Iran Kills Six Pakistanis in Latest Border Incident; Iran Silent (Updated)

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CIA's map of Pakistan

Six more Pakistanis have been killed by Iranian border agents. The incident has been noted widely in the press in Pakistan, but I find no reports on the incident originating in Iran. This latest incident follows three fishermen killed by Iran around December 7 (although at least one report says there were four killed by Iran in the incident) and three Iranian border guards crossing into Pakistan on January 2 to kill a Pakistani national they were chasing. The guards were detained by Pakistan and released on January 15 after Iran paid blood money to the family of the victim.

The fishing incidents of course were in the coastal waters around the southernmost part of the Iran-Pakistan border and the latest incident was also near the southern end of the border. The January 2 incident was a bit farther north, about halfway to the southern edge of Afghanistan.

In the December 7 incident, the fishermen, who were from Sindh province, appear to have been fishing illegally:

At least three Pakistani fishermen were gunned down, while two others were injured, by Iranian security forces when they wandered into Iranian territorial waters in the Pasaband area, about 40 kilometres off the Jewani coast in Pakistan.

/snip/

District Police Officer Gwadar Liaquat Baloch confirmed the incident and said the bodies are yet to be handed over to Pakistani officials.

“The trawler, Al-Mariam, entered into Iran’s territorial waters when Iranian security forces opened fire on them, killing three crew members on the spot, while injuring another two,” he added.

Station Officer of Jewani Imam Baksh said that there were 20 to 25 people onboard Al-Mariam, which was engaged in illegal fishing.

A later report in the Baloch press says the fishermen were Baloch and that four were killed:

Iranian Naval forces indiscriminate firing on fishermen’s boat in Jiwani area of district Gwadar in Balochistan Read more →

Playing Whack-a-Mole with Somali Pirates

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I questioned yesterday whether the raid to free Jessica Buchanan would help or hurt efforts to free an American freelance journalist who was captured on Saturday close to where Buchanan was being held.

Then there’s the American freelance journalist taken hostage Saturday from the same area, Galkayo, from where Buchanan was kidnapped last October.

Several local leaders in Galkayo had just returned from trying to secure the release of another American, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped last week in Galkayo. He remains in captivity in Hobyo, a pirate den on the Somali coast, because the pirates holding him refuse to let him go without a hefty ransom.

I would suggest his presence raises questions about what the ultimate goal for the raid was. Was it just Buchanan’s rescue, or the journalist’s, too?

Reuters quotes a local leader, currently negotiating for the release of the journalist, as saying that 12 helicopters remain on the ground.

“About 12 U.S. helicopters are now at Galkayo. We thank the United States. Pirates have spoilt the whole region’s peace and ethics. They are mafia,” Mohamed Ahmed Alim, leader of the Galmudug region, told Reuters.

He was speaking from Hobyo, a pirate base north of Haradheere, where he said he was negotiating the release of an American journalist seized on Saturday, also from Galkayo.

It turns out I was right. The pirates holding the journalist have moved the journalist three times since the Buchanan rescue.

“Holding hostages in one place is unlikely now because we are the next target,” [Somali pirate Hassan] Abdi said, referring to the raid in a phone conversation with The Associated Press. He expressed concern that the U.S. had pirate informants.

“It wasn’t just a hit and run operation, but long planned with the help of insiders among us,” Abdi said, noting the soldiers had struck at the time when the pirates were least on their guard.

The gang has moved an American kidnapped on Saturday in the northern Somali town of Galkayo three times in the last 24 hours, he said.

I’m curious, too, about Abdi’s claim we had informants from within the pirate group. Remember DOD claimed we took no captives from the pirates, but other sources said we took 3-5 captives back to Djibouti.

The AP story goes on to predict that pirates will increasingly keep their captives at sea, in mixed-nationality groups, to make such raids harder.

So I guess my suspicions yesterday were correct–this raid may do little to solve the pirate problem.

