Homeless in Arizona

U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan on rise for 2013

By Greg Miller, Published: January 10

The CIA has opened the year with a flurry of drone strikes in Pakistan, pounding Taliban targets along the country’s tribal belt at a time when the Obama administration is preparing to disclose its plans for pulling most U.S. forces out of neighboring Afghanistan.

A strike Thursday in North Waziristan was the seventh in 10 days, marking a major escalation in the pace of attacks. Drone attacks had slipped in frequency to fewer than one per week last year.

Current and former U.S. intelligence officials attributed the increased tempo to a sense of urgency surrounding expectations that President Obama will soon order a drawdown that could leave Afghanistan with fewer than 6,000 U.S. troops after 2014. The strikes are seen as a way to weaken adversaries of the Afghan government before the withdrawal and serve notice that the United States will still be able to launch attacks.

The rapid series of CIA strikes “may be a signal to groups that include not just al-Qaeda that the U.S. will still present a threat” after most American forces have gone, said Seth Jones, a counterterrorism expert at the Rand Corp. “With the drawdown in U.S. forces, the drone may be, over time, the most important weapon against militant groups.”

U.S. officials also tied the increase to recent intelligence gains on groups blamed for lethal attacks on U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan. Among those killed in the drone strikes, according to U.S. officials, was Maulvi Nazir, a Taliban commander accused of planning cross-border raids and providing protection for al-Qaeda fighters.

The CIA may see a diminishing window for using drones with such devastating effectiveness as the military begins sharp reductions in the 66,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, current and former officials said.

A former U.S. intelligence official with extensive experience in Afghanistan said the CIA has begun discussing plans to pare back its network of bases across the country to five from 15 or more because of the difficulty of providing security for its outposts after most U.S. forces have left.

The CIA declined to comment.

“As the military pulls back, the agency has to pull back,” the former U.S. intelligence official said on the condition of anonymity, particularly from high-risk outposts along the country’s eastern border that have served as bases for running informant networks and gathering intelligence on al-Qaeda and Taliban strongholds in Pakistan.

Such a retrenchment could slow the process of identifying fresh targets for drone strikes, although the agency is expected to continue operating the remotely piloted planes from fortified bases, such as a landing strip in Jalalabad.

“Essentially we will become Fort Apache in Kabul and the major cities,” the former U.S. intelligence official said, describing a pared back CIA presence. Even if the drones continue to take off and land, the diminished presence in Khost and other locations could hamper “our ability to gather intelligence on where Zawahiri is and what al-Qaeda is doing in the North-West Frontier Province” of Pakistan, he said, referring to al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri and the region now known as Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The CIA’s base plans are among a wide range of issues that the U.S. government has been negotiating with Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who is visiting top officials in Washington this week. A CIA spokesman declined to say whether agency officials had met with Karzai.

The Pakistani government has not publicly protested the stepped-up drone strikes, but reports suggest that they have caused higher-than-usual civilian casualties. Bill Roggio, who tracks drone activity in Pakistan for the Long War Journal Web site, said preliminary information indicates that as many as 11 civilians, along with 30 militants, have been killed so far this year. If true, that civilian count would exceed the total for all of 2012, Roggio said.

U.S. officials disputed that count but declined to provide an alternative figure. U.S. officials have frequently touted the accuracy of the program and claimed that reports exaggerate civilian casualties.

Assessing the civilian toll has been notoriously difficult, partly because the strikes take place in areas almost inaccessible to journalists and independent monitors. The New America Foundation has estimated that the civilian casualty rate was 10 percent in 2012, down from 60 percent in 2006.

The surge in drone activity comes as key leadership positions at the CIA and in Obama’s national security cabinet are in flux.

Former CIA director David H. Petraeus, who had previously commanded coalition forces in Afghanistan, had sought to place tighter restrictions on the agency’s drone campaign in Pakistan, leading to clashes with the head of the CIA’s counterterrorism center, former officials said.

Petraeus resigned in November after admitting to an extramarital affair, leaving his deputy, acting CIA Director Michael J. Morell, with approval authority on drone strikes in Pakistan.

This week, Obama nominated his counterterrorism adviser, John O. Brennan, as the next CIA director. The direction the drone program might take under Brennan, a 25-year CIA veteran, is unclear. He has expressed misgivings about the CIA’s paramilitary mission and expanded the role of other agencies in targeting decisions. But the number of strikes in Pakistan and Yemen soared during Brennan’s tenure at the White House before tapering off in Pakistan over the past two years.

The strikes so far this year have been scattered across North and South Waziristan, semiautonomous regions targeted in the vast majority of the more than 300 strikes carried out by the CIA in Pakistan since 2004.

Among those killed in the latest strikes was Wali Mohammed, a commander described by Roggio as a director of suicide operations for the Taliban.

Pakistanis in the tribal region said they were baffled by the surge in activity.

“This is beyond our understanding why the drone attacks are increased,” a tribal elder from Miran Shah, the main town in North Waziristan, said during a telephone interview. He spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing concern for his safety.

The latest strikes coincided with a broader outbreak of violence in Pakistan. As many as 115 people were killed Thursday in a series of bombings including two in the southern city of Quetta.

Julie Tate in Washington and Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar, Pakistan, contributed to this report.

70% of Pentagon pork goes to contractors???

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Federal union blasts Pentagon budget plan

Posted by Joe Davidson on January 11, 2013 at 2:42 pm

The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) says the Pentagon’s budget plan shows “unapologetic bias … in favor of contractors, regardless of cost.”

The plan “is strictly precautionary,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said at a news briefing Thursday. “This includes a plan to implement potential unpaid furloughs for our civilian personnel if sequestration is triggered,” he said.

Sequestration is the across-the-board budget reduction that would hit federal agencies by March 1 unless Congress acts. The Defense Department cut would be about $52 billion through the end of this fiscal year.

In a statement Friday, AFGE said Panetta’s plan would place an unfair burden on the civilian workforce, compared to agency contractors. “Despite the fact that contractors make up 70% of the Pentagon’s costs for delivering services, while federal employees make up just 30%, DoD is requiring components to reduce the cost of the civilian workforce without any remotely equivalent requirement to reduce contractor costs,” according to the labor organization.

Lt. Col. Elizabeth Robbins, a Defense press officer, said via e-mail that the guidance provided by Panetta “includes the curtailment of travel and conferences, the curtailment of facilities maintenance and repair (which is largely done by contractors), curtailment of supply purchases and business IT (also largely contractor provided), requires the review of all contracts for possible savings, and the requirement to clear all contracts over $500 million with the Defense Acquisition Executive. All of these actions will reduce contractor costs significantly. Therefore, there is no way to conclude that the guidance targets civilian employees in any disproportionate manner.”

To minimize the impact on services, AFGE suggested Defense:

– “Freeze new service contracts”

– “Prohibit the conversion of work performed by temporary federal employees or term employees to contractors.”

– “Ensure that no portion of functions performed by both federal employees and contractors be shifted from federal employees to contractors, so equal or greater cuts must come from the contractor workforce.”

– Match any reduction in federal employee costs that is achieved by furloughs with cuts in service contract expenditures.”

AFGE President J. David Cox Sr. said “cordoning off contractor costs and focusing almost exclusively on cutting just federal employees is bad budget policy. Worse, it will force more extensive cuts in services for each dollar eliminated than if the costs of contractors were subject to the same level of cuts as civilian employees.”

This post has been updated since it was first published.

Arizona National Guard Crimes Covered Up

New York tyrants to pass more gun control laws???

The Second Amendment was created to allow people to kill well armed government tyrants.

In 1776 that meant allowing the people to have swords, flintlock rifles and canons. Now it means allowing the people to have machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-tank guns and all the other weapons the well armed government tyrants have.

Sadly the Second Amendment has been flushed down the toilet and the people are more or less defenseless against the well armed American government which spends more on weapons then all the other countries of the world combined.

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NY poised to be 1st to pass post-massacre gun bill

Associated Press Mon Jan 14, 2013 9:55 PM

Days after calling for an overhaul of gun control in New York following the Connecticut school shooting, Gov. Andrew Cuomo worked out a tough proposal on gun control with legislative leaders who promised to pass the most restrictive gun law in the nation.

The measure passed the Senate 43-18 on the strength of support from Democrats, many of whom previously sponsored the bills that were once blocked by Republicans.

The Democrat-led Assembly gaveled out before midnight and planned to take the issue up at 10 a.m. Tuesday. It is expected to pass easily.

“This is a scourge on society,” Cuomo said Monday night, one month after the Newtown, Conn., shooting that took the lives of 20 first graders and six educators. “At what point do you say, ‘No more innocent loss of life.’”

“It is well-balanced, it protects the Second Amendment,” said Senate Republican leader Dean Skelos of Long Island. “And there is no confiscation of weapons, which was at one time being considered.

“This is going to go after those who are bringing illegal guns into the state, who are slaughtering people in New York City,” Skelos said. “This is going to put people in jail and keep people in jail who shouldn’t be out on the street in the first place.”

“This will be the toughest gun control package in the nation,” said Sen. Jeffrey Klein, leader of the Independent Democrat Conference that shares majority control with Republican senators. “All in all, it is a comprehensive, balanced approach that will save lives,” Klein said in an interview.

Cuomo said he wanted quick action to avoid a run on assault rifles and ammunition as he tries to address what he estimates is about 1 million assault rifles in New York state. He made it a centerpiece of his progressive agenda in last week’s State of the State address.

Republican Sen. Greg Ball called that political opportunism in a rare criticism of the popular and powerful governor seen by his supporters as a possible candidate for president in 2016.

“We haven’t saved any lives tonight, except one: the political life of a governor who wants to be president,” said Ball who represents part of the Hudson Valley. “We have taken an entire category of firearms that are currently legal that are in the homes of law-abiding, tax paying citizens. … We are now turning those law-abiding citizens into criminals.”

The governor confirmed the proposal, previously worked out in closed session, called for a tougher assault weapons ban and restrictions on ammunition and the sale of guns, as well as a mandatory police registry of assault weapons, grandfathering in assault weapons already in private hands.

It would create a more powerful tool to require the reporting of mentally ill people who say they intend to use a gun illegally and would address the unsafe storage of guns, the governor confirmed.

Under current state law, assault weapons are defined by having two “military rifle” features spelled out in the law. The proposal would reduce that to one feature and include the popular pistol grip.

Private sales of assault weapons to someone other than an immediate family would be subject to a background check through a dealer. Also Internet sales of assault weapons would be banned, and failing to safely store a weapon could be subject to a misdemeanor charge.

Ammunition magazines would be restricted to seven bullets, from the current 10, and current owners of higher-capacity magazines would have a year to sell them out of state. An owner caught at home with eight or more bullets in a magazine could face a misdemeanor charge.

In another provision, a therapist who believes a mental health patient made a credible threat to use a gun illegally would be required to report the incident to a mental health director who would have to report serious threats to the state Department of Criminal Justice Services. A patient’s gun could be taken from him or her.

The legislation also increases sentences for gun crimes including the shooting of a first responder that Cuomo called the “Webster provision.” Last month in the western New York town of Webster, two firefighters were killed after responding to a fire set by the shooter, who eventually killed himself.

Legislators wouldn’t comment on the tentative deal or the provisions discussed in closed-door conferences.

“It’s a tough vote,” said Senate Deputy Majority Leader Thomas Libous of Broome County. “This is a very difficult issue depending on where you live in the state. I have had thousands of emails and calls … and I have to respect their wishes.” He said many of constituents worry the bill will conflict with the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms while others anguish over shootings like at Newtown, Conn., and Columbine, Colo.

A vote Monday would come exactly one month after a gunman killed 20 children and six educators inside Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

The closed-door meetings prompted about a dozen gun workers to travel more than two hours to Albany to protest the legislation they say could cost 300 to 700 jobs in the economically hard-hit Mohawk Valley.

“I have three small kids myself,” said Jamie Rudall, a unionized worker who polishes shotgun receivers. “So I know what it means, the tragedy … we need to look at ways to prevent that, rather than eliminate the rights of law-abiding citizens.”

In the gun debate, one concern for New York is its major gun manufacturer upstate.

Remington Arms Co. makes the Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle that was used in the Connecticut shootings and again on Christmas Eve when the two firefighters were slain in Webster. The two-century-old Remington factory in Ilion in central New York employs 1,000 workers in a Republican Senate district.

Assemblyman Marc Butler, a Republican who represents the area, decried the closed-door meetings by Senate Republicans and the Democratic majority of the Assembly as “politics at its worst.”

The bill would be the first test of the new coalition in control of the Senate, which has long been run by Republicans opposed to gun control measures. The chamber is now in the hands of Republicans and five breakaway Democrats led by Klein, an arrangement expected to result in more progressive legislation.

Former Republican Sen. Michael Balboni said that for legislators from the more conservative upstate region of New York, gun control “has the intensity of the gay marriage issue.” In 2011, three of four Republicans who crossed the aisle to vote for same-sex marriage ended up losing their jobs because of their votes.

———

AP Writer Michael Virtanen contributed to this report from Albany.

Obama administration gets America involved in Mali war!!!

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U.S. weighs military support for France’s campaign against Mali militants

By Anne Gearan, Karen DeYoung and Craig Whitlock, Published: January 15

The Obama administration is considering significant military backing for France’s drive against al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali, but its support for a major ally could test U.S. legal boundaries and stretch counterterrorism resources in a murky new conflict.

The United States is already providing surveillance and other intelligence help to France and may soon offer military support such as transport or refueling planes, according to U.S. officials, who stressed that any assistance would stop short of sending American combat forces to the volatile West African nation.

A U.S. and France-backed African force will try to prevent northern Mali from becoming another haven for jihadists.

At the same time, the administration is navigating a thicket of questions about military support and how far it could go in aiding the French without violating U.S. law or undermining policy objectives.

Direct military aid to Mali is forbidden under U.S. law because the weak rump government there seized power in a coup. U.S. moves are further complicated by uncertainty about which militants would be targeted in an assault.

The loosely affiliated web of Malian militants in the country’s north includes members of al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). But other fighters are longtime foes of the Malian government and pose no direct threat to U.S. interests.

“Our goal is to do what we can,” Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said Tuesday during a visit to Spain. “The fundamental objective is to ensure that AQIM — al-Qaeda — never establishes a base of operations in Mali or anywhere else.”

France launched fresh airstrikes in Mali on Tuesday and said it will triple the size of its combat force there. The punishing bombing campaign has failed to stop the militants’ advance, and the additional forces suggest preparation for a ground assault.

The Obama administration is wary of deepening its involvement in the conflict. But the United States shares French concern about the militants’ territorial gains. It is also eager to help a top ally with which it has worked closely on counterterrorism issues in Africa, a senior administration official said.

On all sides, the overriding fear is that the militants will create a terrorist haven in rugged northern Mali similar to the one that fighters secured in Afghanistan before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

U.S. officials have said publicly that they are evaluating France’s requests for further assistance. But privately, they say that one of the critical requests relates to intelligence that could be used for targeting purposes, said the senior official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity about intelligence and diplomatic matters.

Evaluating the request involves “understanding what the French objectives are and really how they intend to go about them and against whom,” the official said.

The official was not specific about whether the surveillance being shared with France comes from drones or from satellites.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said: “They’ve asked for support with airlift. They’ve asked for support with aerial refueling. We are already providing information, and we are looking hard today at the airlift question, helping them transport forces from France and from the area into the theater, and also at the refueling question.”

The Pentagon has begun identifying transport and tanker planes that might be used, but U.S. officials cautioned that resources in the region are slim and that French requests have shifted.

“We’re not providing logistics support, whether airlift, refueling,” yet, the official said. “There is a little bit of a cold-start aspect there.”

Any additional U.S. help could go to French forces directly or to African backup forces, which are expected to begin arriving soon. The European Union said Tuesday that it will speed up a troop-training mission in Mali, which now is likely to be launched in the second half of February or in early March. The E.U. is not planning any direct combat role.

“We have limited assets in the region we can bring in for lift,” the U.S. official said. “Is it best for French troops, or should we be moving Nigerians or troops from Togo or Benin?”

The official said contingency plans for the use of armed drones were already in place and are being reevaluated. The official would not be more specific.

France, the former colonial power in Mali and neighboring Algeria, has led international efforts to confront the Islamist militants who exploited last year’s coup to co-opt a homegrown Malian ethnic conflict.

For months, French officials insisted that only African soldiers would fight. Despite early reservations, the United States backed French-led efforts to initiate an international military force backed by the United Nations. That force was to deploy later this year, but the militants have moved much faster.

“We have one objective,” French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday. “To make sure when we leave, when we end this intervention, there is security in Mali, legitimate leaders, an electoral process and the terrorists no longer threaten its territory.”

The French reinforcements will bring the total number of French troops in Mali from 800 to 2,500, according to the Associated Press.

In addition to possible logistical support, the United States wants France and its partners to lay out a strategic plan for Mali that goes beyond short-term military intervention.

The United States withdrew military support for Mali, once a promising democratic example in Africa, because of the coup. Embarrassingly for Washington, the coup leader had received military training in the United States, defense officials said.

The Obama administration is now working to hurry along the African force. Britain, Canada, Belgium, Denmark and perhaps Germany would help provide logistics for the African deployment, a French diplomat said.

The United States had always been expected to foot a large share of the bill for the African-led force, but it had hoped that the planned slow rollout of the force would allow time to attract more donors.

For now, the United States will redirect about $8 million in unused aid and will ask Congress for additional money, Nuland said.

Colum Lynch contributed from the United Nations to this report.

Worlds largest gun show is in Las Vegas

SHOT Gun Show - Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show

Their web site is here: www.nssf.org

You can register for the show here: www.shotshow.org and here

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Defiance, discretion at Vegas gun show

Justin Berton

Updated 7:26 am, Wednesday, January 16, 2013

Las Vegas -- A month after the elementary school massacre that threatens to change the American gun industry, a group based where that atrocity took place mixed defiance with discretion Tuesday in opening the doors to the world's largest gun show.

More than 60,000 gun dealers, retailers and apparel makers are in Las Vegas this week for the annual Shooting, Hunting, Outdoor Trade Show, hosted by the National Shooting Sports Foundation of Newtown, Conn.

The four-day "SHOT Show" is not for the public - it's for those who sell to the public. With the killings of 20 schoolchildren and seven adults in Newtown prompting the Obama administration to move quickly on proposing changes in federal gun laws, the attitude in Las Vegas this week is a combination of aggressiveness, attention to image and adaptation to a new environment.

"You didn't cause the monstrous crime in Newtown and neither did we," Steve Sanetti, president and CEO of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, told members in opening-night remarks. A new product

On the floor of the Sands Expo and Convention Center, browsers gripped sleek new AR-15 rifles, such as the latest version of the Bushmaster Predator, which has an automatic option and can fire 30 rounds in a few seconds. Retailers showed off new inventions, including the iPhone case that doubles as a stun gun, a woman's bra that can holster a handgun - and a product from a Florida company designed to protect schoolchildren from a killer with a gun.

Unlike in past years, the SHOT Show isn't going out of its way to attract attention. Foundation officials declined interview requests from non-trade outlets and denied credentials to mainstream media a month before the trade show opened. A spokesman said a large media presence would be a distraction for people trying to do business at the show.

Gun control proponents interpreted the silence as an attempt to limit coverage of the convention, where assault weapons are on display and the latest military-style weaponry is geared up to amaze potential clients. Not 'puffed up' now

Josh Sugarmann, executive director of the Violence Policy Center, said industry executives were "puffed up" last year and happy to be interviewed on the convention floor after they reported record sales and estimated the value of the sporting gun industry at $4.1 billion.

"This industry is circling the wagons now," Sugarmann said. "The last thing the industry wants America to see and to think about right now is that these are the very guns the industry is promoting. Most people today would be shocked by what the gun industry has become - primarily marketing military-style weapons because that's the profit center."

Sanetti, the SHOT Show organizer, was among industry leaders who met Thursday with Vice President Joe Biden, who is leading an administration group that will recommend changes in federal gun laws.

On Monday, Sanetti issued a statement saying, "A prerequisite to any dialogue involving our industry and its products is an honest recognition of the legitimacy of what we do and the important part of the national culture we represent. Hunting and the recreational shooting sports are here to stay. And so are we."

The national debate dominated the concerns of conventioneers on the first day of the SHOT Show.

Gregg Thompson, co-owner of Crye Precision of Brooklyn, N.Y., which makes camouflage-pattern apparel including vests and helmets, said foot traffic appeared to be light.

"We are not in a good environment for what we do," said Thompson, whose sales team wore T-shirts that took a dig at the Obama administration: "Freedom Was Awesome 1776-2008."

Thompson added, "We should be looking for the solutions that give us more freedoms, not take them away."

Bad rap for rifle

For others, the trade show was an opportunity to network and try to put a new face on the gun industry.

Chris Cheng, a San Francisco resident and winner of the History Channel's reality marksman competition, "Top Shot," said he hoped to show that competitive shooters come from diverse backgrounds.

Cheng, an Asian American who left a job at Google to pursue his career as a marksman, uses the AR-15 as his primary rifle. It's the same gun that was used by Newtown killer Adam Lanza, which AR-15 fans say has given it a bad rap.

