PoliBlog ™: A Rough Draft of my Thoughts

I must confess, I am posting this largely because of the opportunity to deploy the title. Still, this is actually pretty interesting.

Via LiveScience: Llamas Enlisted to Thwart Biological Weapons

Biochemist Ellen Goldman at the Naval Research Laboratory with virologist Andrew Hayhurst at the Southwest Foundation for Biomedical Research and their colleagues investigated llama antibodies. Past studies revealed that the binding regions of these antibodies and those from camels and sharks are unusually small, just one-tenth the size of common human antibodies.

Llama, camel and shark antibodies consist just of chains of heavy proteins, missing the additional lighter protein chains that more complicated antibodies from other species use. Their relative simplicity makes them more durable, capable of withstanding temperatures of almost 200 degrees Fahrenheit.

The researchers generated more than a billion kinds of antibody binding regions in the laboratory based on genes taken from small blood samples from llamas. After testing their antibodies against various biological threats, the researchers found they could within days successfully identify antibodies targeting cholera toxin, a smallpox virus surrogate and ricin, among other known menaces.

“We’re interested in the development of biosensors for biothreats in the field, and hopefully these antibodies will help lead to more rugged antibodies that have longer shelf lives and not require refrigeration,” Goldman said.

Intriguing.

And remember: ¡Las llamas son mas grande que las ranas!

(If you have no clue as to what I am talking about, either move along, safe in the knowledge that you are above such silliness, or go below the fold)
(more…)

Via the AP: Flatulence forces plane to land.

(All silliness aside, the headline should be: passenger lighting matches forces plane land, which is silly enough by itself. Regardless, how dumb do you have to be to light a match on a plane in this day an age anyway?)

…although not especially surprising. \

Via WaPo: Democrats Reject Key 9/11 Panel Suggestion - washingtonpost.com:

It was a solemn pledge, repeated by Democratic leaders and candidates over and over: If elected to the majority in Congress, Democrats would implement all of the recommendations of the bipartisan commission that examined the attacks of Sept. 11, 2024.

But with control of Congress now secured, Democratic leaders have decided for now against implementing the one measure that would affect them most directly: a wholesale reorganization of Congress to improve oversight and funding of the nation’s intelligence agencies. Instead, Democratic leaders may create a panel to look at the issue and produce recommendations, according to congressional aides and lawmakers.

There can be no doubt that we have some serious problems with our intelligence apparatus. They failed to predict 9/11 and assertions of “slam dunks” led to serious problems in Iraq. Further, the war on terror is as much a war based on intelligence gathering as it is anything else.

Take those sobering facts and add the fact that we, as Americans, need a Congress (regardless of partisan makeup) that is serious about keeping the executive branch in check in this very shadowy area of public policy.

Via WaPo/the AP: Leahy Seeks Documents on Detention

The first is a directive President Bush signed giving the CIA authority to establish detention facilities outside the United States and outlining interrogation methods that may be used against detainees.

The second is a 2024 memo from the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel to the CIA’s general counsel regarding interrogation methods that the spy agency may use against al-Qaeda leaders.

“The American people deserve to have detailed and accurate information about the role of the Bush administration in developing the interrogation policies and practices that have engendered such deep criticism and concern at home and around the world,” Leahy wrote Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

I would have to agree with Leahy: these are things we need to know. These actions are being taken in our name and via the authority vested in the President by the ballot box. Care does need to be used in how the information is handled, but the notion that somehow the war against al Qaeda will be compromised because the legislative branch engages in oversight, as is its constitutional role and duty, is absurd. And, no doubt, that will be the response in some quarters.

I, for one, am tired of nebulous threats about the hypothetical reactions of a handful of thugs as an “argument” against legitimate concerns over the administration’s policies.

Via the NYT: Expecting U.S. Help, Sent to Guantánamo

Abdul Rahim Al Ginco thought he was saved when the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2024 and overthrew the Taliban regime.