4th Circuit: Enemy Combatants Can’t Complain about Having Been Made Enemy Combatants

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As you’ve probably heard, the 4th Circuit rejected Jose Padilla’s suit against Donald Rumsfeld on Tuesday. Both Lyle Denniston and Steve Vladeck have good summaries of the decision, which basically says the courts can’t grant damages for constitutional abuses not otherwise covered by law until such time as Congress sees fit to cover them in law:

The factors counseling hesitation are many. We have canvassed them in some detail, but only to make a limited point: not that such litigation is categorically forbidden by the Constitution, but that courts should not proceed down this highly problematic road in the absence of affirmative action by Congress. If Congress were to create a damages remedy here, we would trust that the legislative process gave due consideration to the broader policy implications that we as judges are neither authorized nor well-positioned to balance on our own.

But if that’s not circular enough reasoning for you, here’s a more disturbing one–one which may have troubling implications given the recent codification of indefinite detention.

The 4th Circuit Opinion hews closely to the argument the government made in its amicus brief which, as I described last year, itself engaged in circular logic. It effectively invoked national security to say that the court couldn’t consider Padilla’s deprivation of due process. And then having bracketed off the lack of due process that got him put in the brig with no access to lawyers, they effectively punted on the torture complaint.

To explain their failure to treat torture in their filing, they say 1) that the other defendants are addressing it and 2) they don’t have to deal with it anyway because the President has said the US does not engage in torture (which is precisely what Bush said when torture was official policy):

In this brief, we do not address the details of Padilla’s specific treatment allegations, which have already been thoroughly briefed by the individual defendants.1

1 Notwithstanding the nature of Padilla’s allegations, this case does not require the court to consider the definition of torture. Torture is flatly illegal and the government has repudiated it in the strongest terms. Federal law makes it a criminal offense to engage in torture, to attempt to commit torture, or to conspire to commit torture outside the United States. See 18 U.S.C. § 2340A. Moreover, consistent with treaty obligations, the President has stated unequivocally that the United States does not engage in torture, see May 21, 2009 Remarks by the President on National Security.

Note that bit, though, where the government acknowledges that torture is illegal?

That’s important, because they base their objections to the Bivens complaint in part on the possibility that a court could review Padilla’s treatment–treatment he alleges amounts to torture, which the government accepts is illegal–and determine whether it was in fact torture and therefore illegal.

Padilla also seeks damages in regard to the lawfulness of his treatment while in military detention. Thus, a court would have to inquire into, and rule on the lawfulness of, the conditions of Padilla’s military confinement and the interrogation techniques employed against him. Congress has not provided any such cause of action, and, as the district court concluded (JA 1522), a court should not create a remedy in these circumstances given the national security and war powers implications.

And they’re arguing Congress–which passed laws making torture illegal (to say nothing of the Constitution prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment)–didn’t provide for a cause of action.

That is, Padilla can’t sue both because Congress has made it illegal but not provided a cause of action here and … national security!

Effectively, then, the government shielded torture by shielding the initial lack of due process from all oversight under national security and therefore depriving Padilla of recourse once he lost his access to due process.

In my opinion, the 4th Circuit brief actually magnifies this problem. Check out the language in these two passages:

Special factors do counsel judicial hesitation in implying
causes of action for enemy combatants held in military detention.

[snip]

With respect to detainees like Padilla, Congress has provided for limited judicial review of military commission decisions, but only by the District of Columbia Circuit Court of Appeals, and only after the full process in military courts has run its course. 10 U.S.C. § 950g. And to the extent that the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush, 553 U.S. 723 (2008), permitted further judicial examination of the detention of enemy combatants, it did so using the limited tool of the constitutionally guaranteed writ of habeas corpus—not an implied and open-ended civil damages
action. See id. at 797. [my emphasis]

That is, the 4th Circuit did not consider whether American citizens with no other recourse could sue under Bivens for having been turned into enemy combatants precisely to deprive them of their rights. Rather, it considered whether “enemy combatants held in military detention” and “detainees like Padilla” had access to Bivens. It thereby ignored the most fundamental part of the process, where the Bush Administration removed Padilla, a citizen, from civilian detention with access to due process, and made him an enemy combatant.

The 4th Circuit denies Padilla the ability to sue for being deprived of his constitutional right to due process by considering him not as a citizen deprived of his constitutional rights, but as a detainee whose constitutional rights had already been suspended.