"Not only do thousands of other competitive shooters use the AR-15, but it is also the most popular modern sporting rifle in America," Cheng said. "That's an important piece of information to understand why talk of an 'assault weapons' ban is resonating with many gun owners."

Cheng was mindful of presenting a positive picture of gun owners. He answered questions through e-mail after his responses were vetted by his History Channel sponsors, and he declined to be photographed next to a poster of hunting rifles at the show.

School market

With the gun control debate focusing on the elementary school killings, Mike Hengstebeck was earning a lot of attention at his booth with a new item for schoolteachers called the LAD - Lockdown and Defend.

The $795 device resembles a fire extinguisher when it's not in use. If a teacher hears gunshots, Hengstebeck said, he or she can unfurl a bullet-resistant 2-by-4-foot sheet from LAD. The device also has two doorstops, which can be used to try to bar a gunman from breaking into the classroom.

Hengstebeck said the teacher can also hang the canvas over the window to protect the class or use it as a shield while students huddle behind it.

He said his company, SRT Supply of St. Petersburg, Fla., had just completed the product days before the show started and had already won the attention of local lawmakers.

"Unfortunately, a lot of times the people who get killed in school shootings are in the hallway," Hengstebeck said. "They hear the shots and they go running. With LAD, we're telling them to lock it down and defend themselves to give them a chance."

Justin Berton is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: jberton@sfchronicle.com. Twitter: @justinberton

NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

I suspect most government tyrants don't like guns because they know the Second Amendment was created to allow "The People" to protect themselves against government tyrants.

But it sounds so much better to say they want to take our guns away from us to protect innocent children from violence, rather then to protect themselves from "The People".

Source

NRA hits Obama over ‘hypocrisy’ of armed guards for daughters

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

In a sign of how brutal, emotional and deeply personal the coming battle over gun violence is likely to be, the National Rifle Association on Tuesday accused President Barack Obama of hypocrisy for having the Secret Service protect his daughters even as he opposes the NRA's call for armed guards in schools.

The Web video, first obtained by The Blaze, opens with a narrator asking, “Are the president’s kids more important than yours? Then why is he skeptical about putting armed security in our schools when his kids are protected by armed guards at their school?”

The 35-second video makes no effort to hide the tension and animosity between the NRA and Obama, even stepping into the recent "fiscal cliff" debate.

The video continues, “Mr. Obama demands that the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes but he’s just another elitist hypocrite when it comes to a fair share of security” as an altered image of the president peers over a stack of dollar bills, followed by images of “Meet the Press” host David Gregory, California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Vice President Joe Biden.

A White House official declined to comment on the video. However, spokesman Jay Carney did announce that Obama would outline his administration’s plan to address gun violence on Wednesday.

Eric Pfeiffer contributed to this report.

Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?

Who Says You Can Kill Americans, Mr. President?

By VICKI DIVOLL

Published: January 16, 2013

WASHINGTON

PRESIDENT OBAMA has refused to tell Congress or the American people why he believes the Constitution gives, or fails to deny, him the authority to secretly target and kill American citizens who he suspects are involved in terrorist activities overseas. So far he has killed three that we know of.

Presidents had never before, to our knowledge, targeted specific Americans for military strikes. There are no court decisions that tell us if he is acting lawfully. Mr. Obama tells us not to worry, though, because his lawyers say it is fine, because experts guide the decisions and because his advisers have set up a careful process to help him decide whom he should kill.

He must think we should be relieved.

The three Americans known to have been killed, in two drone strikes in Yemen in the fall of 2011, are Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical Muslim cleric who was born in New Mexico; Samir Khan, a naturalized American citizen who had lived in New York and North Carolina, and was killed alongside Mr. Awlaki; and, in a strike two weeks later, Mr. Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman al-Awlaki, who was born in Colorado.

Most of us think these people were probably terrorists anyway. So the president’s reassurances have been enough to keep criticism at an acceptable level for the White House. Democrats in Congress and in the press have only gingerly questioned the claims by a Democratic president that he is right about the law and careful when he orders drone attacks on our citizens. And Republicans, who favor aggressive national security powers for the executive branch, look forward to the day when one of their own can wield them again.

But a few of our representatives have spoken up — sort of. Several months ago, Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont and chairman of the Judiciary Committee, began limply requesting the Department of Justice memorandums that justify the targeted killing program. At a committee hearing, Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., reminded of the request, demurred and shared a rueful chuckle with the senator. Mr. Leahy did not want to be rude, it seems — though some of us remember him being harder on former President George W. Bush’s attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, in 2005.

So, even though Congress has the absolute power under the Constitution to receive these documents, the Democratic-controlled Senate has not fought this president to get them. If the senators did, and the president held fast to his refusal, they could go to court and demand them, and I believe they would win. Perhaps even better, they could skip getting the legal memos and go right to the meat of the matter — using oversight and perhaps legislating to control the president’s killing powers. That isn’t happening either.

Thank goodness we have another branch of government to step into the fray. It is the job of the federal courts to interpret the Constitution and laws, and thus to define the boundaries of the powers of the branches of government, including their own.

In reining in the branches, the courts have been toughest on themselves, however. A long line of Supreme Court cases require that judges wait for cases to come to them. They can take cases only from plaintiffs who have a personal stake in the outcome; they cannot decide political questions; they cannot rule on an issue not squarely before them.

Because of these and other limitations, no case has made it far enough in federal court for a judge to rule on the merits of the basic constitutional questions at stake here. A pending case filed in July by the families of the three dead Americans does raise Fourth and Fifth Amendment challenges to the president’s killings of their relatives. We will see if the judge agrees to consider the constitutional questions or dismisses the case, citing limitations on his own power.

In another case, decided two weeks ago, a federal judge in Manhattan, Colleen McMahon, ruled, grudgingly, that the American Civil Liberties Union and two New York Times reporters could not get access, under the Freedom of Information Act, to classified legal memorandums that were relied on to justify the targeted killing program. In her opinion, she expressed serious reservations about the president’s interpretation of the constitutional questions. But the merits of the program were not before her, just access to the Justice Department memos, so her opinion was, in effect, nothing but an interesting read.

So at the moment, the legislature and the courts are flummoxed by, or don’t care about, how or whether to take on this aggressive program. But Mr. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, should know, of all people, what needs to be done. He was highly critical when Mr. Bush applied new constitutional theories to justify warrantless wiretapping and “enhanced interrogation.” In his 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama demanded transparency, and after taking office, he released legal memos that the Bush administration had kept secret. Once the self-serving constitutional analysis that the Bush team had used was revealed, legal scholars from across the spectrum studied and denounced it.

While Mr. Obama has criticized his predecessor, he has also worried about his successors. Last fall, when the election’s outcome was still in doubt, Mr. Obama talked about drone strikes in general and said Congress and the courts should in some manner “rein in” presidents by putting a “legal architecture in place.” His comments seemed to reflect concern that future presidents should perhaps not wield alone such awesome and unchecked power over life and death — of anyone, not just Americans. Oddly, under current law, Congress and the courts are involved when presidents eavesdrop on Americans, detain them or harshly interrogate them — but not when they kill them.

It is not just the most recent president, this one and the next whom we need to worry about when it comes to improper exercise of power. It is every president. Mr. Obama should declassify and release, to Congress, the press and the public, documents that set forth the detailed constitutional and statutory analysis he relies on for targeting and killing American citizens.

Perhaps Mr. Obama still believes that, in a democracy, the people have a right to know the legal theories upon which the president executes his great powers. Certainly, we can hope so. After all, his interpretation might be wrong.

Vicki Divoll is a former general counsel to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and former deputy legal adviser to the C.I.A.’s Counterterrorism Center.

The Second Amendment is not about killing unarmed children!!!

Dear Editor:

Lets face it the Founders didn't create the Second Amendment to allow people to kill defenseless, unarmed school children.

The Second Amendment was created to allow people to kill well armed government tyrants.

In 1776 that meant allowing the people to have swords, flintlock rifles and canons.

In 2013 it means allowing the people to have machine guns, rocket launchers, anti-tank guns and all the other weapons the well armed government tyrants have.

Mike Ross
Tempe, Arizona

US commandos teach Mexico how to track drug cartels

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Congressmen: Operation will improve safety on border

Posted: Thursday, January 17, 2013 10:23 pm

By LAURA B. MARTINEZ The Brownsville Herald

Two South Texas congressmen have thrown their support toward a program in which U.S.-based commandos will teach Mexican security forces how to track drug cartels similar to the way the U.S. hunts al-Qaida terrorists.

The Pentagon is stepping up training for Mexico’s security forces and will train them how to focus on drug criminal networks that have left at least 70,000 dead during a six-year period, The Associated Press reported.

U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, said such a program will make both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border safe and could possibly give Mexicans who have fled their country for safety concerns a chance to return home. [Rubbish - The only way to make American and Mexico safer is to end the insane "War on Drugs"]

“I think this is the kind of robust effort that our country needs to put forward so that we can make Mexico safe for its own citizens along the border — safe enough so people who have moved over who want to go back can go back and live in their homes, and for us to visit” there, Vela said.

The program, based out of the U.S. Northern Command in Colorado, will show Mexican security forces how U.S. special troop operations built an interagency network to target al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden and his followers, The AP reported.

“I think the bottom line is, making Mexico safe help keeps us safe here,” Vela said.

The special operations program already has helped Mexico establish its own intelligence center in Mexico City to target networks, patterned after similar centers in war zones built to search for al-Qaida in Afghanistan and Iraq, the AP reported.U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, said the program is an extension of the Mérida Initiative that he helped establish around 2007 and 2008 that provides extensive military assistance to Mexico.

“I am in full agreement with what the Pentagon is doing to help Mexico in the drug war that they are in. I think the experience that our U.S.-based special operations folks can teach Mexican security forces to find and disable the drug cartels, the way they did al-Qaida, is something that I think the Mexicans, if they take advantage of this, will be extremely helpful to them,” Cuellar said.

Statistics show the U.S. has spent $821 billion in direct operations on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan and more than $9 billion in Colombia. [Wow! That is about 5 percent of the $16.5 trillion national debt] It has spent $1.9 billion on the Mérida Initiative. The Obama administration is seeking to spend an additional $234 million on this plan.

Statistics also show 50,168 Iraqi casualties in the Iraq War, compared to the more than 70,000 killed in the Mexico drug wars. When Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto took office Dec. 1 he said it is important that the U.S. and Mexico work together to fight border violence, sharing intelligence information and cooperation between law enforcement authorities.

Cuellar said helping Mexico curtail drug violence is something he has supported for a while and he is glad that the Department of Defense is offering its assistance.

He emphasized that the U.S. will not go into Mexico to hunt down the drug cartels or conduct any raids there. “We respect Mexican sovereignty and we will do as much as Mexico wants us to do.”

“This is something that is long overdue,” Cuellar said. “What is happening in Mexico, it is alarming in certain areas and I think all of this comes in at the appropriate time.”

lmartinez@brownsvilleherald.com

Pentagon offers boost in aid to Mexico’s security forces

Pentagon offers boost in aid to Mexico’s security forces

Posted on January 17, 2013 By AP Mexico

Will Mexico agree?

Mexican and U.S. military officials played down the change, and it’s unclear whether the Mexican government will agree to boost its training.

“We are merely placing a component commander in charge of things we are already doing,” said Northcom spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis in a written statement.

Mexico’s Foreign Affairs Department emailed a statement saying it had been briefed on the changes, and had no further comment.

The creation of the new command marks another expansion of Adm. Bill McRaven’s special operations empire, as he seeks to migrate special operators from their decade of service in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan to new missions, even as the rest of the military fights post-war contraction and multi-billion-dollar budget cuts.

The new headquarters will also coordinate special operations troops when needed for domestic roles like rescuing survivors after a natural disaster, or helping the U.S. Coast Guard strike ships carrying suspect cargo just outside U.S. territorial waters, according to multiple current and former U.S. officials briefed on the mission. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the Pentagon has not formally announced the new headquarters.

The initial document petitioning Panetta for the command stresses the command’s role in military-to-military cooperation with Mexico. The document was signed in September 2012 by McRaven and Northcom commander Gen. Charles Jacoby.

Northcom’s current special operations training missions are an outgrowth of the Merida Initiative that was formalized in 2008, to provide extensive military assistance to Mexico. The extra special operations staff, including both troops and civilians, will help coordinate more missions as Mexico requests them, current and former officials said.

Pena Nieto is likely to welcome the continued training to help him build and coordinate the forces he needs to reduce drug violence, according to Rand Corp.’s Dr. Agnes Gereben Schaefer.

“He has talked about setting up a paramilitary force…made up of former military and police forces, which he has described as more surgical,” than the current campaign by Mexican army and police, Schaefer said. He would dispatch the force into towns that have been overrun by drug violence, where police don’t have the numbers to fight it, she said.

These news don’t mean U.S. special operations teams will be conducting raids in Mexico

Mexican military, intelligence and law enforcement chiefs have already toured the Joint Special Operations Command headquarters at Fort Bragg in North Carolina to see how U.S. officers coordinate efforts by special operations aircraft, naval vessels and air- and sea-based raiders, according to one current military official.

A small group of top Mexican military and intelligence officials also visited the command’s targeting center at the Balad air base in Iraq before the U.S. troop withdrawal in 2011, a former U.S. official said.

U.S. officials stress that sharing this expertise does not mean U.S. special operations teams will be conducting raids against targets in Mexico, nor will they be entering the country with their own weapons. Mexico forbids U.S. military or law enforcement officers from carrying guns inside their borders, with few exceptions, though American commandos have conducted training missions in the past, two current and one former U.S. military official said. They were speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the sensitive missions.

UN says Afghan prisoners still being tortured

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UN says Afghan prisoners still being tortured

Last Modified: 20 Jan 2013 18:29

Afghan authorities were still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables, according to a UN report.

More than half of the 635 detainees interviewed had been tortured, according to the report titled Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On, released on Sunday.

The figure is higher than the UN found in its first report in 2011, when 24 percent of transferred detainees were tortured.

In multiple detention centres, Afghan authorities leave detainees hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beat them with cables and wooden sticks, administer electric shocks, twist their genitals and threaten to shove bottles up their anuses or to kill them, the report said.

The report shows little progress in curbing abuse in Afghan prisons despite the Afghan government’s promise of prison reform.

It also cites instances where Afghan authorities have tried to hide mistreatment from UN monitors.

After the last year’s report, the NATO military alliance temporarily stopped transferring Afghans it had picked up to national authorities until they could set up a system free of abuse.

Though it said the findings were exaggerated, the Afghan government promised after the first report to increase monitoring, but little appears to have changed.

Once NATO forces resumed the transfers and decreased inspections, torture quickly returned to earlier levels, the report said.

'Allegations untrue'

The report documents what it called a "persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture", noting that no one has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse since the first report was released.

Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said torture and abuse of prisoners was not Afghan policy.

"However, there may be certain cases of abuse and we have begun to investigate these cases mentioned in the UN report," he said.

"We will take actions accordingly."

In a letter responding to the latest report, the Afghan government said that its internal monitoring committee found that "the allegations of torture of detainees were untrue and thus disproved".

The Afghan government said that it would not completely rule out the possibility of torture at its detention facilities, but that it was nowhere near the levels described in the report and that it was checking on reports of abuse.

The findings highlight the type of human rights abuses that many activists worry could become more prevalent in Afghanistan as international forces pull out in next couple of years.

One detainee in the western province of Farah told the UN team: "They laid me on the ground. One of them sat on my feet and another one sat on my head, and the third one took a pipe and started beating me with it.

They were beating me for some time like one hour and were frequently telling me that, 'You are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.'"

It's troubling given the amount of international attention and pledges of reform that came after the first report.

"Torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone," said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the UN mission in Afghanistan, explaining that there has been little follow-through by the Afghan government.

In a letter responding to the UN report, General John Allen, the commander of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that his staff had written letters to Afghan ministers urging them to investigate more than 80 separate allegations of detainee abuse during the past 18 months.

"To date, Afghan officials have acted in only one instance," Allen said in the letter.

UN: Prisoners still tortured in Afghan custody

UN: Prisoners still tortured in Afghan custody

By By HEIDI VOGT, Associated Press – 1 day ago

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Afghan authorities are still torturing prisoners, such as hanging them by their wrists and beating them with cables, the United Nations said, a year after it first documented the abuse and won government promises of detention reform.

The latest report shows little progress in curbing abuse in Afghan prisons despite efforts by the U.N. and international military forces in Afghanistan. The report released Sunday also cites instances where Afghan authorities have tried to hide mistreatment from U.N. monitors.

The slow progress on prison reform has prompted NATO forces to once again stop many transfers of detainees to Afghan authorities out of concern that they would be tortured.

In multiple detention centers, Afghan authorities leave detainees hanging from the ceiling by their wrists, beat them with cables and wooden sticks, administer electric shocks, twist their genitals and threaten to shove bottles up their anuses or to kill them, the report said.

In a letter responding to the latest report, the Afghan government said that its internal monitoring committee found that "the allegations of torture of detainees were untrue and thus disproved." The Afghan government said that it would not completely rule out the possibility of torture at its detention facilities, but that it was nowhere near the levels described in the report and that it was checking on reports of abuse.

The findings, however, highlight the type of human rights abuses that many activists worry could become more prevalent in Afghanistan as international forces draw down and the country's Western allies become less watchful over a government that so far has taken few concrete actions to reform the system.

As one detainee in the western province of Farah told the U.N. team: "They laid me on the ground. One of them sat on my feet and another one sat on my head, and the third one took a pipe and started beating me with it. They were beating me for some time like one hour and were frequently telling me that, 'You are with Taliban and this is what you deserve.'"

More than half of the 635 detainees interviewed had been tortured, according to the report titled Treatment of Conflict-Related Detainees in Afghan Custody: One Year On. That is about the same ratio the U.N. found in its first report in 2011.

It's a troubling finding given the amount of international attention and pledges of reform that came after the first report. At that time, the NATO military alliance temporarily stopped transferring Afghans it had picked up to national authorities until they could set up a system free of abuse. Though it said the findings were exaggerated, the Afghan government promised after the first report to increase monitoring.

But little appears to have changed. Once NATO forces resumed the transfers and decreased inspections, torture quickly returned to earlier levels, the report said. And even though the international military force was making a serious effort to delay transfers if there was risk of torture, about 30 percent of 79 detainees who had been transferred to Afghan custody by foreign governments ended up being tortured, the report said. That's higher than in 2011, when the U.N. found that 24 percent of transferred detainees were tortured.

"Torture cannot be addressed by training, inspections and directives alone," said Georgette Gagnon, the head of human rights for the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, explaining that there has been little follow-through by the Afghan government.

In particular, the U.N. report found that the Afghan government appeared to be trying to hide the mistreatment and refusing to prosecute those accused of torturing prisoners.

The U.N. team received "multiple credible reports" that in some places detainees were hidden from international observers in secret locations underground or separate from the main facility being inspected. Also, the observers said they saw what appeared to be a suspicious increase in detainees held at police facilities when an intelligence service facility nearby was being monitored.

And particularly in the southern province of Kandahar, the U.N. received reports that authorities were using unofficial sites to torture detainees before transporting them to the regular prison.

In a letter responding to the U.N. report, Gen. John Allen, the commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, said that his staff had written letters to Afghan ministers urging them to investigate more than 80 separate allegations of detainee abuse during the past 18 months.

"To date, Afghan officials have acted in only one instance," Allen said in the letter. In that case Afghan authorities did not fire the official in question, but transferred him from Kandahar province to Sar-e-Pul in the north.

The report documents what it called a "persistent lack of accountability for perpetrators of torture," noting that no one has been prosecuted for prisoner abuse since the first report was released.

Aimal Faizi, a spokesman for the Afghan president, said torture and abuse of prisoners was not Afghan policy.

"However, there may be certain cases of abuse and we have begun to investigate these cases mentioned in the U.N. report," he said. "We will take actions accordingly."

But he said that while the Afghan government takes the allegations in the report very seriously, "we also question the motivations behind this report and the way it was conducted." He did not elaborate.

The NATO military alliance responded to the most recent report by stopping transfers of detainees to seven facilities in Kabul, Laghman, Herat, Khost and Kunduz provinces — most of them the same facilities that were flagged a year ago. The transfers were halted in October, when the U.N. shared its preliminary findings with the military coalition.

"This action is a result of concerns over detainee treatment at certain Afghan detention facilities," said Jamie Graybeal, a spokesman for the international military alliance in Kabul.

He said there has been no suspension of transfers to the massive detention center next to Bagram Air Field outside of Kabul. That facility has been particularly contentious because the U.S. has held back from transferring all the detainees it holds there to Afghan custody.

But as international troops draw down in Afghanistan, there will be fewer people to monitor the Afghan detention centers. Allen said in his letter that the NATO military alliance planned to focus on monitoring only a subset of Afghan facilities in the future.

