Published on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 by the Associated Press Going Backwards: Bush Orders Terrorist Trials by Military Tribunal by Ron Fournier
WASHINGTON -- President Bush approved the use of a special military tribunal Tuesday that could put accused terrorists on trial faster and in greater secrecy than an ordinary criminal court. The United States has not convened such a tribunal since World War II. Bush signed an order establishing the government's right to use such a court but preserving the option of a conventional trial.
"This is a new tool to use against terrorism," White House Counsel Albert Gonzales said.
Bush's order does not require approval from Congress.
Detention and trial of accused terrorists by a military tribunal is necessary "to protect the United States and its citizens, and for the effective conduct of military operations and prevention of terrorist attacks," the five-page order said.
The order sets out many of the rules for any military tribunal and the rights of anyone held accountable there. A senior Justice Department official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said only noncitizens would be tried before the military commission.
"These are extraordinary times and the president wants to have as many options as possible," said Justice Department spokeswoman Mindy Tucker. "This option does not preclude any Department of Justice options that might also be available."
In either a military or a civilian court, any suspect would retain rights to a lawyer and to a trial by jury, the administration said.
Anyone ever held for trial under the order would certainly challenge its legitimacy, said Eugene Fidell, president of the National Institute of Military Justice in Washington, and a lawyer who regularly practices before military courts.
"There's no recent history in this country of this. It's an extraordinary step for the president to have taken," Fidell said, adding that it moves the country closer to a genuine war footing.
There is precedent for such panels.
President Franklin Roosevelt had suspected World War II saboteurs secretly tried by military commission, and six were executed. The Supreme Court upheld the proceeding. An enemy who sneaked onto U.S. soil "for the purposes of waging war by destruction of life or property" was a combatant who could be tried in a military court, the Supreme Court ruled.
Military tribunals were also used during and after the Civil War.
Gonzales, the president's top lawyer, said a military commission could have several advantages over a civilian court, including secrecy.
"This is a global war. To have successful prosecutions, we might have to give up sources and methods," about the way the investigation was conducted if the trial was held in a civilian court, Gonzales said. "We don't want to have to do that."
A military trial could also be held overseas, and Gonzales said there may be times when prosecutors feel a trial in the United States would be unsafe.
>From the perspective of the U.S. commander in chief, "the easy way to go is
a military commission" because "you have unfettered discretion" and "the
most significant aspects of judicial review are curtailed," said former
military prosecutor A. Jeff Ifrah.
The problem with federal district courts or courts-martial from the point of view of the chief executive is that there is appellate review plus stringent federal rules of evidence, said Ifrah.
Recent terrorism trials have taken place in U.S. criminal courts, where the rules require the government to reveal its evidence either in open court or in filings it must fight to keep secret.
Michael Scardaville, policy analyst for homeland defense at the conservative Heritage Foundation, said there are legitimate reasons for holding the trials in private.
"This isn't Judge Judy, two people fighting over who gets the car after a divorce. It's about very classified elements of America's national security.
"They can say, 'Not only are we not going to let the press in, it's going to be in the middle of a military base."
Michael Ratner, an international law and war crimes expert at Columbia University, said the government would lose all credibility with the Muslim world if it tries terrorists by a military commission.
"I am flabbergasted," Ratner said. "Military courts don't have the same kind of protections, you don't get the same rights as you do in a federal court. The judges aren't appointed for life, there is no civilian jury."
The order is the latest effort by the administration to toughen the nation's laws against terrorists.
After the Sept. 11 attacks, the administration pushed through Congress an anti-terrorism bill that Bush said was vital but civil liberties groups said went too far, violating Americans' constitutional rights.
It expands the FBI's wiretapping and electronic surveillance authority and imposes stronger penalties for harboring or financing terrorists. The measure also increases the number of crimes considered terrorist acts and toughens the punishments for committing them.
Under the new order, Bush could establish a military commission in the future by asking the secretary of defense to establish the rules for one.
"This does not identify by name who should be exposed to military justice," Gonzales said. "It just provides the framework that, should the president have findings in the future, he could" order Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to establish such a commission. ********
Dr Strange Dick and his creepy consorte Lady Lynne Strange Dick are in full charge, I think. He's so busy no one ever sees him. Security reasons my baa-hind.
Published on Tuesday, November 13, 2001 in the Boston Globe On Campus Conservatives Denounce Dissent by Patrick Healy
A conservative academic group founded by Lynne Cheney, the wife of Vice President Dick Cheney, fired a new salvo in the culture wars by blasting 40 college professors as well as the president of Wesleyan University and others for not showing enough patriotism in the aftermath of Sept. 11.
''College and university faculty have been the weak link in America's response to the attack,'' say leaders of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni in a report being issued today. The report names names and criticizes professors for making statements ''short on patriotism and long on self-flagellation.''
