Professor argues that legal critics of war on terror are legitimate targets

William Bradford is an assistant professor in the department of law at the US military academy at West Point. Bradford claims legal scholars critical of the war on terror are a "treasonous" fifth column to be classified as enemy combatants.

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As enemy combatants, the scholars are legitimate targets who can be attacked using drones or other methods. Bradford argues other lawful targets include "law school facilities, scholar's home offices and media outlets where they give interviews." Even though these are civilian areas, they are areas where there is a "causal connection between the content disseminated and Islamist crimes incited." Bradford also suggests that "Islamic holy sites" should be threatened in the war against Islamic radicalism. The war should be prosecuted vigorously, he argues, "even if it means great destruction, innumerable enemy casualties and civilian collateral damage."

Perhaps you think the article was published in the satirical outlet The Onion, but not so, it was published in the National Security Law Journal, a journal run by students at the George Mason School of Law. The entire article called: "Trahison des Professeurs: The Critical Law of Armed Conflict Academy as an Islamist Fifth Column" can be downloaded at the law journals' website. The French Trahison des Professeurs(treason of the professors) is a reference to a 1920s attack on French intellectuals:“Trahison des professeurs” (treason of the professors) is an homage to “trahison des clercs,” the title of a work decrying early twentieth-century European intellectuals for failing to quash emotional and political arguments and make reasoned judgments about national security. JULIEN BENDA, TRAHISON DES CLERCS (1927).

In the introduction to the paper Bradford identifies himself: "Associate Professor of Law, National Security, and Strategy, National Defense University, Washington, D.C., United States, and National Defense College, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. Ph.D. (Northwestern), LL.M. (Harvard). U.S. Army Reserve, 1995-2001." As has happened previously, at least some of his credentials are simply wrong. A representative of the National Defense University said that Bradford had been a contractor at the prestigious school but "never an NDU employee nor an NDU professor".

Bradford got all upset when five members of a committee reviewing him at Indiana university said they did not believe he deserved tenure but did authorize his re-appointment. Bradford reacted angrily on his blog, on the radio, and even "The O'Reilly Factor." He claimed that Liberal faculty members were pushing him out because he was conservative, a war veteran, and a Native American who did not fit the liberal mould. Bradford is a member of the Chiricahua Apache tribe. Quite a bit of his scholarly work is on Indian law and on this issue he claims his views are radical. He thinks that Indian tribes should be treated more as if they were nations, and that land taken from them illegally should be returned.

However, Bradford ended up resigning from Indiana in 2005 after he lied about his military service in his faculty profile. He claimed he had served in the infantry from 1994 to 2001 and been a major in the Special Forces. Research showed that Bradford had seen no active duty, was not in the infantry and was discharged as a second lieutenant. He had been in the Army Reserve from September 1995 to October 2001. He saw no active duty.

Bradford was hired at West Point only on August 1 this year. Army colonel Christopher Kasker noted Bradford's paper was written long before he was hired at West Point and the paper represented only the views of Bradford and not the institution. Latest news is that Bradford had resigned from his position at West Point.

Targets widened for drone attacks.

The widening of targets has been done with absolutely no publicity or discussion on the political ramifications nor the consequences for civilian casualties. The Obama administration is just as bad on this matter as Bush if not moreso. There has been some discussion of what laws might apply and how the attacks might be justified but nothing about proportionately nor has the information requested been granted. This is from latimes.

latimes.com

CIA drones have broader list of targets

The agency since 2008 has been secretly allowed to kill unnamed suspects in Pakistan.

By David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

8:37 PM PDT, May 5, 2010

Reporting from Washington


The CIA received secret permission to attack a wider range of targets, including suspected militants whose names are not known, as part of a dramatic expansion of its campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's border region, according to current and former counter-terrorism officials.

The expanded authority, approved two years ago by the Bush administration and continued by President Obama, permits the agency to rely on what officials describe as "pattern of life" analysis, using evidence collected by surveillance cameras on the unmanned aircraft and from other sources about individuals and locations.

The information then is used to target suspected militants, even when their full identities are not known, the officials said. Previously, the CIA was restricted in most cases to killing only individuals whose names were on an approved list.

The new rules have transformed the program from a narrow effort aimed at killing top Al Qaeda and Taliban leaders into a large-scale campaign of airstrikes in which few militants are off-limits, as long as they are deemed to pose a threat to the U.S., the officials said.