And even the manner in which the U.N. report was compiled and released shows the waning influence of Western allies over the Afghan government. Both last year and again on Sunday, the report was released without a news conference. Instead, it was quietly posted on the U.N. website in what appeared to be an effort to avoid publicly antagonizing the Afghan government that it criticizes in the report.

"I think it's being dealt with in the appropriate way. Maybe we don't need to do it publicly," Gagnon said, noting that there have been plenty of discussions with the Afghan government about how to improve the prison system.

Asked what actual improvements have been made to prisoner conditions since 2011, Gagnon was at a loss to give an example. But, she stressed: "There has been quite a lot of effort."

U.N. expert launches investigation of drones, targeted killings

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U.N. expert launches investigation of drones, targeted killings

By Emily Alpert

January 24, 2013, 1:16 p.m.

A United Nations expert has launched an investigation of drone attacks and targeted killings, scrutinizing a deeply controversial tool in the United States’ battle against Al Qaeda.

“The plain fact is that this technology is here to stay,” U.N. special rapporteur Ben Emmerson announced Thursday in London, “and its use … is a reality with which the world must contend.”

Drones are not the only way to carry out targeted killings, but the relative ease with which they are used and their devastating effects have spotlighted the legal unease around them, the U.N. expert said. The world urgently needs ways to regulate their use and keep it in line with international law, which has yet to settle how to handle such killings, he stated.

“To shine the light of factual truth on some of these very abstract debates,” a team of investigators will delve into targeted killings, Emmerson told the Los Angeles Times. The experts will scrutinize 25 attacks in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, Afghanistan and the Palestinian territories, the U.N. rapporteur said at the London press briefing.

Though other countries are believed to have drones or the technology behind them, the debate over the unmanned aircraft most often swirls around the United States, which has intensified drone use under the Obama administration.

U.S. officials have defended drone strikes as a justified use of force against Al Qaeda and its allies that has spared pilots’ lives and forestalled deeper military involvement abroad. Such strikes have killed major militants, including Abu Yahya al Libi, the second-in-command in Al Qaeda.

However, the rising use of drones as a tool of war has alarmed human rights groups around the world, who argue that the secretive practice of targeted killings runs afoul of international law. The U.S. has been sued over drone killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen, including an Al Qaeda cleric and his 16-year-old son.

“The Obama administration seems to have decided that wherever it conducts a targeted killing, it is by definition engaged in armed conflict, even far from any obvious battlefield,” James Ross of Human Rights Watch said last year. “What would the U.S. say if Russia or China took the same approach to attack perceived enemies in the streets of New York or Washington?”

The New America Foundation estimates that since 2004 as many as 3,279 people have been were killed by U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan, including as many as 305 civilians and hundreds of others “unknown.” U.S. lawmakers have challenged the accuracy of such tallies, The Times reported in June.

Emmerson said investigators will gather evidence until May, probably visiting Pakistan, Yemen and the Sahel, then seek reactions from the countries involved. In October, Emmerson plans to make recommendations to the U.N. about nations’ duty to investigate such attacks.

He was optimistic that the U.S., Britain, Pakistan and Yemen would cooperate. “I approach this inquiry with an entirely open mind,” Emmerson said.

Government rulers protect themselves from us serfs!!!

Elgin puts safety — of its City Council — first

Elgin puts safety — of its City Council — first

Bulletproof dais and individual panic buttons part of $75,000 package

By Kate Thayer and John Keilman, Chicago Tribune reporters

9:53 p.m. CST, January 23, 2013

The streets of Elgin are as safe as they've been in 40 years, but government leaders aren't taking any chances when it comes to City Hall.

The City Council voted unanimously late Wednesday to spend nearly $75,000 to bolster security as part of a remodeling of the 45-year-old building. The new features will include a staffed metal detector at the entrance, a bulletproof dais and panic buttons in the council chamber and several new surveillance cameras.

City officials said no specific threat was behind the planned changes. It simply made sense to beef up security during the remodeling, they said, especially because the council chamber also serves as a branch of the Kane County court.

"Most people who walk into a government building, they expect to be on camera somewhere, they expect to be protected," said Councilman John Prigge. "In this world we are surrounded by video cameras. We are a normally high-tech world. In the council chambers, it's fair to say we're not."

Strong security measures have long been in place in courthouses, police headquarters and federal buildings, but city halls and school boards have remained relatively open. Across the country, though, that's starting to change as well-publicized acts of violence convince elected officials that it's time to turn their buildings into hard targets.

They're installing metal detectors, having police officers stand guard during public meetings and, in some cases, adding features to their meeting rooms meant to protect officials from gunfire.

Albuquerque, N.M., is one of numerous cities that have lined their meeting room daises with bulletproof material, providing a chance for City Council members to duck out of harm's way should a shooting break out. The Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County, Calif., spent $77,000 to create what the local media referred to as a "panic room" behind its meeting chamber. (A county spokeswoman described it as a reinforced conference room, without offering details.)

Officials with Bay District Schools in Panama City, Fla., decided to add a bulletproof dais and an armed sheriff's deputy after a disturbed man showed up at 2010 board meeting with a gun. He fired several times at Superintendent Bill Husfelt and several board members as they dropped behind their plywood dais, missing them, before being shot by the district's security chief and taking his own life.

"I feel safer now than I did before, but I think it's a mental thing we did mainly for our employees," Husfelt said.

Barbara A. Nadel, a New York architect who writes frequently about building security, said new features alone aren't enough to ensure safety in public buildings. She cited a 2003 incident in New York City in which a gunman evaded a metal detector by entering City Hall with a councilman who didn't have to pass through security.

The gunman, a political opponent of the councilman, shot him dead in the council chamber before being killed by a police officer.

"We can put in all kinds of bells and whistles, but if people aren't following policies and procedures, security can be breached," Nadel said.

The security changes at Elgin's City Hall come as the growing suburb — its population is now about 109,000 — is poised to add two seats to its City Council after the April municipal election. The council now has six seats, plus the mayor.

City officials said the expanding council prompted a remodeling plan, budgeted at $374,000, and security quickly became part of the discussion. Mayor David Kaptain said last month's mass school shooting in Newtown, Conn., did not affect the city's plan, which had been under discussion for more than a year.

Although police recently reported that Elgin's crime is at a 40-year low, the city best known for its Grand Victoria Casino has had its share of violence compared with other suburbs. City Council meetings often draw a crowd, and sometimes a heated discussion.

City Hall has kept a metal detector at the entrance to the council chambers, but visitors have only had to pass through it when the room hosts satellite sessions for the Kane County court. It hasn't been used for council meetings, but the city now plans to put it at the building's front entrance so all visitors are screened.

As for bulletproofing, the council chamber's dais already has a single panel that protects the spot where the judge (or mayor) sits. The city's plan calls for outfitting the entire dais with similar material.

City Manager Sean Stegall said Elgin tried to strike a balance between security and open government; that's why no one considered topping the dais with bulletproof glass, he said.

But he added that installing more bulletproof panels is a wise precaution should anyone get past the metal detector with a weapon. Council members would be the likely target in such a scenario, he said.

Other features to be added include panic buttons for each council member that, when pressed, would alert a police dispatcher to trouble. City Hall also will get new security cameras in the council chamber, the lobby and stairwells.

The city also plans to upgrade its audiovisual equipment and audience seating. Stegall said that is meant to make for better viewing of council meetings, whether in person or via the local cable TV access channel.

kthayer@tribune.com jkeilman@tribune.com

I killed people in Afghanistan. Was I right or wrong?

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I killed people in Afghanistan. Was I right or wrong?

By Timothy Kudo, Published: January 25

Marine Capt. Timothy Kudo, a graduate student at New York University, deployed to Iraq in 2009 and to Afghanistan from 2010 to 2011. Follow him on Twitter: @tkudo.

When I joined the Marine Corps, I knew I would kill people. I was trained to do it in a number of ways, from pulling a trigger to ordering a bomb strike to beating someone to death with a rock. As I got closer to deploying to war in 2009, my lethal abilities were refined, but my ethical understanding of killing was not.

I held two seemingly contradictory beliefs: Killing is always wrong, but in war, it is necessary. How could something be both immoral and necessary?

I didn’t have time to resolve this question before deploying. And in the first few months, I fell right into killing without thinking twice. We were simply too busy to worry about the morality of what we were doing.

But one day in Afghanistan in 2010, my patrol got into a firefight and ended up killing two people on a motorcycle who we thought were about to attack us. They ignored or didn’t understand our warnings to stop, and according to the military’s “escalation of force” guidelines, we were authorized to shoot them in self-defense. Although we thought they were armed, they turned out to be civilians. One looked no older than 16.

It’s been more than two years since we killed those people on the motorcycle, and I think about them every day. Sometimes it’s when I’m reading the news or watching a movie, but most often it’s when I’m taking a shower or walking down my street in Brooklyn.

They are not the only deaths I carry with me. I also remember the first time a Marine several miles away asked me over the radio whether his unit could kill someone burying a bomb. The decision fell on me alone. I said yes. Those decisions became commonplace over my deployment. Even more frightening than the idea of what we were doing was how easy it became for me. I never shot someone, but I ordered bomb strikes and directed other people to shoot.

Many veterans are unable to reconcile such actions in war with the biblical commandment “Thou shalt not kill.” When they come home from an environment where killing is not only accepted but is a metric of success, the transition to one where killing is wrong can be incomprehensible.

This incongruity can have devastating effects. After more than 10 years of war, the military lost more active-duty members last year to suicide than to enemy fire. More worrisome, the Department of Veterans Affairs estimates that one in five Americans who commit suicide is a veteran, despite the fact that veterans make up just 13 percent of the population.

While I don’t know why individual veterans resort to suicide, I can say that the ethical damage of war may be worse than the physical injuries we sustain. To properly wage war, you have to recalibrate your moral compass. Once you return from the battlefield, it is difficult or impossible to repair it.

VA has started calling this problem “moral injury,” but that’s as deceptive a euphemism as “collateral damage.” This isn’t the kind of injury you recover from with rest, physical therapy and pain medication. War makes us killers. We must confront this horror directly if we’re to be honest about the true costs of war.

I didn’t return from Afghanistan as the same person. My personality is the same, or at least close enough, but I’m no longer the “good” person I once thought I was. There’s nothing that can change that; it’s impossible to forget what happened, and the only people who can forgive me are dead.

I will never know whether my actions in Afghanistan were right or wrong. On good days, I believe they were necessary. But instead, I want to believe that killing, even in war, is wrong.

America will participate in other wars in my lifetime. But if the decision to do so is a collective responsibility, then civilians need to have a better understanding of the consequences. The immorality of war is not a wound we can ignore — as is painfully obvious with so many veterans committing suicide.

Civilians can comprehend the casualties of war because most people know someone who has died. But few know someone who has killed. When I tell people I’m a Marine, the next question many ask is: “Did you kill anyone?” To my ears, this sounds like: “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” They don’t realize they’re asking about an intensely private matter.

Many veterans I know are incensed by this question. It reinforces the isolation they feel in a society that doesn’t seem to care about Iraq or Afghanistan. But to me, it speaks to the fact that civilians’ curiosity about war overwhelms their understanding of it. Most Americans have little idea what war means. Our battles are fought with volunteers, making an intimate knowledge of war voluntary as well — and therefore avoidable.

Veterans are the only ones who can explain the ethical impact of war. For me, this means being open and honest about the deaths I caused and how they have changed me.

The question “Did you kill anyone?” isn’t easy to answer — and it’s certainly not one every veteran wants to. But when civilians ask, I think I have a duty to respond.

And if explaining what I did 6,000 miles away in a conflict far from the public’s consciousness makes the next war less likely, then maybe my actions weren’t in vain.

tim.kudo@gmail.com

Miranda rights in Mexico???

Fifth Amendment rights in Mexico???

Of course the cops always tell me I don't have any stinking 5th Amendment rights and make all kinds of nasty evil threats on what will happen to me if I don't answer their questions.

I suspect the Mexican cops will behave the same way.

Believe it or not the Mexican Constitution has it's own version of the 5th Amendment which is Article 20 and allows people charged to remain silent.

Artículo 20

II. No podrá ser compelido a declarar en su contra, por lo cual queda rigurosamente prohibida toda incomunicación o cualquier otro medio que tienda a aquel objeto;

Second Amendment rights in Mexico???

Artículo 10

Los habitantes de los Estados Unidos Mexicanos tienen derecho a poseer armas en su domicilio, para su seguridad y legitima defensa, con excepción de las prohibidas por la ley federal y de las reservadas para el uso exclusivo del Ejército, Armada, Fuerza Aérea y Guardia Nacional. La ley federal determinara los casos, condiciones, requisitos y lugares en que se podrán autorizar a los habitantes la portaron de armas.

Mexican suspects to get Miranda-style warnings

Associated Press Sat Jan 26, 2013 2:02 PM

MEXICO CITY — Reading suspects their rights is something most Mexicans have only seen in American movies.

But authorities say they are starting a program to require police to read suspects their rights or risk letting them go free.

The assistant secretary of the interior says all federal police will have to advise detainees of their right to remain silent and the right to a lawyer.

Eduardo Sanchez says the warning will also advise foreigners they have a right to consular assistance and Indians that they can have translators.

The Interior Department said Friday that suspects could appeal to win their release if they are not read their rights, but that would not necessarily void the charges against them.

The United States has required so-called “Miranda Rights” warnings since the 1960s. [Yea, but the police routinely ignore your Miranda Rights. About the only place you will ever see a cop read somebody their Miranda Rights is on a TV show. As I said at the beginning I always tell the cops I am taking the 5th and refusing to answer their questions. And they have always threaten to harm me if I didn't answer their questions.]

Hitler & Mussolini were great guys????

Of course "It CAN happen here" and this article shows there are lots of people that still love Hitler and Mussolini and would love for it to happen here again.

Source

Berlusconi defends backing of Hitler

Associated Press Mon Jan 28, 2013 12:21 AM

ROME - Former Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi praised Benito Mussolini for “having done good” despite the Fascist dictator’s anti-Jewish laws, immediately provoking outrage as Europe on Sunday held Holocaust remembrances.

Berlusconi also defended Mussolini for allying himself with Hitler, saying he likely reasoned that it would be better to be on the winning side.

The media mogul, whose conservative forces are polling second in voter surveys ahead of next month’s parliamentary election, spoke to reporters on the sidelines of a ceremony in Milan to commemorate the Holocaust. In 1938, before the outbreak of World War II, Mussolini’s regime passed the so-called “racial laws,” barring Jews from Italy’s universities and many professions, among other bans. When Germany’s Nazi regime occupied Italy during the war, thousands from the tiny Italian Jewish community were deported to death camps.

“It is difficult now to put oneself in the shoes of who was making decisions back then,” Berlusconi said of Mussolini’s support for Hitler. “Certainly the (Italian) government then, fearing that German power would turn into a general victory, preferred to be allied with Hitler’s Germany rather than oppose it.”

Berlusconi added that “within this alliance came the imposition of the fight against, and extermination of, the Jews. Thus, the racial laws are the worst fault of Mussolini, who, in so many other aspects, did good.”

More than 7,000 Jews were deported under Mussolini’s regime, and nearly 6,000 were killed.

Outrage, along with a demand that Berlusconi be prosecuted for promoting Fascism, quickly followed his words.

“It is the height of revisionism to try to reinstate an Italian dictator who helped legitimize and prop up Hitler as a ‘reincarnated good guy,’” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, which monitors anti-Semitic incidents worldwide. Berlusconi’s praise of Mussolini constitutes “an insult to the democratic conscience of Italy,” said Rosy Bindi, a center-left leader. “Only Berlusconi’s political cynicism, combined with the worst historic revisionism, could separate the shame of the racist laws from the Fascist dictatorship.”

U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa

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U.S. Weighs Base for Spy Drones in North Africa

By ERIC SCHMITT

Published: January 28, 2013 292 Comments

WASHINGTON — The United States military is preparing to establish a drone base in northwest Africa so that it can increase surveillance missions on the local affiliate of Al Qaeda and other Islamist extremist groups that American and other Western officials say pose a growing menace to the region.

For now, officials say they envision flying only unarmed surveillance drones from the base, though they have not ruled out conducting missile strikes at some point if the threat worsens.

The move is an indication of the priority Africa has become in American antiterrorism efforts. The United States military has a limited presence in Africa, with only one permanent base, in the country of Djibouti, more than 3,000 miles from Mali, where French and Malian troops are now battling Qaeda-backed fighters who control the northern part of Mali.

A new drone base in northwest Africa would join a constellation of small airstrips in recent years on the continent, including in Ethiopia, for surveillance missions flown by drones or turboprop planes designed to look like civilian aircraft.

If the base is approved, the most likely location for it would be in Niger, a largely desert nation on the eastern border of Mali. The American military’s Africa Command, or Africom, is also discussing options for the base with other countries in the region, including Burkina Faso, officials said.

The immediate impetus for a drone base in the region is to provide surveillance assistance to the French-led operation in Mali. “This is directly related to the Mali mission, but it could also give Africom a more enduring presence for I.S.R.,” one American military official said Sunday, referring to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

A handful of unarmed Predator drones would carry out surveillance missions in the region and fill a desperate need for more detailed information on a range of regional threats, including militants in Mali and the unabated flow of fighters and weapons from Libya. American military commanders and intelligence analysts complain that such information has been sorely lacking.

The Africa Command’s plan still needs approval from the Pentagon and eventually from the White House, as well as from officials in Niger. American military officials said that they were still working out some details, and that no final decision had been made. But in Niger on Monday, the two countries reached a status-of-forces agreement that clears the way for greater American military involvement in the country and provides legal protection to American troops there, including any who might deploy to a new drone base.

The plan could face resistance from some in the White House who are wary of committing any additional American forces to a fight against a poorly understood web of extremist groups in North Africa.

If approved, the base could ultimately have as many as 300 United States military and contractor personnel, but it would probably begin with far fewer people than that, military officials said.

Some Africa specialists expressed concern that setting up a drone base in Niger or in a neighboring country, even if only to fly surveillance missions, could alienate local people who may associate the distinctive aircraft with deadly attacks in Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.

Officials from Niger did not respond to e-mails over the weekend about the plan, but its president, Mahamadou Issoufou, has expressed a willingness to establish what he called in a recent interview “a long-term strategic relationship with the U.S.”

“What’s happening in northern Mali is a big concern for us because what’s happening in northern Mali can also happen to us,” Mr. Issoufou said in an interview at the presidential palace in Niamey, Niger’s capital, on Jan. 10, the day before French troops swept into Mali to blunt the militant advance.

Gen. Carter F. Ham, the head of the Africa Command, who visited Niger this month to discuss expanding the country’s security cooperation with the United States, declined to comment on the proposed drone base, saying in an e-mail that the subject was “too operational for me to confirm or deny.”

Discussions about the drone base come at a time when the French operation in Mali and a militant attack on a remote gas field in the Algerian desert that left at least 37 foreign hostages, including 3 Americans, dead have thrown a spotlight on Al Qaeda’s franchise in the region, Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, and forced Western governments and their allies in the region to accelerate efforts to combat it.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat who is chairwoman of the Intelligence Committee, said on CBS’s “Face the Nation” on Sunday that in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death and the turmoil of the Arab Spring, there was “an effort to establish a beachhead for terrorism, a joining together of terrorist organizations.”

According to current and former American government officials, as well as classified government cables made public by the group WikiLeaks, the surveillance missions flown by American turboprop planes in northern Mali have had only a limited effect.

Flown mainly from Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, the missions have faced stiff challenges as militant leaders have taken greater precautions in using electronic communications and have taken more care not to disclose delicate information that could be monitored, like their precise locations.

General Ham said in an interview on his visit to Niger that it had been difficult for American intelligence agencies to collect consistent, reliable intelligence about what was going on in northern Mali, as well as in other largely ungoverned parts of the sub-Saharan region.

“It’s tough to penetrate,” he said. “It’s tough to get access for platforms that can collect. It’s an extraordinarily tough environment for human intelligence, not just ours but the neighboring countries as well.”

The State Department has been extraordinarily wary of allowing drones to operate in the region, fearful of criticism that the United States is trying to militarize parts of Africa as it steps up its campaign to hunt down Qaeda-linked extremists in Somalia, as well as those responsible for the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, that killed Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.

American drones regularly conduct surveillance flights over Somalia and occasionally launch airstrikes against people suspected of being members of the Shabab, a militant group linked to Al Qaeda. General Ham, who will be retiring from his command this spring after nearly 40 years in the Army, has been warning that the United States needs more and better surveillance tools in Africa to track the growing threats there.

“Without operating locations on the continent, I.S.R. capabilities would be curtailed, potentially endangering U.S. security,” General Ham said in a statement to the House Armed Services Committee last March. “Given the vast geographic space and diversity in threats, the command requires increased I.S.R. assets to adequately address the security challenges on the continent.”

Uncle Sam is reading your email???

Google will seek to limit law enforcement's access to emails

Google will seek to limit law enforcement's access to emails

Reuters

Posted: 01/28/2013 05:46:16 PM PST

WASHINGTON -- Google (GOOG) will lobby Washington in 2013 to make it harder for law enforcement authorities to gain access to emails and other digital messages.

