posted June 13, 2009 02:47 PM         

Since the federal courts now view every place on earth as being within the jurisdiction of federal judges/courts, that was a natural follow on...that it would lead to captured enemy combatants being read their rights.

Many thought that was just hyperbole. Guess not.

No nation on earth..past or present has ever considered enemy combatants...either legal combatants in uniform or illegal out of uniform combatants to be a law enforcement matter.

Not until THE ONE, THE MESSIAH ended the war on terrorists and terror tactics.

So, it follows that THE ONE, THE MESSIAH would order that captured terrorists be read their Miranda Rights.

"You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney present during questioning. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights?"

Dick Cheney is right. O'Bomber is an incompetent fool who singlehandedly has made America less safe. O'Bomber is not fit to be Commander in Chief of US military forces and should be impeached, convicted and removed from office immediately.

What terrorist in his right mind is going to answer any questions after being read a Miranda Warning. Duh and double Duh.

posted June 13, 2009 02:57 PM         

Not Right
The Obama administration grants Miranda rights to detainees in Afghanistan.
by Stephen F. Hayes
06/10/2009 2:05:00 PM

When 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammad was captured on March 1, 2003, he was not cooperative. "I'll talk to you guys after I get to New York and see my lawyer," he said, according to former CIA Director George Tenet.

Of course, KSM did not get a lawyer until months later, after his interrogation was completed, and Tenet says that the information the CIA obtained from him disrupted plots and saved lives. "I believe none of these successes would have happened if we had had to treat KSM like a white-collar criminal -- read him his Miranda rights and get him a lawyer who surely would have insisted that his client simply shut up," Tenet wrote in his memoirs.

If Tenet is right, it's a good thing KSM was captured before Barack Obama became president. For, the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here's the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today -- foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them and they're reading them their rights -- Mirandizing these foreign fighters," says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a
former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. "I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn't been briefed on it, I didn't know about it. We're still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative."

That effort, which elevates the FBI and other law enforcement agencies and diminishes the role of intelligence and military officials, was described in a May 28 Los Angeles Times article.

The FBI and Justice Department plan to significantly expand their role in global counter-terrorism operations, part of a U.S. policy shift that will replace a CIA-dominated system of clandestine detentions and interrogations with one built around transparent investigations and prosecutions.

Under the "global justice" initiative, which has been in the works for several months, FBI agents will have a central role in overseas counter-terrorism cases. They will expand their questioning of suspects and evidence-gathering to try to ensure that criminal prosecutions are an option, officials familiar with the effort said.

Thanks in part to the popularity of law and order television shows and movies, many Americans are familiar with the Miranda warning -- so named because of the landmark 1966 Supreme Court case Miranda v. Arizona that required police officers and other law enforcement officials to advise suspected criminals of their rights.

You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning. If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.

A lawyer who has worked on detainee issues for the U.S. government offers this rationale for the Obama administration's approach. "If the US is mirandizing certain suspects in Afghanistan, they're likely doing it to ensure that the treatment of the suspect and the collection of information is done in a manner that will ensure the suspect can be prosecuted in a US court at some point in the future."

But Republicans on Capitol Hill are not happy. "When they mirandize a suspect, the first thing they do is warn them that they have the 'right to remain silent,'" says Representative Pete Hoekstra, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. "It would seem the last thing we want is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed or any other al-Qaeda terrorist to remain silent. Our focus should be on preventing the next attack, not giving radical jihadists a new tactic to resist interrogation--lawyering up."

According to Mike Rogers, that is precisely what some human rights organizations are advising detainees to do. "The International Red Cross, when they go into these detention facilities, has now started telling people -- 'Take the option. You want a lawyer.'"

Rogers adds: "The problem is you take that guy at three in the morning off of a compound right outside of Kabul where he's building bomb materials to kill US soldiers, and read him his rights by four, and the Red Cross is saying take the lawyer -- you have now created quite a confusion amongst the FBI, the
CIA and the United States military. And confusion is the last thing you want in a combat zone."

One thing is clear, though. A detainee who is not talking cannot provide information about future attacks. Had Khalid Sheikh Mohammad had a lawyer, Tenet wrote, "I am confident that we would have obtained none of the information he had in his head about imminent threats against the American people."
http://weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/605iidws.asp

posted June 13, 2009 03:06 PM         

On two consecutive warm summer days last July, the House Armed Services Committee debated procedures for interrogating war-on-terror detainees. There were sharp exchanges between the lawmakers and during testimony from expert witnesses and disagreement on virtually every aspect of U.S. detention policy.

There was, however, one point on which there was consensus, even unanimity: that there was no need to read Miranda rights to detainees.

"There is not now nor has there ever been any interest by any member of Congress in applying the Miranda warnings to the battlefield," said Representative Vic Snyder, a Democrat from Arkansas, on July 30, 2008. Snyder, a former lawyer and ex-Marine, went on.

I don't know why that topic keeps coming up. It was a red herring. Every year, it's been brought up since this war began. And there's not even a point in talking about it. .  .  . There is no interest in this Congress in applying any Miranda warning to the battlefield. And if anyone were to apply it, I can assure you that every member of Congress and the American people would be shocked. They would not want that.

The next day Representative Patrick Murphy, a Democrat from Pennsylvania, echoed those sentiments. Murphy, an Iraq war veteran and a former prosecutor, said:

[W]hen you're fighting enemy combatants they don't get constitutional rights on the battlefield, and we don't give them Miranda warnings or Article 31(b) warnings as we call them in military justice.

But--according to Representative Mike Rogers, a Republican from Michigan and a senior member
of the House Intelligence Committee--the FBI has been reading Miranda rights to high-value detainees at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan. Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, interviewed interrogators at those detention facilities on a factfinding trip he took to Afghanistan in late May.

