Silflay Hraka

OpinionJournal - Extra: Khobar Towers

It soon became clear that Mr. Clinton and his national security adviser, Sandy Berger, had no interest in confronting the fact that Iran had blown up the towers. This is astounding, considering that the Saudi Security Service had arrested six of the bombers after the attack. As FBI agents sifted through the remains of Building 131 in 115-degree heat, the bombers admitted they had been trained by the Iranian external security service (IRGC) in Lebanon’s Beka Valley and received their passports at the Iranian Embassy in Damascus, Syria, along with $250,000 cash for the operation from IRGC Gen. Ahmad Sharifi.

I stumbled upon this piece from Opinion Journal while visiting Vodka Pundit’s blog. It’s a few days old, but I thought it deserved the read and the link. I am not a warmonger, but I do believe in defending the country against those who attack us. If Iran was behind the Khobar bombings, there should’ve been retribution, rather than coddling. Besides his decision to pull out of Somalia in 1993, this is the most damning thing I’ve seen on Clinton’s presidency.

VeloNews: 2006 Tour de France Special Coverage - Astaná-Würth now out of Tour

Dayam. Astana-Wurth loses five riders to the widening doping scandal. This puts the team below the mininum six riders and Alexander Vinokourov is wiped out of the race before it’s even begun. I had Vino and Basso on the podium this year! I can’t take it!

BBC SPORT | Other Sport… | Cycling | Scandal-hit Tour left wide open

In the absence of Basso and Ullrich, the new Tour favourites include Spaniard Alejandro Valverde, Alexandre Vinokourov of Kazakhstan, Lithuanian Yaroslav Popovych, Australian Cadel Evans and Americans Floyd Landis, Levi Leipheimer and George Hincapie.

That sounds about right now that some of the other favorites are out. I don’t know that I’d include Vinokourov or not simply because his team has been through a lot of controversy and may not be as emotionally prepared for the tour.

Who gets the nod for Discovery this year? Popovych or Hincapie? Popovych was a great young rider last year, but Hincapie has the edge in experience. Who rides for whom? That could leave both of them out of the running unless one or the other comes out ahead by a large margin during the trials.

Leipheimer did well by winning the Dauphine Libere last month. That’s generally been a decent indicator of tour performance. He’s had his moments in previous tours but was not able to consistently perform day in and day out. Speaking of Americans, David Zabriskie rode well early on last night, but faded fast in the mountains.

For my money, I’ll be pulling for George Hincapie. He did well last year riding for Armstrong and Discovery. If the team rides for him this year, I think he could finish on the podium easily. He’s a decent time trialist and he could hang in the mountains with the team looking out for him. If he fades early, I’ll pull for any of the Americans that are in contention. Barring that, I’m pulling for Popovych since he rides for Discovery.

I really was looking forward to the drama this year, but that’s been a little dulled by the suspension of the top contenders. I was really looking forward to watching Basso and Ullrich compete no matter what. I don’t know that anyone could’ve beaten Basso. He was just so strong in the mountains last year. I guess there will still be drama, but with the top contenders out, the whole tour has changed for me.

A good account of the latest cycling doping scandal can be found here.

Update I was just looking through the list of riders on the Tour website and started to wonder, now that Basso, Mancebo and Ullrich are out, who will lead their respective teams?

Basso rides for CSC. With him out, American Bobby Julich becomes the best bet to win the general classification. Okay, scratch that. Carlos Sastre might have a better chance. Stuart O’Grady also rides for CSC so maybe they change their strategy and race to get him the green jersey. David Zabriskie, also an American, wore the yellow jersey for a few days last year after a great prologue and it’s conceivable that the team could ride for him if he starts strong again.

Mancebo rides for AG2R Prevoyance. I am not too familiar with most of their riders, but Christophe Moreau put in some yeoman’s work in the mountains last year and the team could ride to get him into the top 5.

Ullrich rides for T-Mobile. I’m guessing Andreas Kloden becomes the GC threat with Ullrich gone. Michael Rogers from Australia could compete for the sprinters jersey, but Kloden finished second in the GC in 2004 and could be a threat again this year.

My gut tells me CSC rides for whomever has the best chance to win the GC going into the mountains. AG2R rides for Moreau and T-Mobile rides for Kloden. Somebody has probably already figured this out, but it’s entertaining for me to try to figure it out on my own.

‘Cause I have to show off my super-geek cycling knowledge.

Doping scandal strips Tour de France of its favorites - Cycling - Yahoo! Sports

A doping scandal knocked Tour de France favorites Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso out of the race Friday and threw the world’s most glamorous cycling event into chaos.

Holy crap. I was all set to post something about the Tour de France starting tomorrow and how excited I was to watch, but now…I’m stunned. Not only are Jan Ullrich and Ivan Basso, two of the top favorites, out of the competition, but so is Francisco Mancebo, last year’s fourth place finisher. There could dozens of other riders removed from the race on suspicion of doping.

