The Holder Justice Department has sent a report to some left friendly blogs which was supposed to put us Republicans in their place by proving that they have tried hundreds of “terrorists.” Check out the headlines from a few of those sites:
The Huffington Post:
KOS:
Almost every “fact” that is released by the left turns out to be lies. This one is no exception.
Andy McCarthy described how this number is reached two months ago. It’s reached by counting a multitude of periphery prosecutions. The report that started all this number fudging, In Pursuit of Justice, even admitted it:
In building our data set of terrorism cases, we have attempted to capture prosecutions that seek criminal sanctions for acts of terrorism, attempts or conspiracies to commit terrorism, or providing aid and support to those engaged in terrorism. We have also sought to identify and include prosecutions intended to disrupt and deter terrorism through other means, for example, through charges under “alternative” statutes such as false statements, financial fraud, and immigration fraud.
And Andy describes how these “alternative” prosecutions are nothing but smoke and mirrors:
This explanation makes clear that the cases HRF is talking about are, in the main, cases that no one disputes can be handled safely and efficiently by the civilian courts. For example, let’s say the FBI is investigating al-Qaeda and it interviews a person suspected of having relevant information. That person lies during the interview, so the prosecutors indict him for making false statements, and he pleads guilty. Under the HRF’s standards, that gets tallied as a conviction in a “terrorism case.” But it hardly means the defendant is an international terrorist, let alone a KSM.
The same holds true for crimes like financial fraud and material support. These often involve people in the U.S. who are not themselves terrorists. Instead, they either contribute money and other assets to the jihadist cause (e.g., by contributing money to “charities” that are actually fronts for al-Qaeda or Hamas), or else help terrorists surreptitiously move their funds from place to place.
To be sure, this is not always the case. As I recounted back in May, the Obama Justice Department gave a sweetheart deal to Ali Al-Marri. He was a hardcore terrorist, yet prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to a charge of material support to terrorism. As a result, he got an absurdly short sentence rather than the life-imprisonment term he’d have gotten if convicted on an actual terrorism charge. Al-Marri, however, is an unusual result. At least up until 2009, if a person could be proved to have committed terrorism crimes, he was almost always charged with terrorism crimes.
And now they have upped the number to over 400. Wanna guess how?
But the claim that there are 403 terrorists in custody is absurd. DOJ arrives at this figure by counting what it describes as two categories of case. The first involves real terrorism charges. Sounds fair enough, but what types of “terrorism charges” are they counting? Well they include, for example, convictions under statutes barring “Animal Enterprise Terrorism,” “Narco-terrorism,” “crimes against internationally protected persons” (which can be terrorism-related but are not necessarily), hostage-taking (ditto), and offenses like harboring terrorists and material support to terrorism (which are surely terrorism-related, and involve assistance provided to terrorists, but are charges generally brought against facilitators, not actual terrorists).
Not exactly KSM. But these Category I cases, though they blatantly goose up DOJ’s numbers, don’t account for most of DOJ’s claimed 403 terrorists. Over sixty percent belong to “Category II,” which Justice, without a hint of apology, describes as follows:
Category II cases include defendants charged with violating a variety of other statutes where the investigation involved an identified link to international terrorism. These Category II cases include offenses such as those involving fraud, immigration, firearms, drugs, false statements, perjury, and obstruction of justice, as well as general conspiracy charges [i.e., cases that charge other kinds of conspiracies, not terrorism conspiracies].
This is rich. As I pointed out when DOJ first rolled out this bunk,
When the Bush administration used the immigration laws to boot terror suspects out of the country, the Left and its fellow travelers like CAIR claimed this was racial profiling masquerading as counterterrorism. Now, in the age of Obama, we learn … that “immigration fraud” counts as a “terrorism case” — so the group can boost the numbers and claim that the same Justice Department (under the Bush administration for most of the period covered in the report) has done a great job of combating terrorism in civilian court.
The problem is not simply that Justice’s numbers are bogus, just like Dana Perino, Bill Burck, I, and others said they were. It is that Justice’s purpose is fraudulent. It was the Left, throughout the Bush years, that pooh-poohed these prosecutions as overblown — an exaggeration of the terrorist threat as part of the “politics of fear.”
We all know what the left, including the MSM, would have said if Bush had tried this baloney. They would have shrilly cried that we are all fear mongering. Terrorism isn’t that big of a deal. We need to get them to love us instead of prosecuting them. Blah blah blah.
But now nothing is overblown. Nothing is exaggerated. All because the Democrats got into power.
See author page
When the United States Attorney General is a bold face liar the country is in trouble. That’s what we get when O’Dumbo hires nothing but known criminals.
