came as the White House announced Wednesday that it would ask Congress for an emergency spending package for domestic counterterrorism programs.

Sophisticated, expensive electronic devices are being used to prevent terrorists from bringing weapons through American ports and borders.

A senior leader of Al Qaeda captured early this month in Pakistan has told interrogators that Osama bin Laden personally selected the targets for the Sept. 11 attacks.

The White House has said that it plans to ask Congress for an emergency spending package for domestic counterterrorism programs. When will we get an accounting of where the first multibillion allocation went?

Much has been said in recent months regarding Homeland Security. We now have an official Department of Homeland Security as a part of the United States government. There is nothing wrong with this, and it is probably years overdue. Besides the task of guarding our borders and coordinating the various law enforcement branches of the government, the Department of Homeland Security advises the citizenry to basically be careful. As far as guarding our borders, they don?t. People cross our borders illegally, everyday, by the hundreds. As far as coordinating our law enforcement agencies; I don?t know, but it doesn?t look like it is happening yet.

They are saying a Turkish airplane (Istanbul to Ankara) has been hijacked. That's terrorist gratitude for you -- obstruct the US and get hijacked. Supposedly 200 people are on board. Update: Followup reports indicate that this wasn't necessary related to Iraq.

Six Iraqis in two foreign countries have been arrested in the midst of planning terrorist attacks on U.S. interests, Fox News learned Friday. The plots have been foiled and the terrorist material, i.e. explosives, were confiscated, State Department Spokesman Richard Boucher said. "The planned attacks were not successful," Boucher said, adding that many Iraqi intelligence service members abroad continue to be a threat.

A group of al Qaeda terrorists is attempting to infiltrate the United States from Mexico to conduct attacks in the country, The Washington Times has learned. At least 14 al Qaeda members are said to be in Mexico, said officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The al Qaeda members are working with Mexican organized crime groups, such as drug-trafficking organizations, in an attempt to enter the United States covertly, the officials said.

Can we close the borders now, please?

Working with the Bush administration, Congressional Republicans are maneuvering to make permanent the sweeping antiterrorism powers granted to federal law enforcement agents after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, officials said today.

The move is likely to touch off strong objections from many Democrats and even some Republicans in Congress who believe that the Patriot Act, as the legislation that grew out of the attacks is known, has already given the government too much power to spy on Americans.

After Bush administration officials and many American lawmakers predicted that terrorist attacks were nearly inevitable because of the war in Iraq, there has been little evidence that Al Qaeda or other networks are preparing to strike against the United States, senior government officials say.