Which makes the final passages of this opinion all the more nauseating. Having premised their entire decision not on Padilla’s rights as a citizen, but on his rights as an enemy combatant (even seemingly referring to him as a detainee, in the present tense), they then argue that there would be no incremental harm for Padilla between being a citizen convicted of a felony through due process and being an enemy combatant.

It is hard to imagine what “incremental” harm it does to Padilla’s reputation to add the label of “enemy combatant” to the fact of his convictions and the conduct that led to them.

This entire suit is about the magical power that term “enemy combatant” has to put an American citizen beyond the realm of due process (and, in Padilla’s case, to be tortured precisely because he has lost due process). That is precisely the logic the judges use throughout this opinion. And yet they simply can’t imagine what the difference between being a citizen–even one convicted of multiple felonies–and being an enemy combatant is?

And then there are the larger implications of this. In a world where indefinite detention is now codified into law, in a world where Padilla has always delimited the possible applications of claimed authority to hold American citizens captured in this country as enemy combatants, the circuit that covers CIA’s and JSOC’s actions–not to mention the two military brigs, Charleston and Quantico, that would be the most likely places to detain American citizens–just accorded that term, “enemy combatant,” magical status. Once applied to an American citizen, the 4th Circuit says, the Executive Branch is absolved of any infringements of a citizen’s constitutional rights, even the infringements of constitutional rights used to get him into that magic status in the first place.

What If Obama Sent SEAL Team 6 after Online Pirates?

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Let me start by saying that Jessica Buchanan, the American aid worker rescued with her Danish colleague from pirates last night by SEAL Team 6 in Somalia, sounds like a selfless woman; I’m happy for her and her family she is now safe.

But the rescue got me thinking about our country’s efforts to combat two types of pirates: those who exploit lawless areas around the globe to kidnap ships or people for ransom, and those who exploit international boundaries to evade copyright laws. So I wanted to look more closely at what went on here. I’m not sure either approach we’re using works (and I’m quite certain that SOPA would be worse), but I am interested in taking a step back and thinking about piracy in general.

First, the details. Here is Defense Secretary Panetta’s statement. President Obama released this statement on the raid.

On Monday, I authorized an operation to rescue Jessica Buchanan, an American citizen who was kidnapped and held against her will for three months in Somalia. Thanks to the extraordinary courage and capabilities of our Special Operations Forces, yesterday Jessica Buchanan was rescued and she is on her way home. As Commander-in-Chief, I could not be prouder of the troops who carried out this mission, and the dedicated professionals who supported their efforts.

Jessica Buchanan was selflessly serving her fellow human beings when she was taken hostage by criminals and pirates who showed no regard for her health and well-being. Last night I spoke with Jessica Buchanan’s father and told him that all Americans have Jessica in our thoughts and prayers, and give thanks that she will soon be reunited with her family. The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice. This is yet another message to the world that the United States of America will stand strongly against any threats to our people.

Buchanan and her colleague are just 2 of 150 western hostages held by groups described as Somali pirates

Obama said we would not tolerate the abduction of our people, but Buchanan has been in custody since October 25.

And this operation freed just two of 150 hostages currently held by groups described as Somai pirates. Hostages include Indian, South Korean, Filipino, and Danish sailors, as well as a British tourist and two Spanish medics kidnapped in Kenya. These hostages, of course, remain in custody.

Then there’s the American freelance journalist taken hostage Saturday from the same area, Galkayo, from where Buchanan was kidnapped last October.

Several local leaders in Galkayo had just returned from trying to secure the release of another American, a freelance journalist who was kidnapped last week in Galkayo. He remains in captivity in Hobyo, a pirate den on the Somali coast, because the pirates holding him refuse to let him go without a hefty ransom.

I would suggest his presence raises questions about what the ultimate goal for the raid was. Was it just Buchanan’s rescue, or the journalist’s, too?

Reuters quotes a local leader, currently negotiating for the release of the journalist, as saying that 12 helicopters remain on the ground.

“About 12 U.S. helicopters are now at Galkayo. We thank the United States. Pirates have spoilt the whole region’s peace and ethics. They are mafia,” Mohamed Ahmed Alim, leader of the Galmudug region, told Reuters.