Officials from intelligence and law enforcement agencies explained to Rogers that they had been told to read high-value detainees their Miranda rights.

"Think about this. Some guy travels from Tunisia, shows up in Afghanistan--masterminding this plot with local insurgent leaders. Taliban, likely, because, you know, any enemy of your enemy is your friend," Rogers explains. "He goes out, he's leading a team to kill U.S. soldiers, 5,000 miles away from home, on the battlefield. They get snatched up--either before it happens or, most likely, after it happens--take him to the detention facility and an FBI agent reads him his rights." Rogers shakes his head. "Reads him his rights. That is not a law enforcement event. That's a military, enemy combatant event."

Rogers says he sought confirmation from senior intelligence and law enforcement officials. An official at the CIA did not know about the practices, but the FBI confirmed that some detainees are Mirandized and explained the procedures. "I sat down with a very high-ranking FBI official," says Rogers, "and he told me how it's happening."

Rogers also says that interrogators expressed frustration that the Red Cross has been advising detainees to take advantage of their new rights and to talk to interrogators only once they had been given a lawyer.

When THE WEEKLY STANDARD broke this story online on June 9, military officials denied that Operation Enduring Freedom detainees had been Mirandized. That same day, however, the Justice Department released a statement acknowledging that detainees had, in fact, been read Miranda rights, but disputing suggestions that this was a change in "overall policy."

There has been no policy change and no blanket instruction issued for FBI agents to Mirandize detainees overseas. While there have been specific cases in which FBI agents have Mirandized suspects overseas, at both Bagram and in other situations, in order to preserve the quality of evidence obtained, there has been no overall policy change with respect to detainees.

Yet several of the individuals responsible for conducting the interrogations of detainees told Rogers that a "change of policy" is exactly what has occurred.

Officials at the Pentagon, with the U.S. military in Afghanistan, at U.S. Central Command, and at the National Security Council referred all questions to the Justice Department. But taking questions after a speech in Washington on Thursday, CENTCOM commander General David Petraeus acknowledged that some detainees had been Mirandized, a practice he said he was "comfortable" with. "This is the FBI doing what the FBI does. There is a very limited number of cases where this has been done."

The Justice Department has refused to be specific about the number. Matt Miller, the top public affairs official at the Justice Department, said:

I can't comment on how many people have been Mirandized in recent months or years, as
that information might relate to ongoing investigations and prosecutions, but there has been no policy change--the FBI Mirandizes suspects overseas to preserve the quality of evidence and does so on a case-by-case basis, depending on the circumstances.

The Red Cross, too, declined to discuss numbers, citing its "direct and confidential dialogue with U.S. authorities." But Simon Shorno, a spokesman for the Red Cross, said that while his organization will continue to press for more rights for detainees, "some progress has been made."

Obama administration officials told reporters on background that the policy was not a change because detainees had been Mirandized during the Bush administration. That's technically true, but Bush administration officials familiar with detainee decisions told me that they can remember only one detainee who was Mirandized. They caution that there may have been more than one, but the story of Aafia Siddiqui stands out.

Siddiqui is a Pakistani woman married to the nephew of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. She was detained in Ghazni, Afghanistan, and taken to a U.S. facility for interrogation. Shortly before her questioning began, she stole the M-4 rifle of a U.S. Army warrant officer and began shooting. (As she did this, she shouted, "Allahu Akhbar!" and told an interpreter to "Get the f-- out of here!") Siddiqui was shot in the abdomen and, after a continued struggle, subdued. No one else was hurt. It was after this incident that she was read her rights having just committed an obvious crime. She was brought to New York and charged with attempted murder. Bush administration officials say Siddiqui's case is notable because it is an exception.

Late last week, Dean Boyd, a spokesman for the Justice Department, provided a more specific statement on the Miranda controversy.

The vast majority of terrorism detainees captured abroad are and continue to be interviewed without Miranda warnings for intelligence collection purposes. In Afghanistan, where the United States has detained several thousand terrorism detainees, only a small handful have been Mirandized. Several of these Mirandized interviews in Afghanistan took place before Jan. 20, 2009. The determination whether to Mirandize a terrorism detainee is made strictly on a case-by-case basis by career agents and prosecutors, in consultation with other relevant agencies. If, based on that consultation, it appears that national security may be best served by prosecuting that detainee, or at least preserving the prosecution option, the detainee may be Mirandized to ensure that his/her statements are admissible at trial and that the detainee can be brought to justice.

Shortly after Boyd's statement, Rogers--joined by House minority leader John Boehner--demanded more information from the Obama administration. Rogers introduced a "Resolution of Inquiry" that would, if it passed the Democratic-led House, formally ask the Obama administration to provide any information related to Mirandizing detainees.

"The idea of reading Miranda rights to terrorists captured on the battlefield is sheer lunacy," Boehner said. "It's so far outside the mainstream, in fact, that President Obama himself mocked it on 60 Minutes a few months ago."

Rogers says that the "Resolution of Inquiry" will force discussion of the issue--and the Justice Department's broader Global Justice Initiative--at least on the committee level. And that discussion could prove interesting.

The big concern for Representative Snyder is U.S. military personnel reading Miranda rights to enemy combatants on the battlefield. He says he has no objection as a matter of policy to detainees being Mirandized by the FBI.

posted June 13, 2009 05:46 PM         

I doubt O'Bomber Kool-Aid drinkers are going to wise up. Further, I doubt they give a damn about O'Bomber's shredding of the Constitution...so long as they think there's something in O'Bomber's pantry for them personally.

posted June 13, 2009 08:03 PM         

That doesn't seem to have happened in spite of 3 or was it 4 "apology tours" O'Bomber has made apologizing for America to foreign audiences.