Monday, September 11, 2006
Five Years Later
I, too, mourn the people who perished on 9/11. I miss the Towers which loomed over Manhattan. I miss the (mistaken) innocence of Americans--that we were protected from terrorism somehow--forgetting our home grown terrorists like Timothy McVeigh, or the FALN's attack on Federal Plaza in the early 1980s one New Year's Eve or even the first attack on the WTC in 1993 . I miss America's democratic integrity the most. To wit:
But five years later Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is not only free, the CIA closed its unit--Alec Station--whose goal was to capture bin Laden in July 2006 (see: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70D15FC39540C778CDDAE0894DE404482)
In fact, a White House report released just prior (September 4) to the President's current speaking tour entitled ÂNational Strategy for Combating TerrorismÂÂ (first written in 2003 and updated March,2006 ) confirmed that Al Qaeda is no longer the greatest terrorist threat, it is the growth of decentralized networks of extremists--of which Iran is a potential source of unconventional weapons for terrorist groups.
Instead we are fighting a war in Iraq, whose now deposed leader though evil himself also saw al Qaeda as a threat. And, based on the recent White House report look like we might be going into Iran, next. (Can democracy be imposed on a people?)
So five years later we are giving Osama bin Laden a pass.
We have also had our administration redefine 'torture' while the Justice Department has modified the memo that then- Counsel to the President, and now Attorney General had given to the President which said that, in short, it wasn't torture if the victim did not die. The new memo is at http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/dagmemo.pdf#search=%22justice%20department%20torture%22
We have had the administration deny the illegal detention of terror suspects in secret, foreign, prisons only to have the President announce on September 6 " the transfer of the last 14 suspected terrorists held by the CIA at secret foreign prisons to the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." At least he (the president) is heeding the Supreme Court's ruling that prisoners can not be kept at Guantanamo without hearings--since he also said that he is proposing new rules he is sending to Congress for them to be tried before U.S. military tribunal panels.
Yes, we have to stop terrorism--but we should not have to lose our integrity to do so. Our actions just begettinging more terrorists.
But five years later Osama bin Laden, the al Qaeda leader and mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, is not only free, the CIA closed its unit--Alec Station--whose goal was to capture bin Laden in July 2006 (see: http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70D15FC39540C778CDDAE0894DE404482)
In fact, a White House report released just prior (September 4) to the President's current speaking tour entitled ÂNational Strategy for Combating TerrorismÂÂ (first written in 2003 and updated March,2006 ) confirmed that Al Qaeda is no longer the greatest terrorist threat, it is the growth of decentralized networks of extremists--of which Iran is a potential source of unconventional weapons for terrorist groups.
Instead we are fighting a war in Iraq, whose now deposed leader though evil himself also saw al Qaeda as a threat. And, based on the recent White House report look like we might be going into Iran, next. (Can democracy be imposed on a people?)
So five years later we are giving Osama bin Laden a pass.
We have also had our administration redefine 'torture' while the Justice Department has modified the memo that then- Counsel to the President, and now Attorney General had given to the President which said that, in short, it wasn't torture if the victim did not die. The new memo is at http://www.usdoj.gov/olc/dagmemo.pdf#search=%22justice%20department%20torture%22
We have had the administration deny the illegal detention of terror suspects in secret, foreign, prisons only to have the President announce on September 6 " the transfer of the last 14 suspected terrorists held by the CIA at secret foreign prisons to the military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba." At least he (the president) is heeding the Supreme Court's ruling that prisoners can not be kept at Guantanamo without hearings--since he also said that he is proposing new rules he is sending to Congress for them to be tried before U.S. military tribunal panels.
Yes, we have to stop terrorism--but we should not have to lose our integrity to do so. Our actions just begettinging more terrorists.
