counterterrorism

If it’s true, as reported, that the question of the CIA’s drone strikes against al-Qaeda in Pakistan is bolstering support for the so-called counterterrorism option in the Obama administration’s Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy, then tomorrow’s meeting at the White House looks, from the attendance sheet, like it’ll debate precisely that issue. Here’s the just-released list of scheduled [...]

The Cable’s Josh Rogin interviews Senate Intelligence Committee ranking member Kit Bond (R-Mo.), who attended this afternoon’s White House meeting on Afghanistan/Pakistan strategy. Not a lot of detail emerged, but this is Bond’s takeaway:
Obama pledged not to return to a counterterrorism approach, where troops “shoot and then fall back to the base,” Bond said.
Obama told [...]

Human rights experts say there is a serious risk that some of the Guantanamo detainees cleared for release could face persecution or torture.

The official readout from yesterday’s White House meeting on Afghanistan and Pakistan strategy was predictably uninformative. (”When it come to decisions as important as keeping this country safe and putting our troops into harm’s way, the President has made it clear that he will rigorously assess our progress,” etc.) But remember how I called Defense [...]

Among the cases the Supreme Court will consider reviewing in its private meeting tomorrow are two controversial cases arising out of the war on terror. Both question whether the president’s authority over detainees and information about their treatment is absolute, or reviewable by the federal courts.
The first and better-known case involves whether the executive branch [...]

Eight years after it was passed, the USA Patriot Act remains among the most controversial pieces of counterterrorism legislation in the so-called “war on terror.”

Last month, a federal court judge ordered the Defense Department to release a 47-year-old father of two with a heart condition who the court ruled had been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay for the past seven years without justification.
On Monday, the Obama administration said it plans to appeal the judge’s ruling.
Back in August, I noted that [...]

One of the defining moments of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Afghanistan strategy that I covered yesterday came when Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) asked why we needed to take a counterinsurgency approach to Afghanistan when a commando raid in Somalia, without the aid of a large troop mobilization, had killed a key al-Qaeda [...]

In surprising slap-in-the-face order to the government, a federal judge ruled last month that a court can require the government to disclose classified information to an individual with security clearance even if the executive branch doesn’t want to.
Steven Aftergood at Secrecy News reports that Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington, D.C., ruled on August 26 in [...]

The news that Mohammed Jawad plans to sue the U.S. government for his unlawful detention and torture raises the question of whether he can get beyond the hurdles so many other torture victims have faced in similar lawsuits.
Previous cases have been dismissed on grounds that government officials had “qualified immunity” for their actions — meaning [...]