In a blog post on Monday, linked to Data Privacy Day, Google's chief legal officer, David Drummond, said the tech giant, in coalition with many other powerful tech companies, will try to convince Congress to update a 1986 privacy protection law.

He cited data showing that government requests for Mountain View-based Google's user data increased more than 70 percent since 2009.

In 2012, Google said, "We're a law-abiding company, and we don't want our services to be used in harmful ways. But it's just as important that laws protect you against overly broad requests for your personal information," Drummond said in the post.

The U.S. Electronic Communications Privacy Act, passed in the early days of the Internet, does not require government investigators to have a search warrant when requesting access to old emails and messages that are stored online, providing less protection for them than, say, letters stored in a desk drawer or even messages saved on a computer's hard drive.

The current system also makes complex distinctions, many disputed in courts, between emails saved as drafts online, in transit, unopened or opened. Some of them are to be released with subpoenas, which have a lower threshold than search warrants as they often do not involve a judge.

A warrant is generally approved by a judge if investigators have "probable cause" to believe that their search is likely to turn up information related to a crime.

Google, Microsoft, Yahoo (YHOO) and popular social media site Twitter -- among others -- have resisted turning over customer data.

They have put in place policies, based on the constitutional protection from unreasonable searches, that require search warrants for access to content of private communications.

Privacy activists say the outdated law should be reformed to extend the constitutional right to privacy online, but legislation limiting government requests will not face an easy road.

Last year, Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, introduced a bill that would have updated the current law.

It triggered a wave of concerns from the police and FBI that new restrictions would impede crime investigations and possibly endanger victims.

"After three decades, it is essential that Congress update ECPA to ensure that this critical law keeps pace with new technologies and the way Americans use and store email today," Leahy said in a statement on Monday.

His privacy legislation died in Congress last year after his counterpart in the House of Representatives, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, a Republican, drafted another version of that bill, which also tackled other issues but stripped out privacy reform language.

Last year, Goodlatte said he was willing to consider the privacy law reform, but that the timeline then was too short for a "thorough examination."

Leahy has now included the change of privacy laws as one of his top priorities this year.

Sounds like the insurgents are winning the war.

Source

Bombs lead to U.S. truck upgrades in Afghanistan

By Tom Vanden Brook USA Today Tue Jan 29, 2013 9:43 PM

WASHINGTON -- Massive roadside bombs in Afghanistan have forced the military to retrofit armored trucks with better escape hatches to rescue troops wounded in explosions, according to documents and interviews with defense officials.

The Pentagon has sought to shift $48 million from its accounts to pay for more than 500 new escape hatches for its Cougar version of the Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles and for upgrades to its other versions of the trucks.

That’s because, Pentagon records show, Taliban insurgents have buried bombs more than 2,000 pounds capable of flipping 40,000-pound vehicles. Defense officials have added more harnesses inside MRAPs to keep troops from being tossed around inside the vehicles during an explosion, improved lighting to help them escape and more protection on the outside.

Every month, U.S. troops encounter at least two massive bombs, usually formed from homemade explosives packed into multiple 40-pound cooking-oil jugs, said David Small, a spokesman for the Pentagon’s Joint IED Defeat Organization.

“Improvements to make equipment safer for war fighters are prudent,” Small said. “While overall Afghanistan trends do not see an increase in IEDs with large net explosive weights, there are areas where such larger attacks have occurred, which could warrant action to modify some MRAPs.”

The Pentagon has spent $47billion on MRAPs to protect troops in Afghanistan and Iraq from IEDs, the No. 1 cause of deaths and wounds to U.S. troops. In Afghanistan, there are about 13,000 MRAPs, the principal truck for the 66,000 troops there.

The Cougar is one of the military’s largest MRAPs and often stays on larger roads, while a variant developed specifically for Afghanistan, the M-ATV, performs the bulk of the work on smaller roads and in tougher terrain.

Staying one step ahead exposes a key advantage the insurgents have in the fight, said Peter Singer, director of the 21st Century Defense Initiative at the Brookings Institution.

“People like to talk about how technology has no role in counterinsurgencies, but here again is a great example of the constant back and forth you face even when fighting against insurgents with minuscule budgets,” Singer said. “The key question is how do we break free of the cycle where we are spending multimillion dollars to counter their tens or hundreds of dollar advancements.”

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

If you are a police officer, a fan of the drug war, hate medical marijuana, love taxes, or hate guns you will probably love Kyrsten Sinema.

Kyrsten Sinema - U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9

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Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.)

U.S. Representative, Arizona, District 9 (Since 2013)

Kyrsten Sinema was born in Tucson, Ariz., and has lived in Phoenix since 1995. She attended Arizona State University where she earned a master's in social work, a law degree and a doctorate in justice studies. She practices criminal defense law in Phoenix and also is an adjunct professor at ASU's School of Social Work. Sinema served three terms as a representative in the Arizona Legislature and was the assistant leader to the House Democratic Caucus from 2009 to 2010. She was elected to the state Senate in 2010 but resigned in early 2012 to seek a seat in Arizona's newly created 9th Congressional District. Sinema ran unsuccessfully for the state Legislature in 2002 and for the Phoenix City Council in 2001, both times as an independent candidate. She is single.

Birthday: July 12, 1976

Hometown: Tucson, AZ, United States

Alma Mater: JD from Arizona State University; MA from Arizona State University; PhD from Arizona State University

Web site: http://kyrstensinema.com/

Obama appoints war monger Chuck Hagel for Secretary of Defense

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At Confirmation Hearing, Hagel Offers Forceful Endorsement of U.S. Military Power

By ELISABETH BUMILLER

Published: January 31, 2013

WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel, President Obama’s nominee to be secretary of defense, on Thursday morning said that the United States must lead other nations in confronting threats, use all tools of American power in protecting its people and “maintain the strongest military in the world.”

In an opening statement at his Senate confirmation hearing, Mr. Hagel presented a broad, forceful endorsement of American military power aimed at answering critics who say he would weaken the United States. He offered strong support for Israel, said he was fully committed to the president’s goal of preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and said he would keep up pressure — through Special Operations forces and drones — on terrorist groups in Yemen, Somalia and North Africa.

“I believe, and always have, that America must engage — not retreat — in the world,” Mr. Hagel told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

On Afghanistan, which Mr. Hagel called “the longest war in America’s history,” Mr. Hagel, a Republican and former senator from Nebraska, said he agreed with the president that there would only be two functions for the small number of American forces in Afghanistan after 2014: hunting down Al Qaeda and its affiliates and training and advising Afghan security forces.

Mr. Hagel’s opening statement frequently echoed the policies of the departing defense secretary, Leon E. Panetta, and at several points used identical phrasing. Like Mr. Panetta, Mr. Hagel said that the United States “always will be a Pacific power” and that the Defense Department was “rebalancing its resources toward the Asia-Pacific region.”

But although he said he shared Mr. Panetta’s “serious concern” about impending defense budget cuts, called sequestration, he did not sound the same cataclysmic alarm that Mr. Panetta has at times in the past.

Before he even made his opening statement, Mr. Hagel faced a blast of objections from the ranking Republican on the committee, Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, who told Mr. Hagel that he would not vote for him because of his position of “appeasing” America’s adversaries.

“His record demonstrates what I view as a steadfast opposition to policies that diminish U.S. power and influence throughout the world, as well as a recent trend of policy reversals that seem based on political expediency rather than on core beliefs,” Mr. Inhofe said.

But even a reliable yes vote, Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who serves as the committee’s chairman, said in his opening statement that Mr. Hagel had made “troubling” statements about Israel and had expressed a willingness to negotiated on Iran on issues that Mr. Levin viewed as nonnegotiable. Mr. Levin said he expected Mr. Hagel to address those issues during the hearing.

The hearing occurred in a packed room in the Dirksen Senate Office Building, where a protester shouted that Mr. Hagel had to provide equal military benefits to gay couples while the men of America’s defense establishment, including former Senator Sam Nunn and James Jones, a former national security adviser, turned up to lend support. Mr. Nunn, who has been considered over the years for defense secretary, introduced Mr. Hagel to the committee.

Mr. Hagel, who has gone through three “murder boards,” or mock hearings, in preparation for the real one, has met with nearly 60 members of the Senate. He has spent the past three weeks working out of a modest transition office down the hall from the office of Mr. Panetta, in the Pentagon E-ring, the corridor with sweeping views of the Potomac River and Washington.

With the help of a transition staff led by Marcel J. Lettre, Mr. Panetta’s deputy chief of staff, Mr. Hagel has received voluminous Pentagon briefings, met with Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and spoken with the deputy defense secretary, Ashton B. Carter, who will remain in the job.

Mr. Hagel, 66, a decorated Vietnam veteran and a senator from Nebraska, has also worked closely with Mr. Obama’s aides on what has become a major White House offensive to counter criticism from Jewish and conservative groups and some Democrats that Mr. Hagel is too hard on Israel and too soft on Iran.

As part of an aggressive effort to support Mr. Hagel, the White House arranged for him to meet this month with major Jewish groups as well as Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, who objected to a statement Mr. Hagel made in 2006: “The Jewish lobby intimidates a lot of people up here.”

He was referring to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, which advocates for Israel. Critics took issue with the implication that members of Congress are bullied and with his use of the word “Jewish” rather than “Israel,” which some said suggested that all advocates for Israel are Jewish.

Mr. Hagel’s past opposition to unilateral American sanctions against Iran, which he viewed as ineffective, has also become an issue. His view was out of step with current Obama administration policy, which has imposed on Iran tough unilateral sanctions as well as sanctions worked out with a coalition of other countries.

Mr. Schumer, the most influential Jewish member of the Senate, endorsed Mr. Hagel after the meeting with him, paving the way for other Democrats to do the same. The White House subsequently arranged another meeting between Mr. Hagel and representatives of major Jewish groups, including Aipac, the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Congress. Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. stopped by. Although the Jewish groups did not endorse Mr. Hagel afterward, they have remained publicly silent and have not moved against him.

But some new political groups financed by anonymous donors continue to wage a media campaign against Mr. Hagel. One calling itself Americans for a Strong Defense is urging Democratic senators in five states to vote against him, saying he would make the United States “a weaker country.” Another, Use Your Mandate, which presents itself as a liberal gay rights group but buys its television time through a prominent Republican firm, is attacking Mr. Hagel in ads and mailers as “antigay,” “anti-woman” and “anti-Israel.”

The antigay charge stems from disparaging comments he made in 1997 objecting to an “openly, aggressively gay” nominee for a top diplomatic post. Mr. Hagel has since apologized for the remarks.

White House officials said they expected support from some of the 12 Republicans on the 26-member Armed Services Committee, including potentially from Senator John McCain of Arizona, who was once a close friend of Mr. Hagel’s but broke with him on the Iraq war. Both men initially supported the American invasion in 2003, but Mr. Hagel became an early critic of the George W. Bush administration’s handling of the war.

Mr. Hagel, who would be the first former enlisted soldier to become secretary of defense, has, like Mr. Obama, been wary of American military involvement overseas. Last year, recalling his service in Vietnam, where he and his brother Tom were serving in the same infantry squad when both were severely wounded, he said: “I’m not a pacifist — I believe in using force, but only after following a very careful decision-making process. The night Tom and I were medevaced out of that village in April 1968, I told myself: If I ever get out of this and I’m ever in a position to influence policy, I will do everything I can to avoid needless, senseless war.”

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Italy court convicts 3 Americans in CIA kidnapping

Associated Press Fri Feb 1, 2013 7:53 AM

MILAN — A Milan appeals court has convicted a former CIA station chief and two other Americans in absentia in the 2003 rendition kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric.

The court on Friday sentenced former CIA station chief Jeff Castelli to seven years, and handed sentences of six years each to Americans Betnie Medero and Ralph Russomando.

All three had been acquitted in the first trial due to diplomatic immunity.

Italy’s highest court last year upheld the convictions of 23 more Americans in absentia in the abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street as part of the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program.

The appeals process for Castelli and the other two was separated for technical reasons.

70 percent of Phoenix's general fund is spent on the police!!!!

"70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety"

Councilman Michael Nowakowski

I think when you consider the total budget as opposed to the general budget the figure is about 40 percent of it. Most city fire departments grab the next 20 percent of the total budget, with all other departments combined grabbing splitting up the final 40 percent of the budget up.

Now considering that two thirds of the people in prison are there for victimless drug war crimes, you could easily tell the police to stop arresting pot smokers and not affect public safety at all!!!!

And of fire a whole bunch of unneeded cops at the same time and save a whole bunch of money.

Of course the war on drugs is a jobs program for cops and the police union would hate that!!!! Even if those jobs are 100 percent unneeded the police union is not going to let them go without a fight!!!

Repeal the stinking sale tax. We don't need those cops!!!

Source

Food-tax repeal may hit Phoenix hard

By Dustin Gardiner The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 1, 2013 10:38 AM

As political pressure builds to repeal Phoenix’s food tax, city officials have outlined several financial obstacles that could complicate such a move.

City Manager David Cavazos this week sent a memo to the mayor and City Council listing major budget constraints to ending the tax, including concerns that it could affect the city’s perfect credit rating or result in a loss of revenue needed to help support police and fire services. [screw the credit rating, I want lower taxes. and it certainly wouldn't hurt to fire a bunch of cops who mainly arrest people for victimless drug war crimes]

The update comes as some council members have renewed calls to repeal the tax this spring, roughly two years before its 2015 sunset. The 2 percent tax on residents’ grocery bills is shaping up to be a contentious point of spring budget negotiations.

Mayor Greg Stanton, who pledged during his 2011 campaign to repeal the tax by April, has been a focus of much of the debate. He has yet to take a definitive position on the issue and could provide the crucial fifth vote needed to abolish the tax early.

“We still have significant challenges,” Stanton said, describing the city’s murky budget picture. “The economy is not bouncing back as quickly as people had hoped.”

He said Cavazos’ memo points out the “stark circumstances” Phoenix faces as it weighs the food-tax repeal: revenue for the current budget year is less than projected. Stanton said he hopes the city can still eliminate or reduce the tax but that he plans to review detailed spending-cut options before making a decision.

Two of the council’s more fiscally conservative members, Jim Waring and Sal DiCiccio, said the city could immediately repeal the tax without affecting public-safety services. DiCiccio has questioned why the city spent tens of millions of dollars on employee raises and bonuses these past few years, costs that are fixed as part of the city’s contracts with unions.

“Delaying the promised repeal of the food tax is the kind of tactic that hurts the middle class and working families,” DiCiccio said. “If the food tax is to be removed by April 1, the public needs time to consider the details of how that will be done without affecting public safety, as promised.”

Council members created the emergency food tax in February 2010 as Phoenix was facing an unprecedented $277 million general-fund shortfall. The tax was proposed as a way to prevent large layoffs of public-safety personnel and keep libraries and senior centers open. [really the expense of libraries and senior centers is insignificant compare to the cops of paying police officers who account for 70 percent of Phoenix's budget] So far, it has generated about $127 million in additional revenue, or about $50million per year.

Although some council members hoped to remove the tax by April, Cavazos’ proposed time line makes that appear unlikely. He plans to present options for cutting the tax on March 26, along with the rest of his trial budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. The council would have months to make a final decision.

City officials said two primary challenges will be maintaining the city’s AAA bond rating and continuing to provide support for public safety.

Phoenix has relied on money from the food tax to help pay for about $30 million in general-fund expenses per year, most of which goes toward public safety and court expenses. On top of that, $8 million goes to help support specialty police and fire funds that have run a negative balance.

“Because 70 percent of the city’s general fund is spent on public safety, I am concerned about how it would be affected by a possible repeal of the tax,” Councilman Michael Nowakowski said recently. “Phoenix’s leaders must consider that and all other consequences in the process.”

A loss in revenue from the food tax could also hurt how credit-rating agencies evaluate Phoenix, Cavazos said. A lower credit rating would require the city to pay higher interest rates when it borrowed money.

Cavazos and city budget staff will spend the next several weeks outlining the council’s specific options, including a budget with recommended service levels and another with cuts to compensate for the loss of the food tax. He said both options will be shown to residents at numerous public meetings.

“I think it’s pretty clear that we have lots of constraints, ” Cavazos said. “We have to work very carefully with our departments and listen very carefully to the public before we can fully identify what those consequences are.”

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

A drug warrior comes to his senses on medical marijuana!!!!

Let's face it, it's time to end the insane and unconstitutional drug war.

Source

Laurie Roberts | azcentral opinions

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

Posted on February 1, 2013 5:00 pm by Laurie Roberts

Look who's coming out of the closet for medical marijuana

“No medical authority would say it’s helping you. They all say it’s harming you.” Rep. John Kavanagh, on medical marijuana

That’s marijuana.

Now there’s a move afoot to repeal the medical marijuana law that Arizona voters have approved three times now. Bennett Black’s father is hoping the Legislature will take a pass on Kavanagh’s bill to put repeal on the 2014 ballot.

“I can’t imagine people saying ‘I’m going to take away a sick person’s lifeline, their ability to have a quality of life and to criminalize that which is keeping him alive,’ ” the father told me. “If there’s a problem, the problem doesn’t come from keeping it away from people that need it.”

Lest you think these the words of some aging hippy, think again. Black’s father is former U.S. Attorney Mel McDonald, a Ronald Reagan appointee who led the war on drugs in Arizona in the 1980s and sat on the 15-member advisory commission of attorneys general that helped set national drug policy. He’s a Mormon, a former Maricopa County prosecutor who also served as a Superior Court judge and has been appointed to various boards and commissions by six of the last seven Arizona governors.

And he’s a fierce supporter of medical marijuana, because he’s seen the relief it offers his son.

I’ve been skeptical about the whole medical marijuana movement, sold as a godsend to cancer and glaucoma patients but used mostly by people with “chronic pain.” The picture of the young man holding his skateboard and his white bag of pot in December, when Arizona’s first dispensary opened, wasn’t exactly a PR coup for the medical marijuana industry.

Then I met Bennett Black and his parents, Mel and Cindy McDonald.

In 1997, Black was riding his Go-Ped when he was hit by a car going 45 mph. The 14 year old suffered a serious brain injury that left him with a severe form of epilepsy.

He’s seen some of the best neurologists in the country. He’s had a golf ball-sized piece of his brain removed. He’s had a vagus nerve stimulator wired to his brain, a device that sends out electrical charges every 30 seconds. And still the epilepsy controls his life, racking his body with life threatening grand-mal seizures that can last up to 75 minutes.

He takes five anti-seizure medications, which leave his stomach one roiling pit of uuuugh. Every day, he is sick. All the time, sick. By 1999, his weight had dropped from 180 pounds to 119 as he would go days without food. His mother, Cindy, talks of spending hour upon exhausting hour in the dead of night, trying to coax seizure medication into his empty stomach only to find the pills minutes later in a bucket of vomit.

A neighbor, suffering the after effects of a broken neck, suggested to Cindy that her son try marijuana. At first, Cindy says she resisted giving it to her son but eventually she became desperate. It was, she says, like a miracle. A few puffs and Bennett could a least gag down a few bites of food, enough to keep him alive.

And so came Cindy the criminal, the mother who snuck around and broke the law, obtaining marijuana so that her son could live, knowing that if she were caught it would make headlines: Wife of former US attorney snared in drug bust.

But knowing, too, that she had no choice.

Mel McDonald also faced a dilemma. He knew his son needed the illegal drug. But he knew also that he could lose his license to practice that which he had always stood for and respected — the law.

For a decade, the McDonalds lived with what he calls “the iron curtain” in their house. Cindy would obtain the marijuana, storing it in a safe only she had access to and giving it to her son when he needed it, which was pretty much every day — though never when Mel was around.

And Mel? It was his job to look the other way and to live with that.

“It’s almost like the story of Les Miserables. Jean Valjean breaking in to steal bread,” he said, recounting a decade of his wife’s clandestine activity. “Here’s a mother who has found one way to keep her son eating food — the only thing that works is marijuana – to keep him alive. To have to go out there and create that barrier in our home because I can’t be a part of it, I can’t be with you. I don’t want to know what you’re doing. I’ve literally got to keep a barrier in my own home to satisfy the requirements of the law and the bar.”

Voters first approved legalizing marijuana for medical use in 1996 but the Legislature repealed the law. Voters again approved it in 1998 but it never took effect because federal officials threatened to prosecute any doctor who prescribed the drug.

Then in 2010, voters narrowly approved it a third time, this time with a requirement only that a doctor “recommend” the drug, and Cindy sobbed relief and gratitude.

For nearly two years, the state dragged its feet before finally the first dispensaries were allowed to open in December. Now Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery is asking the state Supreme Court to toss out the law, contending that it’s pre-empted by federal law.

Meanwhile, Rep. Kavanagh is working to put repeal on the 2014 ballot, noting that 90 percent of medical marijuana users are seeking relief from “chronic pain”, not cancer or glaucoma. He also cites a recent federal appellate court ruling that upheld a Drug Enforcement Agency decision to keep marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug — one deemed to have no legitimate medical uses.

Bennett Black would beg to differ. He is among nearly 34,000 Arizonans who have state permission to use marijuana.