Wow.

I’m drained. I still want to watch the race, but without the favorites, I really don’t have the same enthusiasm for it.

The New Yorker: THE HIDDEN POWER

The piece above is an very lenghty, but very informative piece focusing on the power and influence of Vice Presidential Chief of State, David Addington as it relates to several policies pursued by the current administration. The article covers a lot of ground, from the military commissions the Supreme Court recently ruled illegal to the use of torture in interrogations to the NSA wiretaps and the use by the President of “signing statements”.

Most Americans, even those who follow politics closely, have probably never heard of Addington. But current and former Administration officials say that he has played a central role in shaping the Administration’s legal strategy for the war on terror. Known as the New Paradigm, this strategy rests on a reading of the Constitution that few legal scholars share—namely, that the President, as Commander-in-Chief, has the authority to disregard virtually all previously known legal boundaries, if national security demands it. Under this framework, statutes prohibiting torture, secret detention, and warrantless surveillance have been set aside. A former high-ranking Administration lawyer who worked extensively on national-security issues said that the Administration’s legal positions were, to a remarkable degree, “all Addington.” Another lawyer, Richard L. Shiffrin, who until 2003 was the Pentagon’s deputy general counsel for intelligence, said that Addington was “an unopposable force.

The basic gist of the article is that the administration, using legal justification provided by Addington and others, has overstepped its bounds in pursuing power for the executive branch.

For me, the most damning part of the article is the conclusion, as it highlights the crux of the matter on Presidential power and the importance of the checks and balances of our government.

David Addington is a satisfactory lawyer, Fein said, but a less than satisfactory student of American history, which, for a public servant of his influence, matters more. “If you read the Federalist Papers, you can see how rich in history they are,” he said. “The Founders really understood the history of what people did with power, going back to Greek and Roman and Biblical times. Our political heritage is to be skeptical of executive power, because, in particular, there was skepticism of King George III. But Cheney and Addington are not students of history. If they were, they’d know that the Founding Fathers would be shocked by what they’ve done.”

It’s not enough to provide legal justification for an action. it’s also important to provide an ethical justification. Generally the ethical justification will set a higher bar and, in the long term, will provide better results.

More discussion on the article can be found at OrinKerr.com and AndersonBlog.

SCOTUSblog: Legislative Supremacy, The Laws of War, and the Geneva Holding

3. That Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies as a matter of treaty obligation to the conflict against Al Qaeda. (See also the AMK concurrence: “The provision is part of a treaty the United States has ratified and thus accepted as binding law. By Act of Congress, moreover, violations of Common Article 3 are considered ‘war crimes,’ punishable as federal offenses, when committed by or against United States nationals and military personnel. See 18 U. S. C. § 2441.”) This ruling has enormous implications for the Administration’s detention and interrogation practices, because the Administration’s legal conclusion that CA3 does not apply, and that we will not apply it as a matter of practice, was the key linchpin to the entire edifice of legal maneuvers that led to waterboarding, hypothermia, degradation, etc. See my post here. Per today’s decision, the Administration appears to have been engaged in war crimes, which are subejct to the death penalty. Although I don’t think due process would allow prosecution based on conduct previously undertaken on OLC’s advice that CA3 did not apply (after all, the Chief Justice concluded, in the D.C. Circuit, that CA3 did not apply), practices going forward are bound to change, and quick. (I’m sure the memos are being drafted and distributed in the CIA and DOD even as we “speak.”)

By far the weighest implication, in my mind, to come out of yesterday’s Supreme Court ruling is that the interrogation techniques used against potential terrorists could be considered war crimes. I was floored when I read the piece above yesterday. The ruling stated that the Geneva Conventions do apply when dealing with Al Qaeda or other potential terrorists and detainees and specifically mentioned Article 3 of the conventions. According to the definition of war crimes, violations of that article are indeed war crimes and can carry the death penalty.

(c) Definition.— As used in this section the term “war crime” means any conduct—
(1) defined as a grave breach in any of the international conventions signed at Geneva 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party;
(2) prohibited by Article 23, 25, 27, or 28 of the Annex to the Hague Convention IV, Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land, signed 18 October 1907;
(3) which constitutes a violation of common Article 3 of the international conventions signed at Geneva, 12 August 1949, or any protocol to such convention to which the United States is a party and which deals with non-international armed conflict; or
(4) of a person who, in relation to an armed conflict and contrary to the provisions of the Protocol on Prohibitions or Restrictions on the Use of Mines, Booby-Traps and Other Devices as amended at Geneva on 3 May 1996 (Protocol II as amended on 3 May 1996), when the United States is a party to such Protocol, willfully kills or causes serious injury to civilians.

As SCOTUSblog suggests, I do not think we’ll see any prosecution for past actions, but future interrogations are bound to be a lot more formal than those previously undertaken.