Mr. Ginco, a college student living in the United Arab Emirates, had gone to Afghanistan in 2024 after running away from his strict Muslim father. He was soon imprisoned by the Taliban, and tortured by operatives of Al Qaeda until, he said, he falsely confessed to being a spy for Israel and the United States.

But rather than help Mr. Ginco return home, American soldiers detained him again. Nearly five years later, he remains in the United States military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba — in part, it appears, on the strength of a propaganda videotape made by his torturers.

Now, it is entirely possible that the US is correct about Ginco, however it is also perfectly possible that his story is exactly as it is detailed in the piece. At a minimum, this type of situation details precisely why we need a system to determine whether the people we have in captivity should, in fact, be there. This is not analogous to capturing uniformed German soldiers who can be held until the end of fighting. Instead, it is clear that to some degree the prisoners we are holding have been caught up in a dragnet, with their guilt to be figured out later. As such, a process that accepts that notion is needed, rather than one that seems to assume that all the detainees are guilty, and potentially all al Qaeda masterminds.

The dearth of Arabic language expertise was a glaring problem within our intelligence/law enforcement communities that was exposed by 9/11. It would seem that in the last five years, that has not changed.

Via WaPo: FBI Agents Still Lacking Arabic Skills

Five years after Arab terrorists attacked the United States, only 33 FBI agents have even a limited proficiency in Arabic, and none of them work in the sections of the bureau that coordinate investigations of international terrorism, according to new FBI statistics.

Counting agents who know only a handful of Arabic words — including those who scored zero on a standard proficiency test — just 1 percent of the FBI’s 12,000 agents have any familiarity with the language, the statistics show.

I am not sure what the correct percentage needs to be, but am quite certain that that is far too low. The article does note that the agency has contract linguists, but that strikes me as inadequate if that is where the critical mass of language skills reside.

And having language skills isn’t just about translating intercepted materials:

Daniel Byman, a Georgetown University associate professor who heads the school’s Security Studies Program, said the FBI’s continuing failure to attract Arabic-speaking agents is “a serious problem” that hurts the bureau’s relations with immigrant communities and makes it more difficult to gather intelligence on extremist groups.

“With any new immigrant communities, they need these language skills, whether it’s Vietnamese or Pakistani or Arabic,” Byman said. “It also often gives you extra cultural knowledge and sensitivity. It makes you more sensitive to nuance, which is what investigations are often all about.”

Anyone who speaks other languages understands that one gains more than just the ability to decode foreign words when one learns a language.

And then there’s this element to the whole thing:

“It is easier to get a security clearance if you don’t have any interaction with foreigners, which is not what you want if you want better interaction with foreigners,” Byman said.

While one understands the need for caution, this strikes me as highly problematic. And while i have never gone through the process, I am familiar with FBI background checks, both because of the direct experience of a friend and also because I have been interviewed on several occasions as part of background checks for others. As such, I do not find it all unlikely that the process may indeed be screening out people who would be an asset.

Indeed, the story about language skills is the result of a lawsuit concerning an Arabic-speaking FBI agent who allegedly was frozen out of investigations post-9/11 because he was Egyptian by birth:

Some of the new information about language abilities at the FBI has emerged in connection with a lawsuit by one of the FBI’s highest-ranking Arabic speakers, Special Agent Bassem Youssef, who sued the Justice Department and the bureau alleging retaliation after he complained that he was cut out of terrorism cases after the Sept. 11 attacks.

Youssef, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born in Egypt, is one of only six FBI agents who scored a 4 for “advanced professional proficiency” in Arabic on standardized speaking tests administered by the Interagency Language Roundtable for federal agencies.

Given much of the post-9/11 paranoia that we have experience as a nation, that would not surprise me.

So, I guess if one doesn’t want the NSA to know what you are saying when they listen in on your international calls, your best bet is to speak in Arabic. Lovely.

For those who are interested, the FAS’s blog (Secrecy News) has a link to the PDF of the CRS report on signing statements in this post.

I have not read it yet, but plan to do so this weekend.