Several of the scholars singled out in the report said yesterday they felt blacklisted, complaining that their words had been taken out of context to make them look like enemies of the state.
''It's a little too reminiscent of McCarthyism,'' said Hugh Gusterson, an associate professor of anthropology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was named in the report for his comments at a campus peace rally where he made a connection between American suffering after Sept. 11 and the suffering in war-torn Afghanistan.
''This kind of document reminds me of the Soviet Union, where officials weren't satisfied until 98 or 99 percent of people voted with them,'' Gusterson said.
Lynne Cheney, who was a powerful voice for conservative intellectuals as chief of the National Endowment of the Humanities during the first Bush administration, is not an author of the new report. But it is peppered with quotations stating her views, and it was prepared by two close allies. She was until recently the chairwoman of the council, a private nonprofit organization based in Washington. Her agenda - to promote Western civilization and American culture as the bedrocks of US education - continues to guide the group's activities.
The report lists 117 comments or incidents as evidence that campuses are hostile to the US government and out of step with most Americans who, according to polls, support the war in Afghanistan. ''Indeed,'' the report says, ''the message of much of academe was clear: BLAME AMERICA FIRST.''
While there have been some campus antiwar protests recently - such as the burning of two American flags at Amherst College - these have been relatively rare, and most were criticized by college officials concerned about other students and alumni who lost loved ones in the Sept. 11 attacks.
Anne Neal, an author of the report and council official, said that while she is sure many professors and students support the US government, they are afraid that if they speak out, liberal colleagues might shout them down.
''For the most part, public comments in academia were equivocal and often pointing the finger at America rather than the terrorists,'' Neal said. ''It's hard for non-tenured professors to speak up when there's such a chorus on the other side.''
Among the scholars named in the report, however, several said yesterday the council was carrying out its own political agenda: painting higher education as a bastion of political correctness and trying to silence any criticism of the Bush administration.
''These kinds of attacks will only discourage professors from speaking out and opening up dialogues about what's happening overseas, and why,'' said Kevin Lourie, a professor at the Brown University School of Medicine.
The council cited Lourie for writing, in a Brown news service opinion article, that the United States may be ''paying an accumulated debt for centuries of dominance and intervention far from home.'' Lourie said he was attempting to explain how other nations and societies may view the United States.
Douglas Bennet, the president of Wesleyan, was named for a Sept. 14 letter to the Wesleyan community. The letter condemned the terrorist attacks, but the council singled out one passage in which Bennet voiced his concern that ''disparities and injustices'' in American society and the world can lead to hatred and violence, and that societies should try to see the world ''through the sensitivities of others.''
Bennet complained that the report's authors took his comments out of context. He said that he strongly supports the Bush administration's response to the terrorist attacks and that an American flag has hung on the door of his house since Sept. 11.
''I don't know where this group gets off extracting language from my statement,'' Bennet said. ''They're trying to perpetuate cliches that belong to an earlier era. I don't think it'll wash - we all have important, real work to do as a nation.'' *********
There's absolutely no way the administration doesn't know this since it's exactly how the Soviets got whipped. However the news is going a long way toward holding the market up which is key since Medicare and Social Security ain't "re-formed" yet. I still don't see much reason not to wonder if Sammy and Omar aren't really working with the same folks they been working with for many years, ie, the CIA and the ISI. A long guerilla war seems to be the object of the admin's desire. But if it's in Afghanistan, what about the pipeline? Maybe they can move it to Pakistan. BTW, that new advertising exec woman the Bushies hired is doing a fab job isn't she? The Pakistan Prez's hair looked good too. And he doesn't sound nearly as crazy as the Bushies. Seemed genuinely horrified at the thought that the US would retaliate with nuclear weapons even if bin Laden used a so-called suit-case bomb. Maybe that was the signal that it was all right to screw him.
Taliban Withdrawal Was Strategy, Not Rout
Summary
In less than a week, Taliban fighters have been swept from most of northern Afghanistan, including the key cities of Mazar-e- Sharif, Herat, Kunduz, Taloqan, Bamiyan, Jalalabad and the capital Kabul. How did a force that only two months ago controlled most of Afghanistan get swept from the battlefield so quickly, and is the battle over? Evidence suggests it has only just begun.
Analysis
Northern Alliance troops moved into Kabul on Nov. 13, less than a week after launching an offensive that has swept the Taliban from most of northern Afghanistan.