Read more →

The FBI Feeding Fantasies for Fun and Fear

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Jim linked to this long Esquire story on the Waffle House plotters, the four senior citizens arrested last year for a plot to attack government workers and make ricin. It traces the plot from the online regrets of the leader of the plot, Fred Thomas, through the gateway drugs of Rush and Hannity and Beck to Mike Vanderboegh’s blog to the militia. It describes how the informant in the case, Joe Sims, largely drummed up the plot in an apparent effort to win leniency in the six sex crime charges against him. And it tracks all the details the government or Sims supplied that were necessary for this “plot,” including the money to buy the silencer and explosives.

It’s a story you could tell about many of the aspirational Islamic terrorists arrested in this country too, though there the gateway drug would go through Awlaki’s writings, mosques might play the role that the Waffle House did, and where mental illness often disables the culprit as much as these men’s age and infirmity.

That said, perhaps telling this story about old white men rather than young Islamic men makes it easier for author Tom Junod to capture the dynamic of many of the counterterror plots the FBI puts together.

He had never committed a crime. Now he was in jail for a crime he might not have been able to commit — for dreaming it, thinking it, planning it, and taking what the government calls “concrete steps” to carry it out. Of course, he never did carry it out, thank God, because of the government’s policy of preemption — because the FBI found out that he was in the grip of a murderous fantasy and stopped him before he could make it real. But Fred Thomas was also in the grip of something else besides fantasy, and what he was also in the grip of was the government that used its resources to make his fantasy real so that it could stop him from carrying it out. He was in the grip of a confidential informant who, over an eight-month period, kept calling him and coming to his home, and sat at the very table where I sat with Charlotte Thomas and drank coffee from a Christmas cup. And the confidential informant worked for the government — no, he worked for us, though we’re not supposed to know who he is or the nature of his résumé.

[snip]

The moral order was reversed: The old man who had committed no crime fell under the sway of a much younger man who was already charged with the kind of crimes synonymous with a betrayal of trust, indeed with evil itself. Through the government policy of preempting terror, of making terror happen in order to stop it from happening, the alleged author of a crime from which people instinctively recoil — incest — gained moral advantage over the alleged author of a crime that did not yet exist. What’s more, the younger man was given every possible resource to work toward the fruition of the hypothetical crimes of the older man in order to keep his own ass out of jail. It’s a kind of madness, and yet Charlotte Thomas didn’t see that Fred Thomas was going along with it. Oh, she saw Joe Sims enough to know that she didn’t like him. But she could never see that in some ways Joe Sims knew her husband of fifty-one years better than she did.

In this case, we may actually trade hard time for (alleged) sex crimes for convictions of these four wingnuts who had their fantasies fleshed out by the FBI. (Though, after reading this, I’m more convinced the two men primarily implicated in the ricin plot, Ray Adams and Samuel Crump, will beat their charges, since the most incriminating comments were not taped and therefore rely on the credibility of Sims.)

Which brings me back to the comments US Attorney Sally Quillian Yates made when announcing these arrests.

While many are focused on the threat posed by international violent extremists, this case demonstrates that we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security.

This is what counts as vigilance: recruiting a guy charged with molesting his step-daughters to incite an aspirational plot among senior citizens.

Ahsan Procures Adjournment to Feb. 1 in Gilani Contempt Case; Pasha Term to Expire; NATO Routes to Re-open?

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Aitzaz Ahsan announcing his Black Flag Week campaign in 2008.

In his much-anticipated appearance today before Pakistan’s Supreme Court, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani was represented by Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan. [I must admit to a bit of bias here. Ahsan became something of a personal hero to me when he organized Pakistan’s Black Flag Week in March of 2008, eventually resulting in thousands of lawyers taking to the street and successfully securing the release and reinstatement of the Supreme Court Chief Justice who had been sacked and arrested by Pervez Musharraf. The picture at left is a screengrab from this YouTube of an appeal he sent out in organizing Black Flag Week.] The proceeding against Gilani was adjourned until February 1, in order for Aitzaz to prepare his case more fully. It also appears that Gilani has been excused from further personal appearances at the court.