I have not written much about “signing statements” (a quick search of my archives only turns up this post, and it only references the issue in the context of a larger discussion). I will confess that my initial response when the topic first emerged was that the notion that the president was indicating his understanding of the law for the purposes of posterity (and future court battles) was legitimate. Indeed, the basic practice of such statements, symbolic and otherwise, goes back over a century.

However, it has been clear for some time that, in the guise of being a “war president” that President Bush has clearly been using these signing statements in an attempt to make himself an interpreter of the constitutionality of laws and to thereby expand executive power as he sees fit. I am going to say something that I am very, very reluctant to say, but there is no other way to put it: when a President of the United States seeks to ignore Congress’ will and to usurp powers that belong to the federal courts, because he simply thinks it is the right thing to do, there is no other word for that than authoritarian.

To be clear: I am labeling this type of action as an authoritarian action because it is a raw assertion of power.

The BoGlo has an interesting piece on a recent Congressional Research Service report that is critical of this President’s usage of signing statements.

The story (Bush signings called effort to expand power) notes a recent example:

Despite such criticism, the administration has continued to issue signing statements for new laws. Last week, for example, Bush signed the 2024 military budget bill, but then issued a statement challenging 16 of its provisions.

The bill bars the Pentagon from using any intelligence that was collected illegally, including information about Americans that was gathered in violation of the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable government surveillance.

In Bush’s signing statement, he suggested that he alone could decide whether the Pentagon could use such information. His signing statement instructed the military to view the law in light of “the president’s constitutional authority as commander in chief, including for the conduct of intelligence operations, and to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

Bush also challenged three sections that require the Pentagon to notify Congress before diverting funds to new purposes, including top-secret activities or programs. Congress had already decided against funding. Bush said he was not bound to obey such statutes if he decided, as commander in chief, that withholding such information from Congress was necessary to protect security secrets. [emphasis mine]

While it is possible that rare circumstances might arise, especially in the pursuance of an international war that a President might have to make such radical moves. However, we are not engaged in an international national (as in between nations) war–I am not saying that we are not engaged in serious military activities, or even that we are not “at war” in some sense of the word with radical Islamic terrorist, but we are not in a war of survival with another state–the last time that was true was WWII.

The notion that the President can ignore federal law, because he deems it necessary is an abrogation of the constitutional order–and cloaking it in the magic word “for national security” shouldn’t be enough to make all of us, as citizens, say “ok, have it at, Mr. President.”

The Congress makes the laws, not the president. The courts have the power to interpret the laws in a formal sense, not the president. Further, the power of the purse constitutionally belongs to the congress, not the president. And the power to raise, maintain and regulate the armed forces constitutionally belongs to the congress, not the president.

Where are all the so-called “strict constructionists” in the Republican Party these days?

The AP has an further story (Bush says he can edit security reports) on this topic:

President Bush, again defying Congress, says he has the power to edit the Homeland Security Department’s reports about whether it obeys privacy rules while handling background checks, ID cards and watchlists.

In the law Bush signed Wednesday, Congress stated no one but the privacy officer could alter, delay or prohibit the mandatory annual report on Homeland Security department activities that affect privacy, including complaints.

But Bush, in a signing statement attached to the agency’s 2024 spending bill, said he will interpret that section “in a manner consistent with the President’s constitutional authority to supervise the unitary executive branch.”

It is as if the notion is: you go ahead and pass your little laws, Congress, but I, the President, will decide whether or not to actually use them. I don’t recall that part of the Constitution.

On the topic of signing statements themselves, the piece notes:

The Senate held hearings on the issue in June. At the time, 110 statements challenged about 750 statutes passed by Congress, according to numbers combined from the White House and the Senate committee. They include documents revising or disregarding parts of legislation to ban torture of detainees and to renew the Patriot Act.

Need I remind the conservatives in the audience that one of the foundational principles of basic conservatism is distrust of human nature, and therefore distrust of government in the hand’s of fallible man? The idea that too much power in the hands of a small number of individuals, or a single individual is what promotes tyranny?