Most people see it for what it is, Obozo lies, about near everything. Obozo will never be associated with the word character, he has none … Just a shuck and jive man like the one on the street corner selling coke to the kids.
Except this one legally forces you to buy and use his product.
I have no idea what the purpose of this posting is. These numbers are only “phony” if the Bushie numbers of 300 odd terrorism convictions did not include, for example, people who sell stolen cigarettes to support Hamas. Unless and until you do the same analysis of those numbers, your criticism here is baseless and nonsensical.
But the bigger picture here? Obama can do no good in con eyes. Cons complain when Obama tries terrorism suspects and they complain when he kills them using the Predator. You complain when he includes people who sell stolen cigarettes to support Hamas as “terrorism” convictions and you would probably claim he is “deliberately minimizing the threat of terrorist financing” if he did not include them. So, in short, there is no reason, really, to consider your criticisms seriously.
You should have that on every post you make and then say nothing else.
Let me use small words for you “supposed” paralegal, obama doesn’t take the war on terror seriously and neither does his administration.
BRob, I’m not kidding when I say you are a tremendous asset to the Conservative cause.
Oh, I do support his increased drone attacks on terrorists.
An administration that was confident in it’s anti-terrorism actions, wouldn’t feel the need to advertise it in the HuffPo.
-There has NEVER been an objection to Obama’s use of drones by any “cons”. I’m just glad that after Bush dramatically upped the amount of available craft, that Obama didn’t deviate from Bush’s’ plan to use them extensively.
It is the one thing I appreciate him for.
Patvann
I don’t appreciate Obama for anything. What little that has gone right in his presidency is mostly due to hands off of previous policies and the reason he hasn’t gotten his dirty red mitts on it so far has much to do with his concentrating on his domestic agenda. When he has placed himself in the middle of issues and policies outside of the US, it has been one major disaster after another, with the most recent being the outrageous treatment of one of our longtime allies in the middle east. I fear that if he really started thinking about Iraq and Afghanistan and our involvement there that the wheels would come off the train of successful actions by our military. No, he doesn’t deserve any praise, or even a pass in my book.
@johngalt.
I was trying to be gracious. After all, his actions with the drones seem so bipartisan to me.
Bush planned it, Bush set up the increase in production, Bush started training the drone-pilots, Bush worked out the “plausable deniability-angle” for the Pak’s to use, and Obama hasn’t paid attention to it enough to f**k it up yet.
😉
It isn’t so much the killing of terrorists that we object to, BRob, as it is the apparent decision to favor kill over capture. In the absence of the CIA interrogation program that achieved valuable intell that lead to the disruption, capture, and greater killing of terrorists, we are making ourselves blind to future terror plots.
@Patvann
No disrespect to you was intended. I just believe that he hasn’t had an opportunity to screw things up yet by getting involved, but once he does, we will see once again how inept he is as a leader.
If he even is trying to lead, and not trying to screw us all. I’m not so sure anymore when it comes to him.
No worries, John.
I will never be confused as to where you and I stand. Close-shoulders comes first to mind.
I am VERY sure that if someone (anyone) whines about it (the drones), he’ll tell the Pentagon to back off. He’s pussy that way.
I also want to make clear (because I wasn’t) that my comment is 90% farcical. I don’t trust this POS half as far as I could throw him. After all, it took him 6 months to put the Bush/Pentagon/ Karsai plan into play. (Minus 10,000 requested warriors.)
I simply (and basally) enjoy pointing out that Obama’s only “good” thing was actually Bush’s. 😉
Right on Patvann. 😉
I think BRob’s point is hard to dismiss. Obama’s prosecution of the war on terror receives little to no credit from conservatives. It’s easy to find reasons not to agree with something if you’re already sold on a forgone conclusion (i.e. “Obama is soft on terror”), but do the facts really support that view?
I dispute the notion that because Bush set up a program, credit (or blame) for continuing it cannot fall to his successor. Presidents don’t start with a blank slate and it’s fully within his power to change direction if he so decides. Since he’s not only kept the drone program, but increased the strikes, the lack of a grudging acknowledgement seems petty and misleading.
If someone just came out of a coma after a year and was told the following about US foreign policy over the last 12 months:
1 The President announced a surge of 30,000 new troops in Afghanistan.
2 The President has increased drone attacks in Pakistan
3 The President has kept open Guantanamo.
but also,
4 The President has set a date as a goal for withdrawal from Afghanistan
5 The President has banned water-boarding and other extreme forms of interrogation
6 The President has shows support for trying terror suspects in US civil courts
I don’t think anyone could, with absolute certainly, tell you whether McCain or Obama was the President. Certainly anyone who bought the McCain/Palin campaign rhetoric of Obama being soft on terror would likely assume it was McCain.
