Speaking of Terrorism (and aren't we always?), I'll be on MSNBC with Dylan Ratigan this morning, at roughly 9:00 a.m. EST, discussing the spurt of domestic terrorism arrests lately and what it means.

That's simple. Zazi was arrested just when the Senate Judiciary Committee came out with its proposed changes to make the PATRIOT act and FISA a little more civil rights friendly. The hubbub over his arrest watered down those improvements significantly when the Committee next worked on the bill.

This week's arrest of the fellow intent on spraying malls with automatic weapon fire (Mehanna)came less than 24 hours after the House Judiciary Committee came out with their proposals to reign in the abuses in the PATRIOT act and FISA. Look at the Mehanna story carefully. He was first arrested in 2008. Why did they wait until this week to re-arrest him and make the claims about mall attacks?

Obama has been listening too much to John Brennan again. Brennan wants to keep illegal datamining operations going. The DOJ is going along by making splashy arrests perfectly timed and reliant on just the type of datamining "needed" in the war on terror.

I find it very surprising that Rumsfeld allowed this report to become public, but I find it even more surprising that we don't find members of the usual neocon moron parade (eg Michael O'Hanlon, et al) packing the membership of the working group that put the report together. Here is the list of participants in the study, from page 99:

Chairman

Mr. Vince Vitto C.S. Draper Laboratory

Executive Secretary

Mr. Mark Ellis OUSD

Members

Dr. Anita Jones University of Virginia

Mr. Bran Ferren Applied Minds, Inc.

Mr. Bruce Gregory George Washington University

Mr. Dan Kuehl National Defense University

Dr. Joe Markowitz Consultant

Mr. David Morey DMG, Inc.

Mr. Robert Nesbit The Mitre Corporation

Dr. Michael Vlahos Johns Hopkins University

Government Advisors

Mr. Joel Fischman Department of State

Mr. David Jakubek DDR&E

Mr. Chris Lamb National Defense University

Mr. John Matheny Department of Defense SO/LIC

Mr. Lloyd Neighbors Department of State

Mr. William Parker Department of State

Mr. Robert Reilly Department of Defense

On first scan, I didn't recognize a single name on the list, including the gummint members of the group. Why wasn't Wolfowitz or Dougie Feith in the group?

Only one conclusion comes to mind--Rumsfeld intended to bury and ignore this report from the start, so it was okay to pack the group with competent, lesser-known experts who could analyze the situation without the baggage of a pre-set political orientation.

They said large numbers of civilians had been killed in Afghanistan, Iraq and the Palestinian territories in aerial bombings. Muslim prisoners had been physically abused and sexually humiliated in Iraq. Scores of men had been detained in Cuba and Afghanistan for up to seven years without charges.

To Americans, these episodes were aberrations. To my captors, they were proof that the United States was a hypocritical and duplicitous power that flouted international law.

Lost in the current policy discussions about Afghanistan is the fact that when McChrystal was nominated to head our forces there, even the New York Times admitted that McChrystal intended to expand the practice of detaining innocent civilians:

Reducing that toll will require tighter and more strictly enforced rules of engagement. That applies not just to airstrikes but to the search and detention operations that General McChrystal wants to expand this year with the help of 21,000 additional troops that President Obama ordered sent to Afghanistan. Ground operations are less likely to go astray than airstrikes. But as happened far too many times in Iraq, they can sweep up innocent civilians and turn local people against the American presence.

A diary with the link to this Times endorsement is linked at my name.

Note that the Times both understood that McChrystal would expand detention that was known to "sweep up innocent civilians" and that the direct result is to "turn local people against the American presence". Despite that, McChrystal was not only endorsed, he was confirmed and now undoubtedly has increased the population of innocent civilians at Bagram and elsewhere in Afghanistan.

Why do they hate us? Because we're effen' stupid, that's why!

In trying to achieve "control" of the situation in Afghanistan, we are doing the one thing guaranteed to make things worse.

I liked this part:

There is a growing danger that the public face of the Obama administration's response to this Great Recession is the Bank Bailout. In contrast, the public face of the response to the Great Depression was the WPA. While the administration has accomplished some good with its too-small Recovery bill--preventing a far worse hemorrhaging of jobs, for example--it seems the no-strings-attached Bank Bailout is corroding the view of a government that is on the side of the working person.

My try on the link (and hopefully at my name):

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091102/vanden_heuvel

We were just discussing that very point over at Cocktailhag's place yesterday. Bring back the WPA!