GAO: US vulnerable to al-Qaeda

from Press TV

Fri, 18 Apr 2008 06:24:34

The reports conducted by the Government Accountability Office also says the US can not prevent the Pakistan’s tribal region from being used for launching terrorist attacks on the United States.

President Bush and his senior lieutenants frequently claim that eradicating the threat that Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda terrorist network poses to US and its allies is their top national-security priority.

“No comprehensive strategy for meeting US national-security goals” in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas has been developed even though the administration’s counter-terrorism policy, congressional legislation and the mission of the National Counter-Terrorism Center mandate such an approach, the report says.

Combating Terrorism: The United States Lacks Comprehensive Plan to Destroy the Terrorist Threat and Close the Safe Haven in Pakistan’s Federally Administered Tribal Areas

GAO-08-622, April 17, 2008

Summary (HTML) Full Report (PDF, 32 pages)

Udate: Martial Law Act of 2006

Jim Bovard posted an update to the AntiWar.com/blog that he was notified by a Boise State University professor that the changes to the Posse Comitatus and Insurrection Acts were repealed in Feb.’08. not that that wouldn’t necessarily stop them anyway, but it is pretty remarkable that the lame-duck congress did finally do something right.

read Jim’s post at the AntiWar.com/blog here.

(h/t to Scott)

Ray McGovern on Petraeus, Cheney and Yoo

Also, On AntiWar Radio: Charles Goyette talks with Ray McGovern about Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, David Addington, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and much more.

mp3 here [58:23]

Yoo’s on First?
by Ray McGovern

Weren’t Yoo’s co-conspirators careful to keep their fingerprints off the more blatantly offensive memoranda? Sure they were.

But there was one problem. Then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and then-CIA Director George Tenet could not get their people to torture folks without written, signed authorization by the president.

And we have a copy of that authorization? Yes, it’s been available for years. You have to download it to believe it.

In his Feb. 7, 2002, memorandum, Bush wrote: “I determine that common Article 3 of Geneva does not apply to either al-Qaeda or Taliban detainees.” (Common Article 3 bans “torture [and] outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment.”)

Then, drawing on the lawyerly legerdemain, Bush did something really dumb. Using words drafted by Vice President Dick Cheney’s lawyer, David Addington, for a memo dated Jan. 25, 2002, signed by then-White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, the president ordered that detainees be treated, “humanely… to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity.”

Tacked onto the end of that sentence is a classic circumlocution: “in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.” But that is not what Geneva says, and there is no way to square that circle.

This is the giant loophole through which Rumsfeld and Tenet drove the Mack truck of torture … yes, signed by the president.
The rotten apples were – demonstrably – at the very top of the barrel.

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