We met at noon on Thursday, along with his parents and his service dog Aggie, who is trained to call for help when a seizure occurrs. Black hadn’t eaten for 22 hours when we met. At most, he says he has one meal a day and only then because the marijuana temporarily eases the nausea, giving him a window of opportunity to eat.

“All you have to do is see someone in my situation and see how much it helps and they would completely feel differently,” Black told me. “They would go from being against it to for it in the blink of an eye.”

Cindy says the program has given dignity to people like her son, who can now obtain the drug legally to ease his nausea and stimulate his appetite.

“It saved his life,” she told me. “I will go to my grave knowing he would have been dead.”

Mel McDonald says a repeal would have the effect of turning his wife into a criminal. Mothers will do what they must, after all. Who among us wouldn’t?

If people are abusing the law, McDonald says we should go after the abusers, not the patients whose lives are often transformed because they can get legal access to relief.

“There are tens of thousands of people that marijuana genuinely helps,” he said. “We’ve been to the best doctors in the world for Bennett, from chiefs of staff on down. Nobody gave us a medication to take away the nausea and enable him to eat. It isn’t out there except marijuana. If there was a magic pill somebody could give us that would cure the nausea and let him eat we would take the pill but marijuana is the only thing that works…

“One of the tough things is for me not to pick up the phone and call Tom Horne or Bill Montgomery, both of whom are friends of mine and who I know well, and just say, ‘For hell sakes, there’s people that really need this. If there’s a problem, tighten the laws to stop the abuse but don’ t take the medicine away from the patient.’ ”

Gun Grabbing Phoenix Area Mayors

Most of them pretend to support the Second Amendment, and say "I support the 2nd Amendment but ... " and of course the but is followed by a whole bunch of reasons that show they don't support the Second Amendment.

Remember their names, and when you vote throw these tyrants who want to flush the Second Amendment down the toilet out of office.

Source

Valley mayors weigh in on gun reform

By Maria Polletta The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 2, 2013 11:23 PM

Valley mayors have joined the national chorus of officials saying when it comes to gun violence, something has to give.

But there’s no consensus on what that something is.

The mayors, who range from avid hunters and National Rifle Association members to those who have never owned a firearm, have suggested tentative solutions as diverse as their backgrounds.

Some have hesitated to offer any sort of directive, and most have held off on membership in gun-control organizations. Phoenix Mayor Greg Stanton for a time was the only Valley representative in the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition until Tempe Mayor Mark Mitchell recently joined.

“There’s just a lot of dialogue right now, and it’s hard to bring it all together,” said Gilbert Mayor John Lewis.

Lewis said he prefers to wait and weigh in on specific legislation, such as a 2012 guns-on-campus bill he opposed, rather than sign on to more sweeping efforts.

Mesa Mayor Scott Smith, a former NRA member and a gun owner for most of his life, also worries that acting too quickly on the gun issue would lead to an inadequate or ineffective solution. He said he refuses to “jump on the gun-control bandwagon,” lamenting what he described as the U.S. tendency to seek knee-jerk solutions after major crises.

Still, Smith and other mayors have said they’d support or at least be open to certain measures to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people, in effect limiting firearm privileges to responsible citizens.

Glendale Mayor Jerry Weiers, a hunter, NRA member and gun-safety instructor, said he supports efforts to curtail the spread of illegal guns, for instance. “If it’s an illegal gun, it’s an illegal gun,” he said. “Why wouldn’t everybody support trying to stop (that)?”

Smith also believes the law has a legitimate role in forbidding the willful sale of guns to criminals and forbidding “straw buyers” who would channel weapons inappropriately.

Other mayors, such as Phoenix’s Stanton, have looked to the types and grades of weapons people are allowed to own. President Barack Obama recently unveiled a broad set of proposed gun-control measures that include bans on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

Stanton has described requiring universal background checks as a “good, commonsense approach.” Checks are not done now on users who purchase firearms at gun shows and through other private sales.

Glendale’s Weiers and Peoria Mayor Bob Barrett have said training is a key component of responsible gun ownership. Weiers argued that gun-safety classes for youngsters make for “better citizens and … less problems.”

Barrett, a gun owner, has opposed legislation to allow guns in schools and city buildings and said training should be required to carry a concealed weapon.

“When you are under stress, when you are under fire … you’re more likely, A, to miss or, B, to hit somebody else,” Barrett said. “The idea of people walking around with concealed weapons and no training is not a good thing.”

Barrett contends that any initiative focused solely on how and which guns are obtained will help little if the country does not start placing a greater emphasis on mental-health care. Changing that, he said, would go further than trying to eliminate extended magazines and military-style weapons.

“What I think we need to do as a society is make mental-health treatment regarded the same way physical-health treatment is,” he said. “There is a sense of shame connected with getting counseling and getting help.”

Chandler Mayor Jay Tibshraeny said that “a lot of these folks that have done this (mass shootings) are seriously mentally disturbed” and mental-health-care funding is a “a factor that I look at on this issue.”

“At the state level, better reporting of mental-health records would be good,” Tibshraeny said. “We’ve got folks that are unstable and applying to get guns. A lot of their health history is on record, and it needs to go into a database that is checked as they’re applying.”

All Valley mayors said they believe a balance between protective measures and Second Amendment rights is vital as the gun-control debate moves forward, especially in Arizona, with the state’s historically pro-gun culture.

“I am a gun owner and a supporter of the Second Amendment,” said Surprise Mayor Sharon Wolcott. “But my right to own and carry a gun does not trump your right to live in a safe and civil society.”

Republic reporters Gary Nelson, Parker Leavitt, Dianna Náñez, Allie Seligman, John Yantis,Jen Kuhney and Paul Giblin contributed to this article.

Mayor's for Knife Control???

How many of these mayors think you should have to pass a Brady Bill test before buying really a sharp steak or cooking knife.

Or perhaps a $200 tax on the purchase of any weapons grade knives which would include steak and cooking knifes.

Or have a two week waiting period before picking up the steak or cooking knife you just purchased.

Or banning minors from using anything but dull table knives.

Source

Stabbed Scottsdale bouncer dies, played ASU football

By By D.S. Woodfill and Paola Boivin Arizona Republic-12 News Breaking News Team Sat Feb 2, 2013 10:24 PM

Those who remembered a former Arizona State University football player who died a week after he was stabbed at Scottsdale nightclub described their friend as a gentle giant.

Tyrice Thompson, a former tight end and wide receiver, passed away surrounded by friends and family at about 8:30 a.m. Saturday at Scottsdale Healthcare Osborn Medical Center.

Thompson, a 27-year-old former tight end and receiver for ASU from 2003 to 2007, was working as a bouncer at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale at 1 a.m. on Jan. 27 when a scuffle started between patrons, police said.

Although details of the investigation are still not clear, police said at some point during the scuffle, someone stabbed Thompson 5 times in the back hip and arm.

In a statement released Saturday, Martini Ranch said Thompson had become a member of the family who had a “remarkable ability to connect with people and will always be remembered for his warm smile, sense of humor and positive attitude.”

The business has created a Facebook page to help raise money for his loved ones. That can be found at https://www.facebook.com/remembertyrice

It was sadly ironic way for such a good-natured person to die, said Marques Elliott, a friend of Thompson’s since college.

“He always was a very calm, kind individual,” Elliott said. “He’s always been extremely humble, soft spoken (and) has always had a very clear head on his shoulders. (He was) a very good human being.”

Doug Yazzie, a close friend Thompson who was with his family when he passed away, said Thompson was a kind and positive man.

“He could fill any room with light,” Yazzie said.

Yazzi, who said he is the godfather to Thompson’s 2-year-old son Takai, would likely have forgiven his attacker.

“He didn’t have an angry bone in his body,” he said.

Dennis Erickson, Thompson’s coach during his senior year of school, was heartbroken over the death of his former player.

“He was an unbelievable guy, so coachable,” Erickson said. “Everything we asked, he did. It's so sad.”

Police reported that no one at the bar the night of the attack, including employees, identified who stabbed Thompson and no knife was found at the scene.

Police on Tuesday arrested, but then released pending further investigation, a 26-year-old Tempe resident Ian MacDonald.

“During interviews, Mr. MacDonald admitted to fighting with the bouncers, but denied stabbing Mr. Thompson,” a police statement said.

“Police have questioned all those we believe were witnesses or involved in the incident,” said Sgt. Mark Clark in a statement. “MacDonald remains the sole suspect at this time.”

“We are waiting for lab results to forward charges to the MCAO,” he added.

Thompson, a Laveen resident, played with 13 games his senior year as a Sun Devil, catching 15 passes for 272 yards. He was a key special teams player his final two seasons at Arizona State.

Thompson was signed as an undrafted free agent by the Indianapolis Colts, but did not play an NFL game.

Stan Ogwel mentored Thompson, who was a sophomore at South Mountain High School in Phoenix, as part of public service work he performed with his ASU fraternity.

Ogwel said Thompson was alert before he died, but unable to talk because he was on a respirator.

“I held his hands and prayed with him,” he said. “ I was able to at least spend about 10 minutes with him in the room.”

ASU Associate Athletic Director Mark Brand released a statement that said “the Thompson family is in the thoughts of everyone in the Sun Devil Athletics family.”

“The words of his teammates, our fans and media who came in contact with him are true measures of how much his smile was appreciated,” the statement said.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.

War is big business in Arizona

Source

Arizona defense contractors branch out; develop more products for foreign markets

By J. Craig Anderson The Republic | azcentral.com Sat Feb 2, 2013 3:25 PM

Defense contractors with operations in Arizona such as Raytheon Co., Honeywell International Inc. and the Boeing Co. are becoming less dependent on the U.S. military by branching out into new markets and inventing products for both defense and industry.

That includes seeking more foreign-military customers as well as developing technology with non-military applications such as mass-produced satellites, high-tech helicopter-maintenance systems and better thunderstorm detectors for commercial aircraft.

Unmanned drones and drone-based systems for both military and civilian use also play a prominent role in defense contractors’ diversification plans.

Innovation can carry a heavy cost, as Boeing learned in January when regulators grounded its revolutionary new commercial airliner, the fuel-efficient 787, over fire-safety concerns.

An investigation is under way into what caused a Jan. 7 fire inside an empty 787 “Dreamliner” parked on the tarmac at Boston’s Logan International Airport. The delay in rolling out new 787s ultimately could cost Boeing millions of dollars, aerospace-industry analysts said.

Still, officials at Boeing, Honeywell and Raytheon said constant innovation and diversification always have been essential to keeping their businesses viable.

“At some point, all programs go away,” said Randy Gricius, Space Applications Program manager for Raytheon Missile Systems in Tucson. “You’ve got to continue to look for growth.”

Raytheon has been working on two new products at its Tucson facility: a small guided missile for drones known as Pyros and a line of relatively inexpensive, mass-produced military imaging satellites called SeeMe.

Although both products are being developed for U.S. military use, company officials said Pyros is likely to appeal to foreign allies, and SeeMe could be used by Earth-mapping companies and global-warming researchers.

Pyros is unlike anything Raytheon Missile Systems ever has produced, said J.R. Smith, senior manager of advanced-missile-systems business development.

At 22 inches long and 12 pounds, it is by far the smallest laser-guided missile Raytheon has produced and the first missile designed specifically for drones.

“It’s kind of outside the box of what we normally do,” Smith said.

SeeMe is an even greater departure for the company’s Tucson operation, Gricius said, but it made sense because of Raytheon Missile Systems’ mass-production experience.

SeeMe satellites will sell for $500,000 each, Gricius said, and an innovative system of launching them into low-Earth orbit from high-flying aircraft will cut the deployment cost to about $1million.

By comparison, launching a satellite with a Pegasus missile costs more than $30million, he said.

While Pyros missiles are expected to generate big revenue from foreign customers, SeeMe will be difficult to sell overseas because of prohibitive federal regulations governing satellite sales, Gricius said.

Still, the satellites could be used by non-military customers such as National Aeronautics and Space Administration, as well as U.S. companies that provide images to online mapping services like Google Earth.

Honeywell Aerospace in Phoenix also is tapping deeper into commercial markets with two recently developed products, Health and Usage Monitoring Systems, or HUMS, and the IntuVue 3-D Weather Radar.

HUMS is an onboard diagnostic tool for military and commercial helicopters that measures the health and performance of critical components and can detect mechanical faults before they become catastrophic failures, company officials said.

According to Honeywell, HUMS already is saving the military tens of millions of dollars and thousands of maintenance-related hours each year.

Company officials hope those figures will resonate with commercial customers looking to save time and money on helicopter maintenance.

IntuVue is an upgraded aerial radar system for commercial airliners that can detect potentially dangerous storm conditions more than 350 miles away.

It includes new capabilities to detect turbulence, hail and lightning up to 10 minutes in advance of storm cells in an aircraft’s flight path, a company official said.

“The IntuVue was designed from the ground up to provide pilots with superior information about the location of true weather threats, such as hail and lightning, relative to their aircraft,” said Ratan Khatwa, a senior chief engineer at Honeywell Aerospace.

The predictive hail and lightning system uses complex algorithms that analyze data captured from constant radar scanning from ground level to 60,000 feet and out to 320 nautical miles, equivalent to about 368 miles.

Carl Esposito, vice president of marketing and product management for Honeywell Aerospace, said the company has gotten its reliance on the U.S. military for revenue down to less than 25percent by expanding both commercial and foreign business.

“More than 50 percent of our business is in the commercial area, with customers like Boeing, Airbus, Embraer and Gulfstream,” Esposito said. “In defense, we are nearly evenly split between U.S. business and the rest of the world. We continue to expand in a variety of emerging regions throughout Asia-Pacific, Latin America, India and elsewhere.”

Foreign-military sales by defense contractors are limited by two key sets of regulations: the International Traffic in Arms Regulations and Export Administration Regulations.

The U.S. Directorate of Defense Trade Controls maintains an ever-changing list of trade policies and embargoes that dictates what kinds of products, if any, can be sold to a particular country.

Several countries — including North Korea, Cuba, Iran and China — are perennially restricted from purchasing weapons technology from U.S. companies.

Still, weapon sales to most countries in the world are possible, although they must be evaluated and approved by the U.S. government on a case-by-case basis.

Foreign sales of commercial products such as aircraft-guidance and diagnostic systems are far less restricted and represent a huge potential market for Arizona defense contractors, industry representatives said.

“As air-traffic-management needs greatly increase in markets like China, India and the Middle East, we are well-positioned to bring solutions to those markets that support infrastructure growth while providing the latest in technology and safety advancements,” Esposito said. “This is a core focus for Honeywell now and into the future.”

Reach the reporter at craig.anderson@arizonarepublic.com or 602-444-8681.

Supreme Court to hear fight over taking DNA from arrested people

The Fifth Amendment says:

nor shall [any person] be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Sadly I suspect the same thing will happen with DNA tests.

Source

Supreme Court to hear fight over taking DNA from arrested people

Supreme Court to hear DNA challenge

By David G. Savage, Washington Bureau

February 2, 2013, 10:12 p.m.

WASHINGTON — On a cold February night three years ago, police in suburban Arlington, Va., received a frantic call. A young woman said her roommate had been abducted at gunpoint by a short, clean-shaven man who sped away in a silver SUV.

At dawn, a motorist spotted the victim in a snowy field near a highway, raped and strangled, but alive. An alert officer, hearing the lookout report, recalled that he'd jotted down the license tag of a silver Dodge Durango whose driver lurked near bars at midnight, leading to the quick arrest of a short, clean-shaven Marine named Jorge Torrez.

Ten years ago, Virginia became the first state to require, upon arrest for a serious crime, a mouth swab for DNA. The sample from Torrez, sent to a state crime lab and entered into the FBI's DNA database, confirmed he was the rapist. A few weeks later a DNA match also led to charges against him in the rape and murder of two girls, ages 8 and 9, in Zion, Ill., where Torrez had gone to high school. Jerry Hobbs, the father of one of the girls, had been in prison for the crimes.

This month, the U.S. Supreme Court will take up a privacy rights challenge to taking DNA from people who are arrested. The case could either end the practice or make it the norm nationwide.

Arlington County Deputy Police Chief Daniel Murray says the Torrez case shows the value of taking DNA when someone is arrested for a serious crime. "It's extremely important to quickly identify someone who would be a danger to society if he were on the loose," he said. And in this instance, he said, the DNA match freed an innocent man.

Nationwide, DNA samples are taken from people who are convicted of violent crimes.

Going further, the federal government and 28 states, including California, Illinois and Florida, now take DNA samples from some or all who are arrested but not yet convicted of serious crimes. Besides taking fingerprints, the standard jail booking now often includes taking a DNA swab, which prosecutors say is as simple and painless as brushing your teeth.

Last month, President Obama signed into law the Katie Sepich Enhanced DNA Collection Act, which will help pay the start-up costs for other states to begin testing people who are arrested.

"The whole purpose of this is to find serial rapists and murderers and to get them early to save innocent lives," said Jayann Sepich, a New Mexico mother whose daughter Katie was raped and murdered. Her attacker was arrested several times, but he was not identified until he was convicted of another crime and his DNA was taken.

California prosecutors say arrests for nonviolent crimes, including drug offenses, credit card fraud and burglary, have led them to rapists and murderers, thanks to DNA tests.

But the constitutionality of taking DNA upon arrest remains in doubt, particularly when it is not needed to identify the suspect. For example, police do not need DNA to identify someone who is caught with drugs or breaking into a house.

A state appeals court in San Francisco and a federal judge in Sacramento ruled it was unconstitutional to require a DNA sample from someone who had been arrested but not convicted. The California Supreme Court and the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals have put the issue on hold pending a ruling from U.S. Supreme Court.

The justices will hear the case of Maryland vs. King to decide whether requiring DNA from someone taken into custody but not convicted is an "unreasonable search" forbidden by the 4th Amendment.

In 2009, Alonzo King from Salisbury, Md., was arrested for waving a shotgun in a threatening manner. That was a felony charge, calling for a DNA test. He later pleaded guilty to a lesser charge for which no DNA test was required. But the DNA sample taken upon arrest pointed to him as the man who had broken into a house and raped a woman six years earlier. King was convicted and given a life term.

But Maryland's high court threw out his conviction and ruled police may not take DNA without a search warrant and some reason to believe the suspect had committed another offense. "DNA samples contain a massive amount of deeply personal information," far more than a fingerprint, the state judges said.

Civil liberties advocates have urged the court to hold the line and to bar DNA searches until someone has been convicted.

"This could be an unprecedented expansion of search power. The rule has been the government has to have a specific suspicion before they search," said Erin Murphy, a DNA law expert at New York University. "If you are arrested for a drug crime, that doesn't mean the police can walk into your house looking for evidence of other crimes."

But victims rights groups, the Obama administration and the top state attorneys from California and 48 other states have urged the court to rule that routine DNA testing upon arrest is reasonable and constitutional. They say the mouth swab is a minor invasion of privacy at most and that it has an extraordinary potential for solving heinous crimes.

david.savage@latimes.com

Military serial killer murdered???

‘American Sniper’ Author Shot and Killed in Texas

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Published: February 3, 2013

GLEN ROSE, Texas — The authorities in Texas said a man had been charged in the shooting deaths of a former Navy SEAL and author of "American Sniper," Chris Kyle, and a second man at a Texas gun range.

Sgt. Lonny Haschel with Texas Department of Public Safety said Sunday in a statement that Eddie Ray Routh, 25, of Lancaster was arraigned late Saturday on two counts of capital murder.

Mr. Kyle wrote the best-selling book, “American Sniper: The Autobiography of the Most Lethal Sniper in U.S. Military History,” detailing his 150-plus kills of insurgents from 1999 to 2009.

Mr. Haschel said Erath County deputies responded to a shooting at the Rough Creek Lodge west of Glenn Rose at about 5:30 p.m. Saturday and found the bodies of Mr. Kyle, 38, and a second man, 35-year-old Chad Littlefield. Glenn Rose is about 50 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

The police said Mr. Routh opened fire on the two men at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday, then fled in a Ford pickup truck. At about 8 p.m., Mr. Routh arrived at his home in Lancaster, about 17 miles southeast of Dallas. Police arrested him after a brief pursuit and took him to the Lancaster Police Department.

The Lancaster Police Department referred all calls to the Texas Department of Public Safety in Garland, and a phone message about where Mr. Routh is being held was not immediately returned Sunday.

The motive for the shooting was unclear.

A statement from Travis Cox, director of FITCO Cares, a nonprofit Mr. Kyle helped start, said he had served four tours of duty. He is survived by his wife, Taya, and their children, the agency’s statement said.

Mr. Kyle was sued by the former governor of Minnesota, Jesse Ventura, over a portion of the book that claims Mr. Kyle punched Mr. Ventura in a 2006 bar fight over unpatriotic remarks. Mr. Ventura says the punch never happened and that the claim by Kyle defamed him.

Mr. Kyle had asked that Ventura’s claims of invasion of privacy and "unjust enrichment" be dismissed, saying there was no legal basis for them. But a federal judge said the lawsuit should proceed. Both sides were told to be ready for trial by Aug. 1.

