Bush Administration's First Memo on al-Qaeda Declassified

Bush Administration's First Memo on al-Qaeda Declassified: "In a series of recent public statements, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has again denied that the Clinton administration presented the incoming administration of President George W. Bush with a 'comprehensive strategy' against al-Qaeda. Rice's denials were prompted by a September 22 Fox News interview with Bill Clinton in which the former president asserted that he had 'left a comprehensive anti-terror strategy' with the incoming Bush administration in January 2001. In a September 25 interview, Rice told the New York Post, 'We were not left a comprehensive strategy to fight al-Qaida,' adding that, 'Nobody organized this country or the international community to fight the terrorist threat that was upon us until 9/11.'

The crux of the issue is a January 25, 2001, memo on al-Qaeda from counterterrorism coordinator Richard Clarke to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, the first terrorism strategy paper of the Bush administration. The document was central to the debate over pre-9/11 Bush administration policy on terrorism and figured prominently in the 9/11 hearings held in 2004. A declassified copy of the Clarke memo was first posted on the Web by the National Security Archive in February 2005.

Clarke's memo, described below, 'urgently' requested a high-level National Security Council review on al-Qaeda and included two attachments: a declassified December 2000 'Strategy for Eliminating the Threat from the Jihadist Networks of al-Qida: Status and Prospects' and the September 1998 'Pol-Mil Plan for al-Qida,' the so-called Delenda Plan, which remains classified."

(Via The National Security Archives.)

It's the War Crimes, stupid

It's the War Crimes, stupid: "Because reporting "wasn't up to the task," the Washingtonpost.com's Dan Froomkin provides some pointers for covering torture. He begins by warning that stories of the White House "caving in" on torture are greatly exaggerated.

Make no mistake about it: the Republican 'rebels' and the White House compromised on just how much torture would be allowed.

According to Froomkin, the compromise is that: 'the Republican senators essentially agreed to look the other way.'"

(Via AlterNet.)

`Excited Delirium' Cited in Deaths

`Excited Delirium' Cited in Deaths: "Medical examiners nationwide are increasingly citing the condition when suspects die in police custody. But some doctors say the rare syndrome is being overdiagnosed, and some civil rights groups question whether it exists at all.

"For psychiatrists, this is a rare condition that occurs once in a blue moon," said Warren Spitz, a former chief medical examiner in Michigan. "Now suddenly you are seeing it all the time among medical examiners. And always, police and police restraint are involved."

In Dallas, at least three in-custody deaths in the past five months have been linked to excited delirium. This prompted the police department to start offering mental health assessment training they say will stem the sudden deaths.

Other police departments, including San Diego, have done the same to try to prevent community protests and costly lawsuits. In Phoenix, a jury awarded $9 million in April to the parents of a suspect whose death was attributed to excited delirium."

(Via Salon.)

"Political Islam," Islamists the the War on Terror

"Political Islam," Islamists the the War on Terror: "The U.S. intelligence community has only a single office devoted to understanding political Islam. That is one of the stunning nuggets contained in the recent House Intelligence Committee Report on threats to the United States.

That information, coupled with an interview in Harper's Magazine of Dr. Emile A. Nakhleh, the former director of the Political Islam Strategic Analysis Program at the CIA, seems to me to point a fundamental, residual problem in the government and intelligence community's approach to Islamists.

The House report, while disputed in its timing and presentation by Democrats, nonetheless presents some interesting findings, some that are particularly critical of the administration. The report found "significant shortfalls" in the government's knowledge of Islamist militancy at home or abroad. It concluded that there are "still gaps in our understanding of Islamist extremist groups, which leave America vulnerable.""

(Via The Counterterrorism Blog.)

Retired military officers criticize Rumsfeld at Democratic hearing

Retired military officers criticize Rumsfeld at Democratic hearing: "Retired military officers on Monday bluntly accused Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld of bungling the war in Iraq, saying U.S. troops were sent to fight without the best equipment and that critical facts were hidden from the public.

“I believe that Secretary Rumsfeld and others in the administration did not tell the American people the truth for fear of losing support for the war in Iraq,” retired Maj. Gen. John R. S. Batiste said in remarks prepared for a hearing by the Senate Democratic Policy Committee.

A second witness, retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, assessed Rumsfeld as “incompetent strategically, operationally and tactically ....”

“Mr. Rumsfeld and his immediate team must be replaced or we will see two more years of extraordinarily bad decision-making,” he added in testimony prepared for the hearing, held six weeks before the Nov. 7 midterm elections in which the war is a central issue."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short

Army Warns Rumsfeld It's Billions Short: "The Army's top officer withheld a required 2008 budget plan from Pentagon leaders last month after protesting to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that the service could not maintain its current level of activity in Iraq plus its other global commitments without billions in additional funding.

The decision by Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker, the Army's chief of staff, is believed to be unprecedented and signals a widespread belief within the Army that in the absence of significant troop withdrawals from Iraq, funding assumptions must be completely reworked, say current and former Pentagon officials.

"This is unusual, but hell, we're in unusual times," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the budget discussions."

(Via a DefenseTech.)

In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power

In Tiny Courts of N.Y., Abuses of Law and Power: "But serious things happen in these little rooms all over New York State. People have been sent to jail without a guilty plea or a trial, or tossed from their homes without a proper proceeding. In violation of the law, defendants have been refused lawyers, or sentenced to weeks in jail because they cannot pay a fine. Frightened women have been denied protection from abuse.

These are New York’s town and village courts, or justice courts, as the 1,250 of them are widely known. In the public imagination, they are quaint holdovers from a bygone era, handling nothing weightier than traffic tickets and small claims. They get a roll of the eyes from lawyers who amuse one another with tales of incompetent small-town justices.

A woman in Malone, N.Y., was not amused. A mother of four, she went to court in that North Country village seeking an order of protection against her husband, who the police said had choked her, kicked her in the stomach and threatened to kill her. The justice, Donald R. Roberts, a former state trooper with a high school diploma, not only refused, according to state officials, but later told the court clerk, “Every woman needs a good pounding every now and then.”"

(Via NY Times.)