In other Pakistan developments today, it appears that Ahmed Shuja Pasha will not have his term extended again as head of Pakistan’s ISI spy agency. The selection of a new ISI head will provide yet another front of intrigue in the ongoing struggles between the Zardari government and Pakistan’s military and intelligence forces. Also, it appears that Pakistan is getting close to re-opening NATO’s supply routes through the country, but with the addition of tolls.

Here is Dawn on the court proceedings:

The Supreme Court on Thursday adjourned the prime minister’s contempt hearing to Feb 1, leaving a brewing political crisis over corruption cases and presidential immunity unresolved.

The court has also exempted the premier from appearing for the upcoming hearing of the case.

Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani appeared in the court today to explain why he should not be charged with contempt for failing to re-open old corruption cases against President Asif Ali Zardari.

/snip/

Ahsan requested the court for a month’s time to file a response. He said the time was required to access and go through the case’s record. Responding to which, Justice Nasir-ul-Mulk said that access to records could be provided in two days’ time.

The Express Tribune has more on the issue of why Gilani did not write a letter to Swiss authorities, asking them to re-open their prosecution of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari: Read more →

Inspiring Attorney-Client Crackdowns

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Those of us who watch Gitmo legal issues have wondered since late last year why the prison had imposed new clean team processes on communications between lawyers and their clients. We learned the beginnings of an answer today. DOD found a copy of the AQAP propaganda magazine Inspire in a detainee’s cell.

Navy Cmdr. Andrea Lockhart blurted out the embarrassing disclosure in defending the prison camps commander’s plan to give greater scrutiny to legal mail bound for alleged terrorists. She was discussing a system used by civilian lawyers to send materials to Guantánamo captives who are suing the U.S. for their freedom through habeas corpus petitions in Washington, D.C.

But the government either didn’t offer or doesn’t know why and how the magazine got there.

Pentagon and prison spokesman could not immediately provide details about which edition of the magazine reached the camps, whether a captive had actually seen one and how prison camp personnel discovered it.

And that’s all the more significant given a detail Spencer Ackerman noted on Twitter: Inspire is English.

Most of the detainees left at Gitmo are Arabs.

Granted, it’s a very glossy magazine. The picture above–the most innocuous I could find in the most recent edition [note, Inspire downloads are tracked by DHS and DOJ, so think twice before you download]–appears in a discussion of torture; perhaps it represents waterboarding.

But for detainees with limited English skills, even quotes like this one, which appeared in the same edition and was attributed to Human Rights lawyer Clive Stafford Smith, appearing among a bunch of self-criticisms of our conduct on the war on terror, would be of interest to detainees, but not necessarily great reading material.

It would be absurd to say that torture never gets a result that’s true; of course it does. I mean I could torture you and get your name very quickly. But the first question you always have to ask is this: is torturing someone making the world safer or is it actually inspiring people, that we’re such hypocrites about democracy and the rule of law, that they hate us more? Now you cannot look at the last ten years and say that what we did in Guantanamo Bay and the torture that we’ve done elsewhere has made the world safer; that’s just an untenable position.

That is, there surely would be topics of interest in the magazine, but Gitmo detainees aren’t the audience. (In this issue, there’s one more mention of Gitmo.)

So why did a detainee have one in his cell?

Maybe the magazine was (remember, it wasn’t necessarily this edition) given to detainees to show what others were saying about the detainees or the torture. Maybe the folks running Gitmo believe whoever got the magazine is still trying to exert operational control, which would be a legitimate, serious concern (though would still not implicate the lawyers).

And I find it rather interesting that this happened some time after Samir Khan, the producer of Inspire, got killed in the Anwar al-Awlaki drone strike.

Or it could be something else, as Shayana Kadidal noted:

“Detainees have in the past received books, truck magazines, chewing tobacco, personal electronics, and fancy underwear as perks of cooperating with interrogators,” said attorney Shayana Kadidal of The Center for Constitutional Rights.

“If this magazine was provided to a detainee by an interrogator, it would not mark the first time that sort of thing has happened,” he said, “nor the first time the government had implied that the detainee’s attorneys must have brought him the item.”

Frankly, I don’t know what to make of it. It could mean anything from KSM exercising operational influence again–which would be a genuine concern–to a guard being nice to a detainee.

