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The CIA and Wrongful Detention

The Washington Post reported on the “Masri case” and on the CIA practice of “Rendition” of alleged terrorists. The article gives a negative outlook on the American detention procedures. After reading the article and hearing previous news stories about prisoner abuse in Guantanamo Bay the American public and world get the impression that our procedures are rash, corrupt, and biased.

There are a few things to keep in mind before signing new laws to grant rights of American jurisprudence to foreign enemies or suspects and spurn the system.

It is important to not let a few CIA “mistakes” cloud the difficult job they are expected to perform to protect the American public and allies from harm. Under these circumstances they cannot afford to lose a potential terrorist and would rather err on the side of over caution than under caution (you would too if you carried such a responsibility).

Also some of these terrorists are wily if they know they can get media sympathy to be released they will. This fact has been proved at Guantanamo Bay, a few notorious terrorists once released from “wrongful retention” retuned to Afghanistan and other countries and began spreading terror with double vengeance while gaining the respect of their co-terrorists by their escape. Doubtless they also spread tips for getting out of detention.

Another thing to consider is that the CIA, because they are under cover, deals with many countries and peoples not all with U.S standards of ethics. At times abuses occur without U.S sanction; this is one of the weaknesses of covert justice. The United States dealt honorably in the “Masri case” they could have hid the CIA’s mistake of mistaken identity, but they chose the honorable honest approach and admitted their mistake.

The current administration should be praised for admitting its mistakes and while it improves its procedures. We all make mistakes and err in judgment, what distinguishes the “men from the boys” is how we deal with our failures. Since our government chose the difficult right choice, they should not be criticized for openly declaring their mistakes.

There are many countries in the world who criticize the United States when its mistakes become known; however, many times these countries subject their own people to unimaginable torture. Americans can be proud of their heritage of freedom and equal justice and keep themselves accountable to that standard so that our prized liberty is not stained by abuse.

Why our troops must remain in Iraq

Senator Lieberman gave a great opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal after his visit to Iraq. His colleagues in the Senate would do well to listen to his timely words.

All Americans can read this article and take heart. They can inform their elected representatives that they do not support cowards who retreat just when the fight is the thickest and victory is around the corner for reelection next November.

The following are some highlights of his opinion piece:

“None of these remarkable changes would have happened without the coalition forces led by the U.S. And, I am convinced, almost all of the progress in Iraq and throughout the Middle East will be lost if those forces are withdrawn faster than the Iraqi military is capable of securing the country.

The leaders of Iraq's duly elected government understand this, and they asked me for reassurance about America's commitment. The question is whether the American people and enough of their representatives in Congress from both parties understand this. I am disappointed by Democrats who are more focused on how President Bush took America into the war in Iraq almost three years ago, and by Republicans who are more worried about whether the war will bring them down in next November's elections, than they are concerned about how we continue the progress in Iraq in the months and years ahead.

Here is an ironic finding I brought back from Iraq. While U.S. public opinion polls show serious declines in support for the war and increasing pessimism about how it will end, polls conducted by Iraqis for Iraqi universities show increasing optimism. Two-thirds say they are better off than they were under Saddam, and a resounding 82% are confident their lives in Iraq will be better a year from now than they are today. What a colossal mistake it would be for America's bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will and, in the famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.

The leaders of America's military and diplomatic forces in Iraq, Gen. George Casey and Ambassador Zal Khalilzad, have a clear and compelling vision of our mission there. It is to create the environment in which Iraqi democracy, security and prosperity can take hold and the Iraqis themselves can defend their political progress against those 10,000 terrorists who would take it from them.

Does America have a good plan for doing this, a strategy for victory in Iraq? Yes we do. And it is important to make it clear to the American people that the plan has not remained stubbornly still but has changed over the years. Mistakes, some of them big, were made after Saddam was removed, and no one who supports the war should hesitate to admit that; but we have learned from those mistakes and, in characteristic American fashion, from what has worked and not worked on the ground. The administration's recent use of the banner "clear, hold and build" accurately describes the strategy as I saw it being implemented last week.”

The entire article can be viewed here.