The Northern Alliance now controls the key cities of Mazar-e- Sharif, Herat, Kunduz and Taloqan, all located astride vital supply routes into neighboring countries. Popular uprisings have reportedly ousted the Taliban from Bamiyan and Jalalabad, and there are even reports of anti-Taliban Pushtun forces marching on Kandahar. On the surface it appears a lightning offensive by the Northern Alliance -- supported by U.S. aerial bombardment -- has shattered the Taliban army in a matter of days. But has the Taliban been defeated? An examination of the Taliban withdrawal suggests the group has intentionally surrendered territory in the interest of adopting tactics more amenable to its strengths.
If the United States and its allies misread the Taliban withdrawal as a rout, they could quickly find themselves locked in a nasty guerrilla war in Afghanistan. Worse, that war is likely to spread beyond Afghanistan's borders, as the core of Taliban and al Qaeda forces in that country seek to secure their supply lines and capitalize on their strengths and their opponents' weaknesses.
In order to evaluate whether the Taliban withdrawal from northern Afghanistan was the routing of a defeated force or a strategic maneuver, we must first look at the evidence on the ground.
Perhaps the key feature of the withdrawal is that it has come almost without a fight. Neither the U.S. bombardment nor the Northern Alliance offensive adequately explains this. The Taliban has a hardened army with many veterans of the war against the Soviet Union. Taliban forces were renowned for their dogged combat, stunning the Northern Alliance in previous battles by advancing undeterred through minefields.
Before Sept. 11, the Taliban controlled some 95 percent of Afghanistan and appeared poised to mop up the remnants of the opposition. In the weeks before Mazar-e-Sharif fell, the Taliban soundly repelled a series of Northern Alliance attacks on the city, and even the Northern Alliance admitted they had not had time to prepare for a serious offensive.
In most cases, the Taliban's retreat was premeditated and orderly. The fighting that occurred was a rear-guard action, often carried out by foreign troops. Pakistani volunteers were left behind in Mazar-e-Sharif, and Arab troops reportedly fought a vicious rear-guard action in Kabul. The Taliban troops deployed armor to cover their withdrawal from Kabul, which occurred at night in order to limit U.S. air strikes and preclude premature Northern Alliance assaults.
The speed of the Northern Alliance's advance was not surprising. Rapid advances are the norm in Afghanistan. The Taliban swept through the country as quickly when the group first emerged in 1994 and 1995. Russia's initial invasion of Afghanistan took only a few weeks.
Population density explains much of this phenomenon. Afghanistan has about 41 people per square kilometer -- less than a third the density of neighboring Pakistan -- and this does not take refugees into account. Rugged terrain means that much of Afghanistan is nearly uninhabited or is settled in small villages. It is easy to sweep through this territory; there is little to get in the way.
But there is a catch. Ethnic divisions, limited resources and logistical difficulties have constrained the size of the armies that fought over Afghanistan. At their peak, the Soviets had only about 90,000 troops in the country, and the Taliban and Northern Alliance armies were far smaller. Small armies and vast distances make frontal warfare difficult and dangerous. Armies cannot afford to spare the troops necessary to garrison the land they have overrun if they are to maintain a viable army at the front.
This leads to thin front lines, with troops concentrated at key nodes and with little reserve behind them. Once a front breaks or withdraws, an opposing force can make tremendous advances. Anyone who has played the board game "Risk" will recognize this.
Incidentally, this goes some way to explain the brutality of the Taliban occupation. Because the Taliban forces could not afford to spare the troops to garrison land they had overrun, they needed to utterly subjugate those areas to preclude an uprising behind their lines.
One final factor explains the large numbers of defections among the Taliban forces. Afghanistan is geographically, ethnically and religiously divided, and loyalties are strongest at the local clan level. The Taliban, like the Northern Alliance and like previous Afghan governments, was not a unified entity.
The Taliban's core members are Durrani Pushtuns from Kandahar and southern Afghanistan. They have had difficulty expanding support beyond this region -- even in integrating their close ethnic kin, the Ghilzai Pushtuns from eastern Afghanistan and around Kabul -- and most of the time they have not even tried. As the Taliban fighters advanced through Afghanistan, other clans and factions chose to join rather than fight them, but loyalties always remained at the local level.
Switching sides is common behavior among Afghan groups. It is how the Taliban initially captured Mazar-e-Sharif in 1997 and how it was as swiftly driven from the city later that year. The factions comprising the Northern Alliance have fought one another as often as they have fought the Taliban. As the Taliban core withdrew from northern Afghanistan, the groups that had sided with it during its occupation quickly joined the advancing Northern Alliance.
So contrary to appearances, the withdrawal by the Taliban troops was intentional and orderly. They were not routed. They are now stripped to their ethnic and ideological core, intact, with most of their arms and equipment. They are also back in familiar territory and reinforced with the bulk of Osama bin Laden's Afghan Arab volunteers.
The Taliban are now prepared to adopt a strategy more amenable to their tactical strengths and resources. ___________________________________________________________________