British police used dead children's IDs

Report: British police used dead children's IDs

By RAPHAEL SATTER | Associated Press

LONDON (AP) — The Guardian newspaper says that London's Metropolitan Police Service stole the identities of dozens of dead children to use as aliases for undercover officers, mining those children's personal histories to build covers and even issuing fake passports in their names.

The allegation is another potential embarrassment for Scotland Yard's undercover program, which has previously been rocked by revelations that police spies had sex with their targets and fathered children with activists under surveillance.

It wasn't exactly clear how long or often the police used the dead children's identities. The Guardian said it had seen a document suggesting that around 80 officers used such identities between 1968 and 1994, but said that one case may be as recent as 2003.

Police said in a statement Monday that they had received a formal complaint about the practice and "appreciate the concerns." The practice "is not something that would currently be authorized," they said.

Stealing the identities of dead people is a classic piece of spycraft and features prominently in Frederick Forsythe's famed 1971 thriller "The Day of the Jackal."

But lawmakers and law enforcement officials were left wondering Monday whether taking on the identity of a dead child was an appropriate technique for British police. Opposition lawmaker Keith Vaz told Sky News television "that the parents of those involved should be informed immediately."

The Guardian, which has run a series of stories exposing the seamy side of Scotland Yard's undercover work, based its story on detailed accounts provided by two undercover officers — neither of whom it identified by name — and an ex-girlfriend of a third one, who was identified with a pseudonym.

The newspaper said all three men were members of Scotland Yard's Special Demonstration Squad, which was disbanded in 2008.

One of them, the newspaper said, assumed the identity of an eight-year-old boy who died of leukemia in 1968 — going so far as to assume the boy's hometown and even his parents' names when he infiltrated an anti-capitalist group in the 1980s. The officer was found out when he left his girlfriend — part of the group he was spying on — and she pulled up his vital records in an effort to track him down.

The newspaper described her horror when she realized that the person her boyfriend was pretending to be had died 25 years ago.

Former director of public prosecutions Ken Macdonald said that the latest revelation, coupled with past reporting about undercover officers fathering children with their targets, suggested a police force gone wrong.

"How are you supposed to maintain a level of fair and objective evidence-gathering if you are having sex with the person you are targeting, fathering a baby and then abandoning it, using a dead child's identity?" he said in an interview with BBC radio.

"These are all examples of areas in which the police have completely lost their moral compass and have completely failed to understand the boundaries," he said. "We don't know quite how these units were operating in days gone by. It looks as though they've effectively gone rogue."

Kyrsten Sinema a gun grabber???

I should also note that US Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema when she was a member of the Arizona Legislator tried to slap a 300 percent tax on medical marijuana. She is fairly well hated in Arizona for that.

Source

County attorney says he would bring gun to a hearing

By Brahm Resnik 12 News Fri Feb 1, 2013 6:14 PM

"Sunday Square Off" is the leading weekend political news program in Arizona. "Square Off's" newsmaker interviews feature elected officials at the national, state and local levels. Our political roundtables bring together insiders with unique perspectives on the stories of the day and insight on what's next.

This Sunday

• Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema • Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery • State Rep. John Kavanagh • Promise Arizona's Petra Falcon • Panel: Chris Herstam, Christina Martinez, Stan Barnes

Maricopa County attorney says he would bring weapon into a hearing

Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery says he would probably carry a gun into a mediation hearing like the one that led to the fatal shootings this week of a Phoenix lawyer and his client.

Montgomery is one of my newsmaker guests on this weekend's special edition of "12 News Sunday Square Off." The show was taped before a studio audience taking part in a daylong "Politics and the Press" event sponsored by ASU's Cronkite School of Journalism, the Arizona Republic and 12 News.

Also on the show:

-Congresswoman Kyrsten Sinema (D-9th District) says she believes universal background checks on gun buyers have the best chance of passing Congress this year.

-Republican State Rep. John Kavanagh, a border hawk, debates Promise Arizona executive director Petra Falcon, an immigrant rights advocate, on the new immigration plans released this week.

--The roundtable of Stan Barnes, of Copper State Consulting; Christina Martinez, of Adalante Public Affairs; and 12 News political insider Chris Herstam make the cold political calculations on which big bills -- immigration reform and gun controls -- can get through Congress.

"12 News Sunday Square Off" airs at 8 a.m. Sunday on 12 News, right after "Meet the Press."

Nude photos of Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez

I wonder when these cops ever have time to hunt down real criminals.

Now I said real criminals, and I meant real criminals, not busting harmless pot smokers and other victimless drug war criminals which account for two thirds of the people the police send to prison.

I don't have a problem if Tucson cop Lt. Diana Lopez wants to shoot naked photos of her self and send them to her co-workers, but maybe she should limit these activities to her off time and not do it at work.

And the same for here boyfriend cop. I don't have a problem if he and his buddies look at naked pictures of Lt. Diana Lopez, but they shouldn't be doing it at work.

Source

Tucson policewoman demoted after explicit videos

Associated Press Mon Feb 4, 2013 7:47 PM

TUCSON — A Tucson police lieutenant has been demoted after allegedly taking sexually explicit photos and videos of herself wearing her police uniform.

Police said Monday that Lt. Diana Lopez used her personal cellphone to send videos and photos to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship. They say Lopez was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began last August.

The Arizona Daily Star (http://bit.ly/WMXjxM ) says anonymous letters sent to the police department about Lopez prompted the probe.

A police report says Lopez’s boyfriend apparently showed the videos and photos to other officers from May 2011 through August 2011.

Police say Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards. They say a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank.

Source

Tucson policewoman demoted over sexually explicit photos, video

Carmen Duarte Arizona Daily Star

A Tucson police lieutenant was demoted after officials said she took sexually explicit videos and sexually provocative photos of herself wearing her police uniform and sent them to a subordinate officer with whom she was in a relationship, department officials said Monday.

Lt. Diana Lopez, a former public information officer for the department, was reduced to the rank of sergeant following an investigation that began in August 2012. Anonymous letters sent to the department about Lopez prompted the probe, according to a report that was released Monday.

The department did find that Lopez took sexually explicit videos and at least one provocative photo where she was wearing a Tucson police uniform shirt. She sent those images and videos using her personal cell phone to the subordinate officer.

That officer then apparently showed the videos and photos to other TPD officers, the report said. This happened between May 2011 through August 2011, the report said.

Lopez violated several department regulations, code of ethics and professional standards and a recommendation was made to reduce her in rank from lieutenant to sergeant, the report said.

"Justice Dept justifies killing Americans if they pose ‘imminent threat

Of course you have to remember that MSNBC reports the news as objectively and unbiased as the FOX network reports it so you have to take that with a grain of salt.

Here is a link to the 16 page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.” which was released by NBC. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Dept. document justifies killing Americans overseas if they pose ‘imminent threat’

By Karen DeYoung, Published: February 4

The United States can lawfully kill a U.S. citizen overseas if it determines the target is a “senior, operational leader” of al-Qaeda or an associated group and poses an imminent threat to the United States, according to a Justice Department document published late Monday by NBC News. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

The document defines “imminent threat” expansively, saying it does not have to be based on intelligence about a specific attack since such actions are being “continually” planned by al-Qaeda. “In this context,” it says, “imminence must incorporate considerations of the relevant window of opportunity” as well as possible collateral damage to civilians.

Guiding the evolving U.S. counterterrorism policies: White House counterterrorism adviser John O. Brennan is compiling a “playbook” that will lay out the administration’s evolving procedures for the targeted killings that have come to define its fight against al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

The memos outline the case for the targeted killing of U.S. citizens in counterterror operations overseas.

It says that such determinations can be made by an “informed, high-level official of the U.S. government.”

NBC said the document was provided by the Obama administration last summer to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees as a summary of a classified memo on targeted killings of U.S. citizens prepared by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The memo was written months prior to a September 2011 drone strike in Yemen that killed Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S.-born Muslim cleric accused of helping al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate plan attacks against the United States. Three other Americans, including Awlaki’s 16-year-old son, have also been killed in U.S. strikes in Yemen.

The Obama administration, in decisions upheld in federal court rulings, has repeatedly denied demands by lawmakers, civil rights groups and the media to release the memo and other information on targeted killings — or even to acknowledge their existence. Senators are expected to closely question John O. Brennan, President Obama’s chief counterterrorism adviser, on drone strikes, the memo and the Awlaki killing during Brennan’s confirmation hearing Thursday on his nomination to become Obama’s new CIA director.

Justice officials could not be reached for comment on the document, which NBC posted on its Web site. The 16-page document is titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen Who Is a Senior Operational Leader of al-Qaeda or An Associated Force.”

In announcing Awlaki’s death, Obama described him as the leader of “external affairs” of Yemen-based al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The American Civil Liberties Union on Monday night called the document a “profoundly disturbing” summary of “a stunning overreach of executive authority — the claimed power to declare Americans a threat and kill them far from a recognized battlefield and without any judicial involvement before or after the fact.”

The ACLU sought the original Justice Department memo as part of a case dismissed last month by a federal judge in New York. Last Friday, the ACLU filed a notice of appeal in that case.

“Needless to say, the white paper is not a substitute for the legal memo. But it’s a pretty remarkable document,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Source

Justice Department memo: Drone strikes on U.S. citizens can be legal

By Cheryl K. Chumley

The Washington Times

Tuesday, February 5, 2013

The U.S. Justice Department finds it legal to target American citizens with drone strikes under certain circumstances, according to a memo that just surfaced.

The undated memo, titled “Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operation Leader of al Qaeda or An Associated Force,” was obtained by NBC News. The memo defines as legal drone attacks on U.S. citizens who were involved in violent attacks, according to United Press International. [ The memo can be viewed here http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

Specifically, the memo states: “The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” according to UPI. Citizens who present such “imminent threats” were defined as those who participated in violent acts — and maintained the views that led to their violent acts, according to UPI.

In those instances, a fatal drone attack would be considered a “legitimate act of national self-defense that would not violate the assassination ban,” according to the memo.

The memo was distributed to various members of Senate and House intelligence committees.

Source

Drone strikes on Americans on U.S. soil are LEGAL, says confidential Justice Department memo

By Damian Ghigliotty

PUBLISHED: 23:58 EST, 4 February 2013

The U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be ‘senior operational leaders’ of the Islamic terrorist organization Al Qaeda or ‘an associated force,’ according to a confidential Justice Department memo leaked on Monday.

The U.S. government can do so even if there is no clear evidence that the American targeted is engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.

The news was first reported by NBC’s Open Channel, which obtained a copy of the 16-page document and released it to the public.

The undated memo, which is not an official legal document, sheds new light on the reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against Al Qaeda suspects in recent years -- including those aimed at American citizens -- under the Obama administration.

The memo, ‘Lawfulness of a Lethal Operation Directed Against a U.S. Citizen who is a Senior Operational Leader of Al Qa’ida or An Associated Force,’ was reportedly provided to members of the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary committees in June by unnamed administration officials.

It was provided on the condition that authorities keep the memo confidential and not discuss its contents publicly, according to NBC.

‘The condition that an operational leader present an “imminent” threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,’ the memo states.

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

Insight: The document sheds new light on the legal reasoning behind a reported increase in the number of drone strikes used against al-Qaida suspects in recent years, including those aimed at American citizens

The Justice Department told MailOnline that it would not comment on the news.

The Obama administration has remained relatively hush about reports of increased drone strikes carried out since 2008.

The Long War Journal reports that the U.S. has been conducting a covert program to target and kill Al Qaeda and Taliban commanders in Pakistan's northwest region.

‘The US ramped up the number of strikes in July 2008, and has continued to regularly hit at Taliban and Al Qaeda targets inside Pakistan,’ the non-profit news outlet writes.

‘There have been 332 strikes total since the program began in 2004; 322 of those strikes have taken place since January 2008.’

The New York Times reported in November that the Obama administration had been mapping out a strategy weeks before the presidential election to develop definitive rules for the targeted killing of terrorists by drones, so that a new president would ‘inherit clear standards and procedures’ if Obama was not re-elected.

The secrecy surrounding such strikes may soon be unraveled, as indicated by the release of the 16-page Justice Department memo.

Proponent: John Brennan, Obama's pick for CIA director, has called drone strikes 'consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense'

John Brennan, a White House counter-terrorism adviser, one of the leading architects behind the government’s drone policy and Obama’s pick to become the country’s new CIA director, is expected to face tough questions about his involvement in Obama’s drone program during his Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday.

Brennan was the first administration official to formally acknowledge drone strikes in a speech he gave at the Woodrow Wilson Center in April 2012, calling drone strikes ‘consistent with our inherent right of national self-defense.’

A bipartisan group of 11 senators wrote a letter to Obama on Monday asking his administration to provide its legal justification for its use of drone strikes over the past four years.

‘We ask that you direct the Justice Department to provide Congress, specifically the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees, with any and all legal opinions that lay out the executive branch's official understanding of the President's authority to deliberately kill American citizens,’ the senators lead by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon wrote in their letter.

Political blogger Marcy Wheeler, who says she has closely tracked the group’s repeated requests, writes that it was at least the 12th time Congress had asked for those documents.

Among the overseas attacks that have killed U.S. citizens with terrorist ties on Obama's watch, a September 2011 missile strike in Yemen took out alleged Al Qaeda members Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan.

Both men were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government or charged with any specific crimes.

Read the full Justice Department white paper released on Monday night here. [http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/msnbc/sections/news/020413_DOJ_White_Paper.pdf ]

U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa defined by a decade of missteps

Source

U.S. counterterrorism efforts in Africa defined by a decade of missteps

By Craig Whitlock, Published: February 4

The U.S. military was closely tracking a one-eyed bandit across the Sahara in 2003 when it confronted a hard choice that is still reverberating a decade later. Should it try to kill or capture the target, an Algerian jihadist named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, or let him go?

Belmokhtar had trained at militant camps in Afghanistan in the 1990s, returned home to join a bloody revolt and was about to be blacklisted by the United Nations for supporting the Taliban and al-Qaeda. But he hadn’t yet attacked Americans and did not appear to pose a threat outside his nomadic range in the badlands of northern Mali and southern Algeria.

U.S. military commanders planned airstrikes against Belmokhtar and a band of Arab militants they had under surveillance in the Malian desert, according to three current and former American officials familiar with the episode. But the U.S. ambassador to Mali at the time vetoed the plan, saying a strike was too risky and could stir a backlash against Americans.

Since then, Belmokhtar has gradually helped build an al-Qaeda-branded network while expanding his exploits as a serial kidnapper, smuggler and arms dealer. Last month, his group, Signatories in Blood, took dozens of people hostage at a natural gas complex in Algeria. At least 37 foreign captives were killed, including three Americans.

In addition to raising his global profile, the attack turned Belmokhtar into a symbol of how the United States over the past 10 years has bungled an ambitious strategy to prevent al-Qaeda from gaining a foothold in North and West Africa.

The U.S. government has invested heavily in counterterrorism programs in the region, spending more than $1 billion since 2005 to train security forces, secure borders, promote democracy, reduce poverty and spread propaganda.

The strategy was portrayed as a sobering lesson from the costly invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. The goal of stabilizing weak African countries was to keep al-Qaeda out and obviate the need to send U.S. combat forces into the Sahara.

Despite those efforts, Belmokhtar’s group and a hazy array of other jihadist factions and rebellious tribesmen seized control of northern Mali last year. In March, a U.S.-trained Malian officer carried out a coup, further plunging the country into chaos.

“We had this great program, and we put hundreds of millions of dollars into it, and it failed. Why did it fail?” said a member of the U.S. Special Operations forces who worked in Africa until he retired last year. “Fundamentally, we missed the boat.”

Todd Moss, who was deputy assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2007 to 2008, blamed “a wholly inadequate policy response.” He said U.S. officials placed their faith in a flawed model to promote development and build institutions, especially in northern Mali, a Texas-size territory with little government presence.

“There was no consensus on the size or seriousness of the threat,” Moss added. “We were looking through both civilian and military rose-colored glasses. And that should give us pause as we try to figure out how to move forward.”

‘He was well within reach’

By 2003, U.S. officials were becoming alarmed about the potential for Islamist extremists to establish a haven in North or West Africa.

Radicals who failed to topple the Algerian government in the 1990s had moved deep into the Sahara, hiding in the hinterlands of impoverished countries such as Mali, Mauritania and Niger, where they turned to smuggling and other criminal rackets.

Among them was a former paratrooper known as Abderrazak al-Para, who kidnapped 32 Europeans and collected $6 million in ransom.

The kidnapping did not involve any American hostages, but it drew the attention of commanders at the U.S. European Command in Stuttgart, Germany.

Using satellite imagery and other sources, the U.S. military tracked al-Para and shared the intelligence with African governments, which pursued him across the desert. After an epic chase, he was captured in Chad.

Around the same time, the U.S. military also started to track Belmokhtar and floated a plan to fire missiles at an Arab militant camp in northern Mali. Vicki Huddleston, the U.S. ambassador to Mali at the time, said she blocked the operation. It was unclear whether Belmokhtar was actually present at the camp, she recalled in an interview, adding that he was considered a minor figure.

“I said no. First, you don’t know who these people are, and second, it’s a bad idea,” she said. “We had a big fight over this.”

The four-star Air Force general in charge of the operation, Charles F. Wald, who has since retired, acknowledged that he wanted to capture Belmokhtar but insisted that airstrikes were not a serious option. He said that the U.S. military wanted to share intelligence and gear with Algeria and Mali so they could arrest or kill Belmokhtar but that civilian U.S. leaders refused. “The answer at that time was, ‘Not our business,’ ” he said.

Wald is still angry at what he sees as a missed opportunity, saying the military had “about a thousand” chances to get the bandit. “We allowed Belmokhtar to become larger than life,” the general said in an interview. “He was well within reach,” he added. “It would have been easy.”

Ten years later, Wald and the ambassador still disagree about whether they should have seized that chance to eliminate Belmokhtar. But they concur that the dispute foreshadowed flaws in the forthcoming U.S. strategy to prevent al-Qaeda from planting roots in the region.

“I’m really frustrated right now because I think we blew it,” Wald said, speaking in general about U.S. counterterrorism policy in Africa. “We’ve gone backwards, frankly.”

President Obama later appointed Huddleston as the top Africa policy official in the Pentagon, where she earned a reputation among her former diplomatic colleagues as a zealous hawk on security matters.

She said the U.S. government never overcame divisions over how aggressively it should respond to the emergence of al- Qaeda’s North African affiliate. The Pentagon was often too eager to take direct military action, she added, while the State Department was too willing to tolerate al-Qaeda’s presence.

“The issue has come up again and again,” said Huddleston, who retired from the Pentagon at the end of 2011. “The Defense Department wanted to help the countries in the region to confront the threat, and State wanted to contain.”

Signs of trouble in Mali

A look at the events leading up to the intervention in Mali.

The failure to keep Islamist extremists from taking over northern Mali was not because of lack of money or attention from Washington.

In 2005, the U.S. government started the Trans-Sahara Counter­terrorism Partnership — an innovative, $1 billion collection of programs designed to prevent the spread of radicalism. It delivered humanitarian aid and security assistance to 10 countries in North and West Africa, drawing on the combined resources of the military, the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

The partnership was dogged by problems from the outset, however, as U.S. agencies squabbled internally and struggled to understand an unfamiliar cultural and political terrain.

In 2007, the George W. Bush administration created a separate Africa Command to oversee military activity on the continent, fuel­ing fears among Africans that the United States was militarizing its foreign policy and looking to construct new bases. Facing a backlash, the Pentagon was forced to call off its search for an Africa headquarters for the command. It remained in Germany, instead.

The new command was largely a paper institution, with no regular troops assigned to it. Wald, the retired general, said the whole approach was misguided.

“The Africans didn’t want us there in the first place, so they started out behind the power curve to start with,” he said. “We can’t lead them around condescendingly.”

In 2008, the Government Accountability Office criticized the Pentagon, State Department and USAID for lacking a “comprehensive, integrated strategy” for the Trans-Saharan Counterterrorism Partnership. The investigative arm of Congress found that the agencies did not collaborate well and could not measure whether the aid was doing any good.

A senior State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to talk candidly about the $1 billion Sahara counter­terrorism strategy, acknowledged that it was difficult to measure the program’s effectiveness. “To be very honest with you, we’re not very good at quantifying it,” the official said.

The program focused heavily on Mali, a landlocked, famine-prone country that American officials worried was vulnerable to Islamist extremists coming south from Algeria.

The U.S. military engaged the Malians in annual regional military exercises, code-named Flintlock. U.S. Special Forces also spent years training specialized Malian units, known as ETIAs. But the challenges were evident.

In 2009, after a graduation ceremony for one ETIA unit that had received five weeks of instruction from U.S. troops, the ambassador to Mali at the time, Gillian Milovanovic, expressed shock at the bedraggled appearance of the Malian soldiers.

In a classified diplomatic cable later made public by the anti- secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, Milovanovic described how a U.S. Army captain introduced her to “one, rather unimpressive soldier, an older, rail thin man with a scraggly beard and bloodshot eyes who had been lounging against a motorbike in a dirty T-shirt inside a warehouse. [The captain] explained that in spite of appearances, this was one of the ETIA’s best men, noting that he had been one of the few survivors of a July 4 ambush of a Malian Army patrol by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.”