Instead of just a few dozen attacks per year, CIA-operated unmanned aircraft now carry out multiple missile strikes each week against safe houses, training camps and other hiding places used by militants in the tribal belt bordering Afghanistan.

As a matter of policy, CIA officials refuse to comment on the covert drone program. Those who are willing to discuss it on condition of anonymity refuse to describe in detail the standards of evidence they use for drone strikes, saying only that strict procedures are in place to ensure that militants are being targeted. But officials say their surveillance yields so much detail that they can watch for the routine arrival of particular vehicles or the characteristics of individual people.

Dead terrorists often turn up alive.

In the case of drone attacks very often intelligence about who is killed is suspect. Those reporting to US intelligence know what the intelligence officers want to hear. Militants and militant leaders were killed. So that is what they verify. I expect that often the militants themselves may play along especially when leaders are reported killed. If the leaders are dead they will not be targeted any more. I often wonder when the militants themselves verify killings whether that is not just a ruse. This is from Washington Times.

Wanted: Accurate intel on 'dead' terrorists




Ashish Kumar Sen

Taliban leader Qari Hussain? Killed in January 2008 ... until he appeared at a news conference a few months later in Waziristan.

Al Qaeda official Mohammad Ilyas Kashmiri? Annihilated in a drone attack in September ... but still able to give an exclusive interview in October.

Taliban honcho Hakimullah Mehsud? Wiped out in a missile attack in January ... or was he?

Reports on Thursday that Mehsud was only wounded in that U.S. drone attack have prompted questions about the quality of intelligence emerging from Pakistan, a key U.S. ally in the war against al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Bruce Riedel, a CIA veteran currently with the Brookings Institution, described the latest reports as "a useful reminder that claims of the drones' successes need to be judged with caution."

"Intelligence is not a science experiment," Mr. Riedel said. "It is a difficult task of resolving conflicting data over time."

According to an Associated Press dispatch, four intelligence officers said Pakistan's main spy agency now thinks Mehsud is alive, citing electronic surveillance and reports from sources in the field, including from inside the Taliban.

U.S. officials privately have expressed frustration with the level of cooperation from Pakistani officials in the fight against militant groups.

Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agency helped create the Taliban in the 1990s. Despite pressure from the U.S. to sever links with the militants in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, U.S. officials and analysts say some elements in the Pakistani establishment remain sympathetic to terrorist groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba.

"Our close relationship with the Pakistanis is based on common interests, particularly our shared commitment to fight terror," said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the issue. "They have people dying almost every day, after all. But there are some groups that at least some parts of the Pakistani state see differently than we do."

The official said that when it comes to fighting al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, "there's really no daylight" between the Washington and Islamabad.

Still, the premature announcement of the death or capture of a terrorist is far from uncommon.

In January, Pakistani authorities announced that they had arrested Adam Gadahn, an American al Qaeda spokesman wanted in the U.S. on a charge of treason, in Karachi. Days later, they announced they hadn't arrested him after all.

While Pakistan's military has acted against al Qaeda and the Pakistani Taliban, both of which have carried out several attacks in Pakistan and are viewed as direct threats to the state, it has been less eager to take on the Afghan Taliban.

"To speak to the Taliban, you have to go through the Pakistani army and the ISI," Gilles Dorronsoro, a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told a meeting this week, confirming links among the Pakistani army, the ISI and the Taliban.

"Pakistan is both playing with the radicals and trying to have a relationship with the Americans," he said. "It is too late to ask the Pakistani army to reverse its policy of supporting the Taliban."

On Feb. 10, Pakistani Interior Minister Rehman Malik confirmed reports of Mehsud's death, which the Taliban promptly dismissed as a lie and then insisted Mehsud was alive.

The CIA also never confirmed Mehsud's death.

However, a U.S. counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Mehsud had not been seen or heard from since the drone strike.

"If Hakimullah really is alive, let him prove it. He never had a problem going before the cameras. But, for the past few months, he's nowhere to be seen," the official said. "His group isn't one that traditionally led from the cave in silence."

The Taliban said it would not offer any evidence, such as a video recording, because doing so could help security forces hunt down Mehsud, the AP reported.

A Pakistani Embassy spokesman in Washington said he could not confirm reports that Mehsud was alive.

"His absence is the Taliban's problem, not ours. It's already been shown that he can be hit," the U.S. counterterrorism official said. "As Baitullah Mehsud learned to his peril, if you're a terrorist figure in that part of the world, you have to be smart ... and lucky," the official added, referring to the former leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in a U.S. strike in August.

Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said he had seen "no evidence" that Mehsud "is operational today or is executing or exerting authority over the Pakistan Taliban, as he once did."

"So I don't know if that reflects him being alive or dead, but he clearly is not running the Pakistani Taliban anymore," Mr. Morrell told reporters.

The Taliban waited three weeks to confirm Baitullah Mehsud's death. That incident spawned reports that two likely successors - Hakimullah Mehsud and Waliur Rehman - had engaged in a gunfight in which one or both militants had been killed.

That report also proved to be inaccurate, and Hakimullah Mehsud later met with reporters to prove that he was in fact alive.

In January, he appeared in a video with a Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees in Afghanistan in December.

Ayesha Siddiqa, a visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University's School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, said he was not surprised that Mehsud could have survived the drone attack.

"It doesn't take rocket science to discover that if, as it was indicated in the news, he had died in Multan then somebody ought to have seen his dead body. None of that happened," Ms. Siddiqa said.

"His death and rebirth are part of the larger psy-ops. At this point, it is tough to determine truth from lies, which makes fighting very difficult," she said.

Kucinich speaks out on extrajudicial killings

There seems to be a willingness to mute any criticism of policies which under George Bush would have led to huge liberal outcries. Cogent criticism of these policies have been left to people such as Ron Paul on the right and Kucinich on the left while mainstream liberals are silent. This is from the nation.

Kucinich: White House Assassination Policy Is Extrajudicial killings.

by JEREMY SCAHILL

April 15, 2010

There has been almost universal silence among Congressional Democrats on the Obama administration's recently revealed decision to authorize the assassination of a US citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki. Al-Awlaki, who now lives in Yemen, has been accused of providing inspiration for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged "underwear bomber," and Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood shooter. In recent weeks, there has been a dramatic surge in US government chatter about the alleged threat posed by al-Awlaki, with anonymous US officials accusing him of directly participating in terror "plots" (his family passionately disputes this).

Several Democrats refused, through spokespeople, to comment on the assassination plan when contacted by The Nation, including Senator Russ Feingold and Representative Jan Schakowsky, both of whom serve on the Intelligence Committees. Representative Jane Harman, who serves on the Homeland Security Committee, said recently that Awlaki is "probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us."
One of the few Democrats to publicly address the issue of government-sanctioned assassinations is Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich. "I don't support it--period," he said in an interview. "I think people in both parties that are concerned about the Constitution should be speaking out on this. I can't account for what anyone else doesn't do."

Kucinich told The Nation he has sent several letters to the Obama administration raising questions about the potential unconstitutionality of the policy, as well as possible violations of international law, but has received no response. "With all the smart people that are in that administration, they've got to know the risks that they're taking here with violations of law," he says.

Targeted killings are not a new Obama administration policy. Beginning three days after his swearing in, President Obama has authorized scores of lethal drone strikes, including against specific individuals, in Pakistan and Afghanistan, surpassing the Bush era numbers. The elite Joint Special Operations Command maintains a list of individuals, including US citizens, which it is authorized to assassinate. In January, Dana Priest reported in the Washington Post that the CIA had US citizens on an assassination list, but the Post later ran a correction stating that only JSOC had "a target list that includes several Americans." The policy of the CIA targeting al-Awlaki, a US citizen, for assassination, therefore, appeared to be a new development, at least in terms of public awareness of approved government assassinations.

"In the real world, things don't work out quite so neatly as they seem to in the heads of the CIA," says Kucinich. "There's always the possibility of blowback, which could endanger high-ranking US officials. There's the inevitable licensing of rogue groups that comes about from policies that are not strictly controlled and that get sloppy--so you have zero accountability. And that's not even to get into an over-arching issue of the morality of assassination policies, which are extra-constitutional, extra-judicial. It's very dangerous from every possible perspective."

He added: "The assassination policies vitiate the presumption of innocence and the government then becomes the investigator, policeman, prosecutor, judge, jury, executioner all in one. That raises the greatest questions with respect to our constitution and our democratic way of life."

Kucinich says the case of al-Awlaki is an attempt to make "a short-cut around the Constitution," saying, "Short-cuts often belie the deep and underlying questions around which nations rise and fall. We are really putting our nation in jeopardy by pursuing this kind of policy."

About Jeremy Scahill
Jeremy Scahill, a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at The Nation Institute, is the author of the bestselling Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army, published by Nation Books. He is an award-winning investigative journalist and correspondent for the national radio and TV program Democracy Now!. more...
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