One Utah

Via Think Progress: Today marks seven years since the day President Bush received a President’s Daily Brief entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” (PDF) What did Bush do? He stayed on vacation the rest of August.
The Bush administration finally scheduled a long-delayed meeting to discuss al Qaeda with Richard [...]

At “Camp Justice” in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the U.S. military is currently conducting the first American war crimes trial since World War II — of Salim Hamdan, a citizen of Yemen and a former driver for Osama bin Laden.
To call this proceeding a kangaroo court would run the risk of insulting marsupials everywhere.
From Glenn [...]

I don’t know how many times we have to tell you people. The idea of fighting terrorism with law enforcement agencies belongs to an outmoded, naive September 10 mentality. People who think that Al Qaeda’s attacks on the USA could have been stopped by the FBI (if the top brass listened to their [...]

Meet Mustafa Ahmed Muhammad Uthman Abu al-Yazid, aka Sheikh Saeed. The 53-year-old Egyptian is al-Qaeda’s operational commander for Afghanistan, and may be the third highest ranking al-Qaeda leader, after Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri.
Al-Yazid just gave an interview to the Pakistani TV station Geo, in the Afghan province of Khost. It [...]

Yesterday, the Fourth Circuit appellate court, in a 5-4 ruling (PDF), affirmed that the President has the power to arrest U.S. citizens and legal residents inside the U.S., and imprison them indefinitely in a military prison, without charging them with any crime, based solely on his assertion that the imprisoned individual is an “enemy combatant.”
The [...]

As predicted last February, the U.S. government terrorist watch list has passed the one million mark.

Barry Steinhardt point out the absurdity on HuffPo:

There cannot possibly be one million terrorists poised to attack us. If there were our cities would be ablaze. The president - if not this president, then the next one — needs to [...]

According to the latest CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey, only 35 percent of Americans believe a terrorist attack somewhere in the United States is likely over the next several weeks. While this level of fear is still way out of proportion with the actual risk, it’s the lowest in a CNN poll since the 9/11 [...]

Thursday, channel 501 showed the 1984 film The Killing Fields. For those who haven’t seen it, it’s based on the experiences of NY Times reporter Sydney Schanberg and Cambodian reporter Dith Pran in Cambodia in the 1970s; Pran was captured by the Khmer Rouge and spent years living and laboring in their camps before [...]

Only 15 senators voted to block the FISA bill: Biden (D-DE) - Boxer (D-CA) - Brown (D-OH) - Cantwell (D-WA) - Dodd (D-CT) - Durbin (D-IL) - Feingold (D-WI) - Harkin (D-IA) - Kerry (D-MA) - Lautenberg (D-NJ) - Leahy (D-VT) - Menendez (D-NJ) - Sanders (I-VT) - Schumer (D-NY) - Wyden (D-OR). Senators Clinton, [...]

From the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael Mullen:
“In the last six or seven months, we have a put a tremendous amount of focus on Afghanistan, and I think rightfully so,” he said. “It is an economy-of-force campaign, and by definition, that means we don’t have enough forces [...]

The Military Commissions Act of 2006 purported to suspend the right of habeas corpus, among other things.
Today the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that if Congress wishes to suspend habeas, it must do so only as the Constitution allows — when the country faces rebellion or invasion.
Writing for the majority in the 5-4 decision, Justice [...]

After four years of delays, the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has finally released its Phase II report. In a sweeping review of the administration’s pre-war case for invasion, the Committee found that the American public was being fed information at odds with the truth about Iraq.
The lies came directly from President Bush, [...]