But the same magazine that justified the killing of American citizens now serves to justify the infringement of attorney-client privilege.

Turkish Double Talk

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And just because this seems to connect all my posts from today.

Today’s Zaman, January 17, 2012:

According to reports by Turkish intelligence agencies, Heron unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) operated by Israel that have been observed in Hatay and Adana provinces in recent months spied for the terrorist Kurdistan Worker’s Party (PKK).

Turkish intelligence agencies prepared a report after the detection of two Israeli Herons in Hatay and Adana roughly two months ago, claiming that the Herons are collecting intelligence on Turkish military units in order to aid PKK operations in those regions.

The report asserts that the PKK’s training camps in northern Syria, near Turkey’s Hatay border “where Turkish military border posts are relatively weak” were established in those locations based on intelligence collected by the UAVs.

Today’s Zaman, January 17, 2012:

Intelligence units have warned that the Quds Force, a special unit of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, plans to send a group to Turkey to carry out a series of demonstrations that may include a bomb attack on the Embassy or Consulate General of the United States.

Read more →

Fans, Fertilizer, and False Flags

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I’d like to look more closely at the alleged Hezbollah terror plot announced last week in Bangkok.

Thai police said they had broken up a terror plot aimed at tourist sites in Bangkok, after U.S. warnings triggered in part by worsening tensions with Iran following the killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran.

National police chief Gen. Priewpan Damapong said a man in custody for questioning on Saturday said the bomb plot had been called off when authorities caught wind of it. Gen. Priewpan described the man as of Lebanese descent, with links to the Iranian-backed, Lebanon-based militant group Hezbollah. Another suspect is still at large, he said.

Last April, in what was billed as an unprecedented step, Mossad issued a warning (leaked to the media) to Israelis overseas about an imminent Hezbollah plot. Among those implicated in this imminent plot that apparently never came to fruition was Lebanese businessman Naim Haris, who was allegedly in charge of recruiting for Hezbollah overseas. Reportedly, some time last year Shin Bet–also in an unusual move–released a picture of Haris, though I haven’t found any public record of it in a quick Google search.

Then, on December 18 of last year, Israel alerted US and Thai officials about the presence of two Lebanese terrorists in Bangkok. Those two alleged terrorists are presumed to be Haris and Atris Hussein.

On December 18, Israel reportedly told the US and Thailand about the presence of at least two Hezbollah members in Bangkok. The three countries then began a secret, three-week-long hunt of the terror suspects

Last Friday, the US Embassy in Thailand issued a warning that foreign terrorists might be trying to attack tourists in Bangkok.

This message alerts U.S. citizens in Thailand that foreign terrorists may be currently looking to conduct attacks against tourist areas in Bangkok in the near future.  U.S. citizens are urged to exercise caution when visiting public areas where large groups of Western tourists gather in Bangkok.

[snip]

Note:  Due to a technical error, some recipients received this message – followed by a recall message – a few minutes later.  Please disregard the recall message.

Israel’s Counterterrorism Bureau did the same.

I checked with a friend who lives and works–at a US multinational–within blocks of one of the alleged targets, and he got no specialized warning.

By the time the Israeli warning, at least, went out, Thai police had already arrested Atris at the airport. Read more →

Dick Cheney’s Turkey Talk

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Rick Perry apparently won the award at last night’s GOP Reality Show for most belligerent, ill-considered comment, calling to kick Turkey out of NATO because it had ties to Islamic terrorists.

And while it doesn’t have the same utter lack of caution, I’ve always wondered why this passage from Dick Cheney’s autobiographical novel never attracted more attention:

I think we failed to understand the magnitude of the shift that was taking place in Turkey. The significance of an Islamic government taking power in one of America’s most important NATO allies was in a sense obscured because of all the other challenges we faced. Today, Turkey appears to be in the middle of a dangerous transition from a key NATO ally to an Islamist-governed nation developing close ties with countries like Iran and Syria at the expense of its relations with the United States and Israel. (379)

Sure, PapaDick didn’t call them terrorists–not explicitly. But when I read this I thought the subtext was just as shocking as what Rick Perry said last night.