The ambassador also observed how the Malians were poorly clothed and equipped, even though the U.S. government had bought boots, desert fatigues, radios and Toyota Land Cruisers for the entire 160-man unit.

Many of the soldiers were black-skinned Malians from the south who had little familiarity with the Arab and Tuareg tribes that populate the north. In hindsight, U.S. officials said, they should have recognized that the black troops would clash with the Tuaregs, who have a long history of grievances against the Malian central government, instead of al-Qaeda. But few of the U.S. Special Forces instructors were conversant in local culture or native languages, and they didn’t pick up the cues.

“That’s the key ingredient that was always missing in this and is only now coming to light — would they really fight?” said Rudolph Atallah, director of Africa counter­terrorism programs at the Pentagon from 2003 to 2009. “There was no thought about taking the cultural piece a little bit deeper.”

There were also clear signs that the Malian government had little interest in fighting al-Qaeda. Suspicions abounded among U.S. officials and other diplomats that Malian leaders were pocketing a portion of the ransoms that Belmokhtar and other jihadists collected from their kidnapping schemes.

“We made a big effort to build the political will in Mali, and it never succeeded,” said a senior Obama administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “They always told us what they thought we wanted to hear, but they never followed it up with actions.”

A turn for the worse

The U.S. strategy for the region began to fall apart in 2008.

Military leaders in Mauritania and Niger — two countries that bookend Mali — toppled their governments in coups, forcing the Pentagon to cut off military training.

That left the United States more dependent on Mali to spearhead its anti-terrorism programs, even as it was becoming clear that Malian troops weren’t up to the task.

“It was an awful, stupid strategy we had by then,” Huddleston said. “You obviously couldn’t fight terrorism with one weak army that didn’t want to fight in the north.”

The Obama administration made things tougher by restricting intelligence-sharing with France and Algeria, key allies against al-Qaeda, according to former U.S. officials.

American military officers chafed at the restrictions but often failed to earn the trust of U.S. ambassadors in the region, said the former Special Operations forces member.

“Quite frankly, we weren’t used to dealing with the Department of State and other agencies,” he said. “When we get on the ground, they run the show, and that’s what we struggled with.”

By 2011, Mali’s security was visibly deteriorating as Tuareg mercenaries and Islamist extremists flooded into the north and domestic political strife came to a boil. After the March coup, Washington severed all security aid to the Malian military.

Even now, disagreement persists inside the Obama administration over whether the threat posed by Belmokhtar and other al-Qaeda loyalists in northern Mali warrants a more forceful response by the U.S. military. The White House has ruled out sending combat troops to Mali, but the Pentagon is making plans for a Predator drone base next door.

“Nobody’s arguing that they should be left unmolested,” the senior State Department official said. “But if they’re stuck in the middle of Mali’s northern mountains, that in itself doesn’t matter.”

Obama tries to convince Congress he can kill any American he feels like???

Lawmakers to get classified drone info

Associated Press Wed Feb 6, 2013 6:52 PM

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama has directed the Justice Department to give Congress' intelligence committees access to classified legal advice providing the government's rationale for drone strikes against American citizens working with al-Qaida abroad, a senior administration official said Wednesday.

A drumbeat of demands to see the document has swelled on Capitol Hill in recent days as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to hold a confirmation hearing for John Brennan, who helped manage the drone program, to be CIA director.

Those demands were only intensified by the leak this week of an unclassified "white paper" on how decisions are made to target U.S. citizens abroad that the Justice Department confidentially sent to key lawmakers last year. The unclassified memo says it is legal for the government to kill U.S. citizens abroad if it believes they are senior al-Qaida leaders continually engaged in operations aimed at killing Americans, even if there is no evidence of a specific imminent attack.

The senior official said Obama decided to send lawmakers the classified rationale on Wednesday as part of his "commitment to consult with Congress on national security matters." Obama directed the Justice Department provide the Senate and House intelligence committees access to classified advice from its Office of Legal Counsel that the white paper is based on, the official said.

Legal opinions produced by the legal counsel's office are interpretations of federal law that are binding on all executive branch agencies.

The administration official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the matter by name.

Earlier Wednesday, White House spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was engaged in an internal process deliberation to determine how to balance the nation's security needs with its values. He said Obama was committed to providing more information to Congress, even as he refused to acknowledge whether the drone memo even existed.

"He thinks that it is legitimate to ask questions about how we prosecute the war against al-Qaida," Carney said. "These are questions that will be with us long after he is president and long after the people who are in the seats that they're in now have left the scene."

Eleven senators, including Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon, called on Obama to provide lawmakers "any and all legal opinions" that outline the president's authority to use legal force against Americans.

Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told The Associated Press that Obama called him Wednesday evening to alert him to the decision to release the legal opinions. The president pledged to launch a "very extensive" public discussion on the government's ability to target Americans abroad, Wyden said.

"This is an encouraging first step," Wyden said. "There is now an opportunity to build on it."

The Oregon lawmaker said he expects members of the intelligence committees to be able to read the classified legal opinions before voting on Brennan's nomination to lead the CIA, but likely not before Thursday's hearing.

Justice's unclassified 16-page white paper says that it is lawful to target al-Qaida linked U.S. citizens if they pose an "imminent" threat of violent attack against Americans and that delaying action against such people would create an unacceptably high risk. Such circumstances may necessitate expanding the concept of imminent threat, the memo says.

"The threat posed by al-Qaida and its associated forces demands a broader concept of imminence in judging when a person continually planning terror attacks presents an imminent threat," the document added.

A September 2011 drone strike in Yemen killed Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, both U.S. citizens. A separate drone strike two weeks later killed al-Awlaki's 16-year-old son, a Denver native. The strikes came after U.S. intelligence concluded that the elder al-Awlaki was senior operational leader of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula plotting attacks on the U.S., including the abortive Christmas Day bombing of an airplane landing in Detroit in 2009.

The memo does not require the U.S. to have information about a specific imminent attack against the U.S. But it does require that capture of a terrorist suspect not be feasible and that any such lethal operation by the United States targeting a person comply with fundamental law-of-war principles.

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

U.S. drone use could set dangerous example for rogue powers

By Carol J. Williams

February 7, 2013, 2:00 a.m.

Imagine if North Korea or Iran or Venezuela deployed thousands of unmanned surveillance aircraft in search of earthbound enemies, a swarm of robotic hunters armed with lethal weaponry and their governments’ go-ahead to exterminate targets.

It’s a frightening scenario but far from an unimaginable one, given that dozens of nations now build, program and deploy their own drones.

Newly disclosed U.S. guidelines on drone warfare appear to authorize a more permissive practice of targeted killings in the global fight against terrorism than previously articulated. And the Obama administration’s embrace of a right to strike those it has identified as threats to U.S. security has prompted warnings from rights advocates and international security experts that the White House is setting a dangerous precedent that rogue nations could follow.

The U.S. military and intelligence communities have increasingly turned to drones for precision strikes against terrorism suspects in Pakistan and Yemen, executing more than 300 remote-controlled attacks during President Obama’s first term. That is a sixfold increase from the Bush administration’s use of drones, according to the British nonprofit Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

Muting any serious debate on the morality and legality of targeted killings is the U.S. public’s positive response to the arm's-length attacks that eliminate terrorism suspects without putting troops at risk in a more conventional offensive. More than 80% of Americans expressed support for the administration’s drone policy in a Washington Post-ABC News poll a year ago. A Pew Research Center survey in June showed similarly high regard among Americans questioned but majority disapproval among respondents in 19 other countries surveyed.

Escalating U.S. drone use in counter-terrorism is both hurting the country’s image and raising the stakes in what promises to be a protracted war to defeat the global network of militants bent on doing America harm, security and legal experts argue.

“Technological capabilities are developing far faster than the laws and international frameworks to regulate their use,” said Amy Zegart, a senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and former National Security Council staffer under President Clinton.

Drone use was a rare and almost exclusively U.S. military capability a decade ago, Zegart said, yet today at least 70 countries have unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, as drones are called in security parlance. Although most of that use is aimed at reducing the costs and risks of intelligence-gathering and search-and-rescue missions, the increasingly affordable and versatile aircraft can be programmed for combat as easily as for peaceful civilian uses.

Despite a credible threat of spreading drone warfare, there is little interest among the nations employing the devices to yield to any agreed rules of engagement, Zegart said.

“The question is, can the United States lead by example? Can we realistically put forward policies and ideas” that would establish permissible uses and prevent a perilous free-for-all, she said, intimating that such self-imposed restraint is unlikely.

Avner Cohen, a professor of nonproliferation policy at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, agrees there is little incentive for countries making the most aggressive use of drones -- the United States and Israel first among them -- to impose restrictions on themselves.

He points to what he sees as “seductive” elements of drone use as a danger for both international security and thoughtful decision-making.

Israeli drone surveillance pinpointed Hamas militia leader Ahmed Jabari in the Gaza Strip in November, encouraging the Israeli leadership to order a targeted killing in a likely streamlined analysis of potential consequences, Cohen recalled. Jabari’s death set off eight days of fighting between Israel and the Palestinian enclave that ended with a cease-fire seen as having strengthened Hamas and Palestinian cohesion.

“The temptation to use it is so high that it can obscure and overpower all kinds of other considerations,” Cohen said of drones’ offensive capabilities.

Human rights and international law advocates have expressed growing concern that Washington’s expanding use of targeted killings by drones violates its obligations to treaties guaranteeing protection of civilian life and prohibiting extrajudicial killings off the battlefield.

Ben Emmerson, the U.N. special rapporteur on counter-terrorism and human rights, announced two weeks ago that he was investigating U.S. strikes on suspected terrorists to evaluate their compliance with human rights treaties and the international law of armed conflict.

Rights groups contend the U.S. actions stray far beyond the limited circumstances under which international accords allow the use of preemptive lethal force.

“When the U.S. government violates international law, that sets a precedent and provides an excuse for the rest of the world to do the same,” said Zeke Johnson, director of Amnesty International USA’s Security with Human Rights Campaign.

“We have now seen, under two administrations, the emergence of a claimed global war framework in which the U.S. tries to treat the whole world as a battlefield, to the exclusion of human rights law,” Johnson said.

“I sincerely doubt most members of the U.S. government would be happy with China or Russia or North Korea using drones and lethal force the way the U.S. government is doing, which is outside the bounds of international law,” said Johnson.

“Everyone should be concerned by the idea that any government can basically deny its human rights obligations,” he warned. “That puts all of us at greater risk in the long run.”

Secret drone strikes simplify Obama Doctrine

Secret drone strikes simplify Obama Doctrine

February 7, 2013

For years, scholars and journalists have struggled without much success to define the Obama Doctrine — the president's foreign policy principles.

As a Democratic candidate, Barack Obama couldn't even define his own doctrine as he sought to succeed outgoing Republican President George W. Bush.

In a debate in 2007, back when he was Sen. Civil Liberties and the darling of the left that hated Bush for leading the war party into Afghanistan and Iraq, Mr. Obama said the world was too complicated for him to formalize his doctrine.

"Well, I think one of the things about the Obama Doctrine is it's not going to be as doctrinaire as the Bush Doctrine because the world is complicated," the senator from Chicago said. "And I think part of the problem we've had is that ideology has overridden facts and reality."

But now President Obama has finally stripped away those complications to define the Obama Doctrine this way:

He can assassinate American citizens abroad without trial if they're suspected terrorists.

His weapon of choice? Drone strikes from the air.

Drones are politically antiseptic weapons of death, almost like a video game, except that real blood and tissue is blown against the walls. And it's all being done in secret. The White House won't publicly release the rationale explaining how the Obama administration has shredded the Constitution and taped the bits back together again.

Two things are astounding here: The lack of Democratic outrage over Obama's convoluted policy, and the ease with which Republicans and Democrats have brought us to this point.

Just think about what the president's assassination campaign means. Not for the terrorists, who deserve their fate. But for the rest of us. A president has put it in writing: He can kill you if he finds that you're a threat.

Many of us — and to my shame I include myself — bought into many Bush Republican policies after al-Qaida killed thousands of our countrymen on Sept. 11, 2001. And then came more cameras watching us, and more eavesdropping, and a steady erosion of American privacy.

It came in the name of efficiently thwarting the terrorists. Now the supreme efficiency is offered by a president who campaigned in opposition to waterboarding terrorists for information to find Osama bin Laden.

The president's drone strikes against American citizens overseas "are legal, they are ethical and they are wise," said White House press secretary Jay Carney. He added that such drone strikes are "fully consistent with our Constitution."

Carney must be talking about some other little booklet. He can't mean our American Constitution. If he actually believes that the Constitution allows the president to kill Americans without trial, someone should lead him by the nose to a loony bin.

Not all Republicans are for this. But many establishment Republicans just love it, like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, an Obama critic and friend of defense contracts.

He stopped thwacking Obama for a day or so to support the president in the assassination doctrine.

"Every member of Congress needs to get on board," Graham said. "It's not fair to the president to let him, leave him out there alone quite frankly. He's getting hit from libertarians and from the left."

Some on the port side are angry, including the severe high priestess of the political left, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow. Unconfirmed reports had her hair smoldering the other evening.

But she's not an elected official. Where was Democratic outrage? You'd think Sen. Dick Durbin would scream. He made plenty of loud public demonstrations during the Bush years, and I almost expected him to start yanking his burning hair from the roots while referencing storm troopers and gulags and such.

Sadly, Durbin and other Democratic pols are rather church-mousian about Obama's drones. With their own guy on the throne, they're worried about damaging the dignity of the presidency.

To his credit, Durbin quietly signed his name to a letter from 11 senators of both parties asking Obama to make public the White House rationale allowing assassinations.

But they won't hound Obama. Expect them instead to shake their jowls angrily at John Brennan.

Brennan is the career CIA officer and supporter of drones and "enhanced interrogation techniques" who was nominated by Obama to run the CIA. He is scheduled to testify Thursday at a Senate confirmation hearing .

There is a big difference between intelligence officers and politicians. Obama seemed to understand this once, when the world was complicated for him. Intelligence officers do what's necessary, and once the work is done and the threat removed, they're often thrown under the bus by politicians.

But politicians? They change the rules to justify what they want to do. And in so doing, they make the future far more dangerous and far less free.

"Who'd we get today?" was the famous question asked repeatedly by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, when he was the pro-drone Obama White House chief of staff, according to Bob Woodward's book "Obama's Wars."

Emanuel's was a gleeful question, full of bureaucratic malice, asked by a man with his loafers on safe White House carpets. Those same carpets still caress Obama's shoes.

The president once opposed "enhanced interrogation" of terrorism suspects. But now he claims constitutional protection to kill them without trial, if they're Americans overseas.

That complicated, nuanced world Obama once lived in? It's been simplified.

jskass@tribune.com

Twitter @John_Kas

The full text of the white paper on the killing of U.S. citizens abroad

The full text of the white paper on the killing of U.S. citizens abroad

By Chris Wilson, Yahoo! News | The Ticket

This week, NBC News published a confidential Justice Department memo presenting the Obama administration's case for the lawful killing of U.S. citizens abroad who are involved with al-Qaida, reigniting a debate over presidential power that raged during much of the George W. Bush administration. NBC released a PDF of the 16-page white paper liberally embossed with watermarks of the outlet's logo on each page.

Given the extreme gravity of the subject, Yahoo News retyped the portions of the documents that could not be digitized automatically due to the watermarks, presented below. Information for how to contribute corrections is included at the bottom of the article.

DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE WHITE PAPER

We are grateful for any and all corrections to this transcription. Please email errors to cewilson@yahoo-inc.com with the approximate location of the fix.

Brennan defends drone strikes, even on Americans

Brennan defends drone strikes, even on Americans

Associated Press Fri Feb 8, 2013 7:56 AM

WASHINGTON —

CIA Director-designate John Brennan strongly defended anti-terror attacks by unmanned drones Thursday under close questioning at a protest-disrupted confirmation hearing. On a second controversial topic, he said that after reading a classified intelligence report on harsh interrogation techniques, he does not know if waterboarding has yielded useful information.

Despite what he called a public misimpression, Brennan told the Senate Intelligence Committee that drone strikes are used only against targets planning to carry out attacks against the United States, never as retribution for an earlier one. "Nothing could be further from the truth," he declared.

Referring to one American citizen killed by a drone in Yemen in 2011, he said the man, Anwar al-Alawki, had ties to at least three attacks planned or carried out on U.S. soil. They included the Fort Hood, Texas, shooting that claimed 13 lives in 2009, a failed attempt to down a Detroit-bound airliner the same year and a thwarted plot to bomb cargo planes in 2010.

"He was intimately involved in activities to kill innocent men women and children, mostly Americans," Brennan said.

In a sign that the hearing had focused intense scrutiny on the drone program, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told reporters after the hearing that she thinks it may be time to lift the secrecy off the program so that U.S. officials can acknowledge the strikes and correct what she said were exaggerated reports of civilian casualties.

Feinstein said she and a number of other senators are considering writing legislation to set up a special court system to regulate drone strikes, similar to the one that signs off on government surveillance in espionage and terror cases.

Speaking with uncharacteristic openness about the classified program, Feinstein said the CIA had allowed her staff to make more than 30 visits to the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters to monitor strikes, but that the transparency needed to be widened.

"I think the process set up internally is a solid process," Feinstein said, but added: "I think there's an absence of knowing exactly who is responsible for what decision. So I think we need to look at this whole process and figure a way to make it transparent and identifiable."

In a long afternoon in the witness chair, Brennan declined to say if he believes waterboarding amounts to torture, but he said firmly it is "something that is reprehensible and should never be done again."

Brennan, 57 and President Barack Obama's top anti-terrorism aide, won praise from several members of the committee as the day's proceedings drew to a close, a clear indication that barring an unexpected development, his confirmation as the nation's next head of the CIA is on track.

"I think you're the guy for the job, and the only guy for the job," said Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.

The panel will meet in closed session next week to permit discussion of classified material.

Brennan bristled once during the day, when Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, accused him of having leaked classified information in a telephone call with former government officials who were preparing to make television appearances.

"I disagree with that vehemently," the nominee shot back.

Brennan made repeated general pledges to increase the flow of information to members of the Senate panel, but he was less specific when it came to individual cases. Asked at one point whether he would provide a list of countries where the CIA has used lethal authority, he replied, "It would be my intention to do everything possible" to comply.

He said he had no second thoughts about having opposed a planned strike against Osama bin Laden in 1998, a few months before the bombings of two U.S. embassies. The plan was not "well-grounded," he said, adding that other intelligence officials also recommended against proceeding. Brennan was at the CIA at the time.

Brennan was questioned extensively about leaks to the media about an al-Qaida plot to detonate a new type of underwear bomb on a Western airline. He acknowledged trying to limit the damage to national security from the disclosures.

On May 7 of last year, The Associated Press reported that the CIA thwarted an ambitious plot by al-Qaida's affiliate in Yemen to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner, using a bomb with a sophisticated new design around the one-year anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden. The next day, the Los Angeles Times reported that the would-be bomber was cooperating with U.S. authorities.

During Thursday's hearing, Risch and Sen. Dan Coats of Indiana were among those who contended Brennan had inadvertently revealed that the U.S. had a spy inside Yemen's al-Qaida branch when, hours after the first AP report appeared, he told a group of media consultants that "there was no active threat during the bin Laden anniversary because ... we had inside control of the plot."

The hearing was interrupted repeatedly at its outset, including once before it had begun. Eventually, Feinstein briefly ordered the proceedings halted and the room cleared of anyone except staffers and credentialed media.

Brennan is a veteran of more than three decades in intelligence work, and is currently serving as Obama's top counter-terrorism adviser in the White House. Any thought he had of becoming CIA director four years ago vanished amid questions about the role he played at the CIA when the Bush administration approved waterboarding and other forms of "enhanced interrogation" of suspected terrorists.

On the question of waterboarding, Brennan said that while serving as a deputy manager at the CIA during the Bush administration, he was told such interrogation methods produced "valuable information." Now, after reading a 300-page summary of a 6,000-page report on CIA interrogation and detention policies, he said he does "not know what the truth is."

The shouted protests centered on CIA drone strikes that have killed three American citizens and an unknown number of foreigners overseas.

It was a topic very much on the mind of the committee members who eventually will vote on Brennan's confirmation.

In the hours before the hearing began, Obama ordered that a classified paper outlining the legal rationale for striking at U.S. citizens abroad be made available for members of the House and Senate intelligence panels to read.

It was an attempt to clear the way for Brennan's approval, given hints from some lawmakers that they might hold up confirmation unless they had access to the material.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said he was encouraged when Obama called him on the telephone to inform him of his decision. But he said that when he went to read the material he became concerned the Department of Justice "is not following through" on the presidential commitment. Prodded to look into the matter, Brennan said he would.

Wyden made the drone strikes the main focus of his time to question Brennan, asking at one point what could be done "so that the American people are brought into this debate and have a full understanding of what rules" are for their use.