@Tom:
Actually, conservatives have given Obama credit on areas where he’s perpetuated Bush-era policies; you see it mostly amongst mainstream conservatives (some of them are ones derided by conservatives as RINO for their civility and being too moderate). Even at FA, we did posts early on, pointing out where Obama was being “Bush-lite” and making fun of his supporters who began scratching their heads why their guy of “hope and change” was “giving more of the same”. But it was also interesting to note where even Code Pink and others were giving Obama a pass for things they criticized Bush over.
I think our criticism of Holder and the desire of him and Obama to return us to a law enforcement approach as a model in dealing with terrorism is valid.
And the CIA program SAVED LIVES!
But you’re right that some of our criticism of Obama crosses the line into partisan derangement, where he’s damned if he does, damned by us if he doesn’t. His visit to Afghanistan this morning is one that comes to mind. I think we come across looking foolish if we criticize him over basically doing what a commander-in-chief should be doing.
It’s ironic how Obama straying from the script can have a unifying effect on the far left and right in their shared uncertainly how to process it. I’m certain many liberals aren’t too happy about some of his decisions vis a vis Afghanistan. They were hearing the “end the war in Iraq” part of his pitch louder than his comments regarding Afghanistan. I don’t think he ever intended for a dramatic departure from what the US was already doing. If so, I don’t think he would have kept Gates around. Certainly Gates isn’t just Republican window dressing, because Obama keeps siding with him on many of the internal policy debates, such as the need for and size of the surge.
I would be curious to read more about the CIA program that you mentioned.
Tom,
I think his eyes were opened when he and McCain began receiving intell briefs, just prior to the election. I believe Scott did a post linking to one of Obama’s aides after the election saying “Holy s**t!” regarding intell briefing on Pakistan. I suspect that no matter which side of the political spectrum you are on, to some degree, there will be some level of consistency in how presidents recognize that America has enemies who mean to harm us. That our military will maintain some level of continuity and consistently advise presidents, apolitically on their best assessments.
Obama’s kept the rendition program begun under Clinton; wiretaps continue; he’s reconsidered military tribunals; upped Predator drone attacks; surged in Afghanistan (albeit not as quickly as partisan pundits demanded, fairly or unfairly in their arm-chair criticism); and is riding on the success of the surge (which he opposed) and the SoFA signed by Bush (which he asked to be delayed). He’s encountering the same difficulties that Bush had in trying to close Gitmo; and is too stubborn to just admit he was wrong on the campaign promise to close it down. He’s coming full circle back to where Bush left off.
Tom,
I’ve been posting a lot lately from Marc Thiessen. If you truly are interested, start here. Yes, he’s partisanly in the Bush camp. But I give guys like David Corn the time of day and am willing to check out what they have to say and not dismiss them outright due to partisan prejudice. Hope you will do the same. Sometimes it is the partisan criticism that best hones the arguments and counterarguments.
Theissen’s book is really informative, imo. It answers quite a bit of the criticism and talking points we’ve heard in the last few yrs regarding waterboarding and whether or not enhanced interrogations provided any intell that saved lives (he takes on Ali Soufan’s narrative). For quite some time, the CIA could not respond to the criticism to correct the misinformation and non-informed claims, because their program was secret. So the narrative has primarily been shaped by the critics. And so the CIA, Cheney, and Bush are regarded as men who endorsed “torture”.
Jane Mayer came out with a book review, btw, criticizing Thiessen’s information (Thiessen is also critical of Mayer’s previous work, in his book). So this “tit for tat” will be interesting to see where it will lead us in terms of arriving at more accurate information.
The CIA program where we actually let them interrogate the unlawful combatant’s. (As defined by the Geneva Convention.) Sometimes that entailed doing to them what we have some of our our troops go through several thousand times a year. But because we did “that” to 3 self-confessed terrorist’s 6 years ago, it’s now a no no. EVEN THOUGH THAT PRACTICE (to 3 out of around 2000) SAVED THOUSANDS OF LIVES.
-Other people called that “torture”, so the FBI now does all the “questioning”…But only if they happen to survive or avoid a Hellfire from above. We also now confer upon them full American Constitution protections, even though they are not Americans, they were not caught here, nor are the held here.
They now have more Constitutional rights than our soldiers do, and anyone from England, (if they commit a crime on our soil) does….More pro-bono lawyers, too.
It’s a funny way to fight a war.