That’s a good thing. The U.S. doesn’t need to involve itself in things that could be construed as torture, even if the goal is to save lives. It is my belief that the U.S. can still accomplish that goal without resorting to tactics that sully our reputation in the eyes of the world and ultimately stain our collective soul.

More good reading on the ruling can be found here.

‘Vonage the Dog’ bites back | CNET News.com

The best option for Vonage could be to sell the company, some analysts said. But that might not be as easy as it sounds. After eBay bought Skype for $2.6 billion last year, Vonage reportedly shopped itself around and found no buyers willing to pay the same hefty price.

Would suitors be interested at a lower price? Maybe. And Vonage’s sliding stock price is making it cheaper all the time. Internet companies such as Yahoo and AOL are trying to break into the phone business. Vonage’s 1.6 million subscribers and voice calling software could supplement efforts the Internet companies already have in the works.

I post this mostly as a follow up to my previous Vonage posts.

Supreme Court Blocks Trials at Guantánamo - New York Times

There seems to be a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth over the Supreme Court’s ruling that the prisoners at the Guantanamo prison cannot be tried by military tribunal. People act like the sky is falling. It’s not like the ruling states that all the Guantanamo prisoners have to be set free. Far from it. All it suggests is that, if you’re going to try them, you have to try them in a court of law consistent with the Geneva Conventions.

The Geneva Convention seems to be the sticking point with a lot of those bemoaning the ruling. Andy McCarthy over at National Review states that this basically means, since we adhere to the Geneva Conventions, we effectively have a treaty with Al Qaeda.

Make no mistake: if this happens, the Supreme Court will have dictated that we now have a treaty with al Qaeda — which no President, no Senate, and no vote of the American people would ever countenance. (Compare this.) The Constitution consigns treaty-making to the political branches, not the courts, but a conclusion that Geneva protects Hamdan (and, by extension, his fellow savages) would ominously mean that the courts, under the conveniently malleable guise of “customary international law” can rewrite treaties to mean whatever they like them to mean.

McCarthy focuses his ire on different ways of interpreting the Geneva Conventions. Depending on how you classify the conflict in which we find ourselves, Al Qaeda prisoners either are or are not protected by the Conventions. His argument is that the Supreme Court basically chose an interpretation that bound the U.S. to treat Al Qaeda prisoners (even alleged ones that haven’t been tried in any court) as they would any other prisoners of war.

It is likely that such a theory will not rest on a claim that terrorists qualify as honorable prisoners of war under the conventions. It is too obvious that this is not the case. Rather, it would be premised on the theory that Common Article 3 applies. Article 3 (which is “common” because it applies to all of the Geneva Conventions) prohibits “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.” (Emphasis added, and explained below.)

The president, properly, has indicated that Common Article 3 does not apply to our war with al Qaeda because it applies, as relevant here, only to an “armed conflict not of an international character occurring in the territory of one of the High Contracting Parties.” POTUS reasons that our conflict is international because al Qaeda is an international terrorist organization and the war is not limited to Afghanistan. However, some claim the war is limited to Afghanistan (notwithstanding, for example, the Twin Towers used to stand in Manhattan, not Kabul), and that a conflict with al Qaeda cannot be “international” because al Qaeda is not a nation.

What McCarthy is missing is the other part of the Supreme Court ruling: the fact that the handling of the Guantanamo prisoners is also in violation of the military’s Uniform Code of Military Justice, a wholly American document. Even if Geneva were interpreted in such a way that allows the Guantanamo prisoners to be held as “enemy combatants” that could be tried by military tribunals, the UCMJ wouldn’t allow it.

The specific article of the UCMJ mentioned in the court ruling is Article 36, which states:

(a) Pretrial, trial, and post trial procedures, including modes of proof, for cases arising under this chapter triable in courts-martial, military commissions and other military tribunals, and procedures for courts of inquiry, may be prescribed by the President by regulations which shall, so far as he considers practicable, apply the principles of law and the rules of evidence generally recognized in the trial of criminal cases in the United States district courts, but which may not be contrary to or inconsistent with this chapter.

(b) All rules and regulations made under this article shall be uniform insofar as practicable and shall be reported to Congress.

So, even if the Geneval Conventions were ignored, the military tribunals would still be illegal according to U.S. policy. The full majority opinion and a more reasoned discourse of the case can be found over at SCOTUSblog.com.

I predict that the smoke will clear on this in a few days and people will realize it isn’t the end of the world or the end of the war on terrorism. It’s just the system of checks and balances doing what it’s been doing for two-hundred plus years: ensuring the rule of law in our country and making sure no one branch of government gathers too much power unto itself.

Operation removes lightbulb from anus - Yahoo! News

While spending some time at the beach with my extended family, I played a game of “Operation” with my niece and nephew. For those of you who have never played Operation, the object is to remove various maladies from the patient with a set of metal tweezers. Every time you touch the metal sides of the game board, a buzzer buzzes and a lightbulb on the patient’s face is lit.

This reminds me of that somehow.