I will further say this: if the Democrats do obtain control of one or both houses of Congress in the elections and next year turns into hearing-o-rama on the Bush administration’s practices, then the administration will have no one to blame but itself.

Via the AP: Court temporarily OKs domestic spying

The Bush administration can continue its warrantless surveillance program while it appeals a judge’s ruling that the program is unconstitutional, a federal appeals court ruled Wednesday.

[…]

The unanimous ruling from a three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals gave little explanation for the decision. In the three-paragraph ruling, judges said that they balanced the likelihood an appeal would succeed, the potential damage to both sides and the public interest.

This isn’t especially surprising, nor will it be so if the 6th Circuit overturns the lower court’s ruling.

Via WaPo (House Approves Warrantless Wiretap Law) we get some quotes from House leadership that features the worst kind of “reasoning” in the current debate about how to deal with detainees and how to foster national security.

First we have Speaker Haster:

After the House voted 253-168 to set rules on tough interrogations and military tribunal proceedings, Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., was even more critical than Boehner.

“Democrat Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and 159 of her Democrat colleagues voted today in favor of more rights for terrorists,” Hastert said in a statement. “So the same terrorists who plan to harm innocent Americans and their freedom worldwide would be coddled, if we followed the Democrat plan. “

There is a twofold problem here. They are both quite common in this discussion. The first is the fundamental assumption that every single person that we capture is automatically a terrorist (i.e., that suspicion equals guilt). This is not necessarily the case. It is wholly possible that some we have captured were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or that we made some other mistake. A corollary of the first problem is to assume that everyone we capture is equivalent to Khalid Sheik Muhammad and his ilk. They aren’t. However, many speak as if every single person in our custody is the equivalent of a major lieutenant of Osama bin Laden and that they hold treasure troves of information and they are each to be seen as proxies for the 9/11 hijackers.

A second major flaw here is the notion that having rules and procedures that acknowledges that we are dealing with human being here is “coddling” anyone. Indeed, the ability to recognize that your enemy is a) a human being, and b) perhaps not as guilty as you suspect that he is, isn’t coddling, it is due process and it a morally superior position that we should aspire to have, not disparage.

And, as I noted in my post last night about suspending habeas corpus, the bottom line is that we are talking not about dramatic actions that governments undertake during a specific crisis when the hot war rages, but rather the codification of actions that will be undertaken when passions have cooled and the immediacy of the crisis has faded and when cooler heads ought to prevail.

Look, within our own criminal justice system we frequently afford rights to the worst of the worst (and people we are 99% are guilty). We do so because it is the right thing to do and because such mechanisms protect the innocent. There are criminals who deserve to be shot on sight, no doubt. However, we don’t do that because it violates our basic values as a democracy.

I am not arguing that we should treat captured combatants the same as we treat criminal defendants. However, there are parallels here in terms of how we should behave.

Consider: if the enemy is shot and killed during battle, that is acceptable. However, if once you have the enemy in your control and you bind him and shoot him in the back of the head, we find that highly unacceptable. Why? Either way he is dead by the same bullet. However, we clearly consider those circumstances to be different.

As such, once you have people in your custody, the manner of treatment matters.

I would note, as I have before, that if we, as a major element of our foreign policy, are going to promote democratic goverance as something that other states should adopt, then we have to be a model of that form of government. If we are going to say that as soon as we feel threatened that we are willing to toss values out the window, then the message being sent is power and security trumps democratic values. How is that going to incentivize non-democracies in insecure parts of the world to adopt democratic norms and values? Isn’t the real lesson that we are teaching is that what really is matters is order and power ?

Another example of Leadership and dramatic rhetoric:

“The Democrats’ irrational opposition to strong national security policies that help keep our nation secure should be of great concern to the American people,” Majority Leader John Boehner, R-Ohio, said in a statement after the bill passed 232-191.

A true sign of serious argumentation: tagging those who disagree with you as being “irrational.”

But, then again, it’s election season and majority status is on the line, so why not trivialize the debate?

I wonder how many times in the coming days that people will defend the provision in the detainee bill that denies terror suspects the rights of habeas corpus by saying that Lincoln did it in during the Civil War.

Two things spring to mind. First, just because something was done in the past by a successful war President doesn’t necessarily make it a good thing. Second, and more importantly, it is one thing for a given President to engage in a particular activity during the crisis moments of a hot war, and it is wholly another to codify such things into law.

Via the NYT: Senate Passes Detainee Bill Sought by President Bush

It strips detainees of a habeas corpus right to challenge their detentions in court and broadly defines what kind of treatment of detainees is prosecutable as a war crime.

[…]

Senator Carl M. Levin of Michigan, the senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, argued that the habeas corpus provision “is as legally abusive of the rights guaranteed in the Constitution as the actions at Abu Ghraib, Guantánamo and secret prisons were physically abusive of detainees.”

And even some Republicans who said voted for the bill said they expected the Supreme Court to strike down the legislation because of the habeas corpus provision, ultimately sending the legislation right back to Congress.

“We should have done it right, because we’re going to have to do it again,” said Senator Gordon Smith, a Republican from Oregon, who had voted to strike the habeas corpus provision, yet supported the bill.

One guess that the whole thing isn’t over, even once the President signs the bill.

Of course, as Scott Lemieux, points out, Congress has the Constitutinal authority to suspend habeas rights in times of war and invasion (see Article I, Section 9). Whether this is a good thing, however, is another question.

The thing that I find most frustrating about the current debate over the National Intelligence Estimate is that both sides are being disingenuous and engaging in the politics of spin. One side likes the leaked portions, because it supports their position, the other side likes the parts the President declassified for the same reason. Even if the whole the document was released, both sides would simply cherry-pick the part that they liked best. (Although, like others, I see no reason in not releasing the whole document).

And ultimately, what is the NIE really worth? I would argue that is it worth far less than the current argument would make it out to be. It isn’t like the information within them is golden or that our intelligence agencies have a fabulous track record of predicting the future (or, for that matter, assessing the present–indeed, the words “slam dunk” come to mind). As James Joyner noted the other day:

One would be remiss for failing to note that these are the same intelligence agencies who failed to predict the Iranian Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the war in the Balkans, Pakistan’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons, the 9/11 attacks, London bombings, Madrid bombings, and other major events.

Writes Richard Minter in today’s WSJ

The question, then, is whether America should return to Mr. Clinton’s policies or soldier on with Mr. Bush’s.

He asks this in the context of the debate that has emerged over the last several days as a result of the Clinton interview with Chris Wallace. And in terms of the policies he means:

every George W. Bush policy that arouses the ire of Democrats–the Patriot Act, extraordinary rendition, detention without trial, pre-emptive war–is a departure from his predecessor. Where policies overlap–air attacks on infrastructure, secret presidential orders to kill terrorists, intelligence sharing with allies, freezing bank accounts, using police to arrest terror suspects–there is little friction.

Those lines hardly encompass the entire universe of anti-terrorism policies.

How is it that the choice has to be between the general inaction of the Clinton of the administration, and the over-reaction of the Bush administration?

“Maybe, just maybe, radical islam is a kind of sui generis phenomenon that would be best understood on its own terms rather than desperately trying to glom it onto secular totalitarian ideologies of the past”-Daniel W. Drezner

The context was an attempt by Niall Ferguson to state that radical Islam was less fascist and more Leninist.

However, Drezner gets it right, and hits on one of many reasons why I don’t like the “Islamofascist” label–there is not good analytical reason to try and squeeze the phenomenon into some existing ideological box. It doesn’t serve the process of understanding in the least.

Via MSNBC: Bush, GOP rebels reach tribunal deal

However, I shall refrain from comment given the following:

Details of the agreement were sketchy.

As such, judgment will be reserved until things are less, well, sketchy.

I stand dubious about the quality of the compromise, just because this whole area of policy makes me wonder if we know what we are doing.