Brennan said the day's hearings were part of that effort, and he said he backs speeches by officials as a way to explain counter-terrorism programs. He said there is a "misimpression by the American people" who believe drone strikes are aimed at suspects in past attacks. Instead, he said, "we only take such actions as a last resort to save lives" when there is no other alternative in what officials believe is an imminent threat.

Fewer than 50 strikes took place during the Bush administration, while more than 360 strikes have been launched under Obama, according to the website The Long War Journal, which tracks the operations.

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Gun-licensing mandate an affront to our rights

Mon Feb 11, 2013 1:14 AM

Comparing guns to cars is a common and seductive but subtle error of logic.

If it makes sense to license drivers and register cars, then it would make sense to license pilots and register airplanes. And we do. That’s parallel logic.

However, if it makes sense to license gun owners and register guns, then it would make sense to license writers and register printing presses. That would be parallel logic, too. But we don’t do that, because that doesn’t make sense. That’s because those are rights, and government has no legitimate power to license your rights.

So, why would an honest writer object to having a license? Most reporters I know can’t answer that question, which explains why so many support “universal registration” — they understand the issue very poorly. I’ll answer it for you.

If you must pass a government test, pay a tax called a “fee,” get fingerprinted, photographed, listed in the criminal database and carry around your card with an expiration date to publish an article, or else go to prison, that’s flat out wrong. Licensing and registering freedom is tyrannical, assaults the innocent and serves no legitimate purpose in America. That’s why.

—Alan Korwin, Scottsdale

The writer is author of “The Arizona Gun Owner’s Guide.”

Cops over react to trivial comments as they always do.

Police take precautions for trivial Dobson HS bomb threat

But don't think of it as a waste of our tax dollars. I am sure the cops who do this view it as a jobs program to justify the high pay they receive.

And of course H. L. Mencken had it nailed perfectly with his comment:

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary."

Incidents like Dobson HS bomb threat force schools, police to take extra precautions

Posted: Saturday, February 9, 2013 8:12 am

By Michelle Reese, Tribune

Just one day after schools in Tempe were put into lockdown, Mesa’s Dobson High School was partially evacuated Friday following a bomb threat.

School and police officials said they collaborate to determine when to ask school principals and teachers to lock their doors and keep students away from potential harm.

“We work together with the schools to try to determine, for the safety of the students and staff, when it would be best to lockdown a school, depending on the situation,” said Mesa Police’s Det. Steve Berry.

Friday’s lockdown of Dobson High was prompted after a student made a comment about a bomb during class, Berry said. It was heard by students and his teacher, who contacted the school resource officer — a licensed Mesa Police officer — who was on campus.

“The boy was detained. The wheels were set in motion to make sure this was not a credible threat,” Berry said. “Once he realized he was going to be taken serious, that this was not a joke, he tried to recant. That’s not going to stop us from moving forward to assure everything is safe.”

After students were evacuated from parts of the school — and other parts were put on lockdown — police determined it was safe to return to class.

Since December’s tragic shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., East Valley school officials say they are fielding more calls and questions from parents about safety.

“Since December, many people are on heightened alert mode,” Tempe Elementary School District spokesperson Monica Allread said. “Parents want to know anything that happens at the school that’s out of the ordinary. We’re working hard to make sure they know that.”

Mesa Unified School District spokesperson Helen Hollands said there are a few reasons for lockdowns in a school.

“There are lockdowns that happen because of an external incident. That would be if police are dealing with a suspect in an area. Those are always called by the law enforcement agency,” she said. “The other would be if we go into a lockdown for a campus related or internal reason. Most of the time, it’s a collaboration between the school district and the police or law enforcement agency to decide if it’s appropriate to go into lockdown.”

A school principal may also put a school in lockdown if there is an active situation, she said.

“If the event is active and there is an immediate threat or danger, the site administrator would call the lockdown immediately and then notify police,” she said.

After the Sandy Hook shooting, the Mesa school district decided to move up plans to do a campus-by-campus safety analysis. The Mesa school district governing board will hear that report Tuesday during a work study session that begins after an executive session at 5 p.m.

“That will look at what we need to do to make our sites physically more safe for students and staff,” Hollands said.

The district is also looking at the policies, procedures, practices and protocol that are used on campuses.

“That’s underway right now. That will be a report that could change protocol. Sometimes it’s helping to close a gap between practice and protocol,” she said.

Tempe’s Allread said during the last two school years, she sent out three letters each year notifying parents that a lockdown took place. This year, including Thursday’s incident, she has already sent out five.

A handful of schools in Tempe were put on lockdown while police searched an area for a suspect from a road rage incident.

Mesa didn’t have a count of the number of lockdowns used so far this school year as of press time.

Allread said the Tempe Elementary School District looked at its safety and security measures last summer.

“But we’re always looking a safety and security and certainly after what happened in December, we took a look at what they had in place and tried to learn any lessons we could,” she said.

The 16-year-old student detained by police could face charges, Mesa Police’s Berry said. The student could also face punishment from the district, from a short suspension to expulsion, depending on the circumstances, Hollands said.

“At this point, without having any due process evaluation, I couldn’t say where within this guideline it would fall. It has a range, because you need to take into account all the mitigating circumstances,” she said.

Contact writer: (480) 898-6549 or mreese@evtrib.com

A serial killer speaks out against the death penalty

Source

Ex-Virginia executioner becomes opponent of death penalty

By Justin Jouvenal, Published: February 10

Jerry Givens executed 62 people.

His routine and conviction never wavered. He’d shave the person’s head, lay his hand on the bald pate and ask for God’s forgiveness for the condemned. Then, he would strap the person into Virginia’s electric chair.

Former executioner opposes death penalty: Jerry Givens executed 62 people in Virginia’s electric chair. Since leaving his job he has become one of the state’s most visible — and unlikely — opponents to capital punishment.

Givens was the state’s chief executioner for 17 years — at a time when the commonwealth put more people to death than any state besides Texas.

“If you knew going out there that raping and killing someone had the consequence of the death penalty, then why are you going to do it?” Givens asked. “I considered it suicide.”

As Virginia executed its 110th person in the modern era last month, Givens prayed for the man, but also for an end to the death penalty. Since leaving his job in 1999, Givens has become one of the state’s most visible — and unlikely — opponents of capital punishment.

His evolution underscores that of Virginia itself and the nation. Although polls show that the majority of state residents still support the death penalty, Virginia has experienced a sea change on capital punishment in recent years that is part of a national trend.

The state has had fewer death sentences over the past five years than any period since the 1970s. Robert Gleason, who was put to death Jan. 16, was the first execution in a year and a half. As recently as 1999, the state put 13 to death in a single year.

Nationwide, the number of death sentences was at record lows in 2011 and 2012, down 75 percent since 1996, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Five states have outlawed capital punishment in the past five years, and Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley (D) affirmed plans to push for a moratorium there. Gallup polls show support for capital punishment ebbing.

Givens’s improbable journey to the death chamber and back did not come easily or quickly for the 60-year-old from Richmond. A searing murder spurred his interest in the work, but it was the innocent life he nearly took that led him to question the system. And he was changed for good when he found himself behind bars.

His story helps explain how a state closely associated with the death penalty for decades has entered a new era.

“From the 62 lives I took, I learned a lot,” Givens said.

The first execution

Friends and strangers regularly ask Givens the essential question: What is it like to take another man’s life? In answering, he vividly recalls his first execution, in 1984.

That it involved one of America’s most notorious killers helped solidify Givens’s feelings then that the death penalty was just.

Linwood Briley was one of three brothers in a gang responsible for one of the bloodiest murder sprees — and death row escapes — in state history.

The day before Briley’s execution, Givens said, the death row team began a standard 24-hour vigil, monitoring Briley at the now-shuttered Virginia State Penitentiary in Richmond. The goal, as Givens put it, was to keep the condemned from killing himself before the state could. [Wow, those government folks will do anything to get their bloodthirsty wish of killing people they consider scum]

Nevertheless, the first execution took a toll. Givens said the most difficult part of that execution — or any other — was something he called the “transformation.”

Givens worked as a prison guard “saving lives” most of the time, as he put it, but when he took on the role of executioner, he had to become a killer.

Before Briley was put to death, he asked to be baptized, Givens said. The death team took him to the penitentiary’s chapel, and Givens prayed alongside the man whose life he would soon end.

Find Virginia executions from 1982 to present by year, method of execution and by the victims’ names.

“We don’t know our day and time, but these guys do,” Givens said of death row inmates. “They can repent. This is the advantage they have.”

The team moved Briley to the death chamber, and he was strapped in the electric chair. Givens took up a position along a wall outside, where the button was located. He could see Briley’s back through a small window.

At these moments, Givens said, he would empty his mind to avoid fear, insecurities or regret. He was solely focused on the grisly mechanics of electrocution.

“You are concentrating on the body itself,” he said. “With that much electricity, you are going to get burning and smoke. You want to make sure the current is right.”

At 11 p.m. Oct. 12, 1984, Givens pushed the button. He saw Briley’s body spasm through the window. And then it was over. He had taken his first life.

Inevitably, Givens said the emotion of an execution would come flooding back.

“You are not going to feel happy,” Givens said. “You feel for the condemned man’s family and the victim’s family. You have two sets of families that are losing someone.”

The chamber and back

Givens grew up in the Creighton Court housing complex in Richmond, where he also graduated from high school in the early 1970s. By 1974, he had gotten a job at a Philip Morris plant and then lost it after fighting with a co-worker.

He recalled someone telling him that he should apply for a job at the state penitentiary before he got sent there. Givens did just that.

After two years as a prison guard, he said, a supervisor approached him about working on death row. He would not be paid extra, but he accepted the job. The deciding factor, he said, was an event that marked him early in life.

When he was 14, Givens said, he was at a house party in Creighton Court. He spied a girl next to a window, and as he was trying to get up the confidence to ask her to dance, a gunman burst up a flight of stairs.

The man was looking for someone at the party, but he fired randomly and killed the girl.

Givens was furious. The incident left him with a firm conviction: Killers such as that shooter deserved to die.

In the years ahead, Givens said, he would recall the girl’s shooting each time he had to prepare for an execution. It was a touchstone that helped him carry out the grim work of the death chamber.

After Briley, the executions would come in quicker succession through the 1980s and 1990s. Givens executed Linwood Briley’s brother James in 1985. In 1993, it was Syvasky Poyner, who killed five women during an 11-day spree in southeast Virginia, and David Mark Pruett, who admitted to raping and killing his best friend’s wife.

Ultimately, though, it was a man he didn’t execute who would make the biggest impression. Earl Washington Jr. was sentenced to death in 1984 in the rape and killing of a 19-year-old mother of three in Culpeper.

Washington, who has an IQ of about 69, admitted to the killing, although many of his answers were inconsistent with the facts of the case. Just days before his scheduled execution in 1985, lawyers secured a stay based on doubts about his guilt.

In 1993, DNA tests provided strong evidence that Washington was not the killer. Then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder (D) commuted his sentence to life in prison. After testing with a more advanced forensic science, Washington was cleared and eventually granted an absolute pardon, making him the first person on Virginia’s death row to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

It was a landmark moment locally and nationally. The case was among the first in a wave of exonerations based on post-conviction DNA testing. There have been 302 such cases across the nation, including 18 death row inmates, according to the Innocence Project.

Experts and opponents of the death penalty say the exonerations have been a key factor in the recent decline in death sentences in Virginia and elsewhere. They say judges and juries have become more sophisticated about how the system can fail and therefore more leery of applying a penalty that cannot be reversed.

The DNA testing “was a scientific process totally outside the system that said, ‘You’ve got the wrong guy,’ ” said Richard Dieter, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center and an opponent of the death penalty. “The fact that you had the entirely wrong person was a revelation to some people.”

The man who would have been Washington’s executioner was one of them. Givens said the case shook his faith in the justice system. He came within days of putting an innocent man to death.

“If I execute an innocent person, I’m no better than the people on death row,” Givens said.

From executioner to inmate

Despite his growing reservations, Givens continued to work as Virginia’s chief executioner through the late 1990s. He had risen to the rank of captain in the Department of Corrections, raised a family and become an assistant football coach at a Richmond area high school.

But then it fell apart. Givens was charged with money laundering and lying to a federal grand jury about it in 1999. Prosecutors said Givens and an old friend from Creighton Court purchased a car together using proceeds Givens knew came from drug dealing. Givens was put on trial.

“There’s a fine line between lawfulness and unlawfulness,” the U.S. attorney reportedly told the jury in the case. “There are a lot of good things about Jerry Givens. He is by no means the worst criminal any of us will ever meet, but he did cross the line.”

Givens maintains his innocence, but he was convicted and forced to resign from the Department of Corrections. His distrust of the justice system was cemented.

The prison guard became an inmate and spent four years behind bars.

“This was God’s way of waking me up,” Givens said.

His incarceration gave him time to think and deepened his Baptist faith. He said he read the Bible more often — the story of Jesus’s crucifixion held a lot for a man who had spent his adult life putting people to death.

Givens said a pivotal moment came one day as he was walking around the prison track, where he often talked with God. He said God asked him a thorny question: Would Givens have executed His son if He were on death row?

Givens said he could give only one reply: No, because Jesus was the son of God. He said he realized what he had done as executioner was not compatible with Jesus’s teachings of forgiveness. He realized that he could no longer support the death penalty. He said God told him to share his story.

Evelyn Givens said she thought her brother’s change was possibly the result of guilt about what he had done and a desire to spare others from “walking in his shoes.”

“He doesn’t want anyone else to feel what he felt,” she said.

After he was released from prison in 2004, he found work as a truck driver. Jonathan Sheldon, a lawyer and former executive director of Virginians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty (VADP), recalls hearing about Givens through a mutual acquaintance.

They agreed to meet at a Burger King off Interstate 95 outside Richmond. The activist and the former chief executioner sat across from each other, talking about the death penalty.

“It was quite a funny meeting,” Sheldon said.

It also planted a seed that would grow in the coming years.

Givens started attending VADP meetings and joined the board about 2009. He began giving speeches across the country about his experiences as chief executioner and his newfound opposition to the death penalty.

The work hit a high point in 2010, when he testified at a state legislative hearing on a bill that would expand the death penalty to accomplices in murders. Givens’s emotional testimony about the impact of death row work helped defeat it.

“The people who pass these bills, they don’t have to do it,” Givens said afterward. “The people who do the executions, they’re the ones who suffer through it.”

Sen. J. Chapman “Chap” Peterson (D-Fairfax) said it was a key moment.

“It was so dramatic, you could have heard a pin drop,” Peterson said. “No one knew who he was, and then he announced he had been the state’s chief executioner and gave an emotional and raw speech. It was something out of Dickens.”

All the while, Virginia was changing as well.

David Bruck, a law professor at Washington and Lee University’s law school and an opponent of capital punishment, said a number of other factors have contributed to the decline in use of the death penalty in Virginia.

Like most states, Virginia has enacted sentences of life without parole, giving juries and prosecutors an alternative. The creation of the state’s capital public defender system has given those facing the death sentence better representation.

Bruck also said the state’s prosecutors, who are elected in Virginia, feel less public pressure to pursue the death penalty than in years past because it has faded as a key political issue.

“Our death sentencing rate is becoming similar to states like Colorado that have the death sentence on the books but hardly use it,” Bruck said.

That’s good news to someone such as Givens. He said he has gained a measure of peace through his new calling. He wrote a book about his experiences, which was released last year.

Nevertheless, he still wonders whether there were any innocents among the 37 people he executed via the electric chair and the 25 by lethal injection. The man who prayed for the forgiveness of each of the condemned said he may need it himself.

“The only thing I can do is pray to God to forgive me if I did,” Givens said. “But I do know this — I will never do it again.”

North Korea tested miniature nuclear device

Source

North Korea tested miniature nuclear device, state media says

By David Pierson

February 11, 2013, 11:42 p.m.

BEIJING – North Korea tested a nuclear device Tuesday, state media said, defying international pressure to stop such activities and drawing quick condemnation from the White House.

State media said North Korea successfully detonated a miniature atomic bomb underground in a test geared toward protecting its safety and sovereignty from the United States.

The White House, meanwhile, issued a statement saying "these provocations do not make North Korea more secure."

“Far from achieving its stated goal of becoming a strong and prosperous nation, North Korea has instead increasingly isolated and impoverished its people through its ill-advised pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery," the White House statement said.

This is the third nuclear test for North Korea, and it comes on the heels of its launch in mid-December of a multistage rocket that put a small satellite into orbit. The technology for a satellite launch is similar to that of an intercontinental ballistic missile, with the main difference being the type of payload it carries.

Experts believe North Korea is still far from making a nuclear weapon that can reach the United States but that it is making strides quickly.

A nuclear test had been suspected Tuesday before state media reported the underground test because South Korea had detected signs of a man-made seismic event across its northern border.

The North Korean official news agency said the device was more powerful than the previous two the country had tested and was aimed at keeping its archrival, the United States, in check.

The size of the bomb is significant because North Korea hopes to build a warhead small enough to be mounted on a missile that can reach American soil.

Experts said it was too early to tell whether the device contained highly enriched uranium, which is easier to conceal. The last two North Korean nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 used plutonium.

“To be able to tell whether they have tested uranium or plutonium, we have to collect the gas leaked from the … test site,” said Kim Min-seok, a spokesman for the South Korean Defense Ministry. “We can't tell for sure for now.”

Russia and Britain reportedly condemned the North Korean nuclear test, which defied United Nations instructions to shutter its atomic program or risk greater sanctions.

China, another permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, had yet to issue a statement.

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

Look I will trust the teachers with a gun any day of the year, but I wouldn't let these trigger happy cops get anywhere near the school campus

Source

Dorner manhunt: Officers opened fire on mother, daughter

February 9, 2013 | 7:47 am

In their pursuit of a fugitive ex-cop, at least seven officers opened fire on what turned out to be a mother and daughter delivering newspapers on a quiet residential street, law enforcement sources told The Times.

It was "a tragic misinterpretation" by officers working under "incredible tension," LAPD Chief Charlie Beck said Friday in an interview with The Times. Margie Carranza, 47, and her mother, Emma Hernandez, 71, were the victims.

Early Thursday morning, Christopher Jordan Dorner, 33, allegedly shot three police officers, one fatally. And, in an online posting authorities attributed to him, Dorner threatened to kill more police and seemed to take responsibility for the slaying over the weekend of the daughter of a retired LAPD captain and her fiance.

Then around 5 a.m. Thursday in Torrance, police from nearby El Segundo saw a pickup truck exit a freeway and head in the general direction of the Redbeam Avenue residence of a high-ranking Los Angeles police official, which was being guarded by a group of LAPD officers.

A radio call indicated that the truck matched the description of Dorner's gray Nissan Titan. As the vehicle approached the house, officers opened fire, unloading a barrage of bullets into the back of the truck. When the shooting stopped, they quickly realized their mistake. The truck was not a Nissan Titan, but a Toyota Tacoma. The color wasn't gray, but aqua blue. And it wasn't Dorner inside the truck, but Carranza and her mother delivering copies of the Los Angeles Times.

Beck and others stressed that the investigation into the shooting was in its infancy. They declined to say how many officers were involved, what kind of weapons they used, how many bullets were fired and, perhaps most important, what kind of verbal warnings — if any — were given to the women before the shooting began.

"How do you mistake two Hispanic women, one who is 71, for a large, black male?" said Richard Goo, 62, who counted five bullet holes in the entryway to his house.

Glen T. Jonas, the attorney representing the women, said the police officers gave "no commands, no instructions and no opportunity to surrender" before opening fire. He described a terrifying encounter in which the pair were in the early part of their delivery route through several South Bay communities. Hernandez was in the back seat handing papers to her daughter, who was driving. Carranza would briefly slow the truck to throw papers on driveways and front walks.

As bullets tore through the cabin, the two women "covered their faces and huddled down," Jonas said. "They felt like it was going on forever."

Hernandez was shot twice in her back and is expected to recover. Her daughter escaped with only minor wounds from broken glass.

Beck said he had not yet received a detailed briefing, which typically occurs a few days after officer-involved shootings to give investigators time to collect evidence and put together the basic summary of what happened. But he did say that the gunfire occurred in two bursts: The first came from an officer positioned down the block from the LAPD official's residence, and the second when Carranza accelerated away from the gunfire and toward other officers.

After the investigation is completed, Beck and an oversight board will decide if officers were justified in the shooting or made mistakes that warrant either punishment or training.

Arizona AG Tom Horne wants his hit and run case tossed

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Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne wants traffic case tossed

Associated Press Wed Feb 13, 2013 5:10 PM

PHOENIX — Lawyers for Arizona Attorney General Tom Horne asked a judge Wednesday to dismiss a misdemeanor hit-and-run case against him, arguing he’s being singled out for prosecution and FBI agents who witnessed the incident while tailing him are refusing to answer questions.

A court filing obtained by The Associated Press accused the FBI’s top agent in Arizona of personally calling Phoenix Police Chief Daniel V. Garcia and asking him to investigate after FBI agents tailing Horne saw him back into another vehicle and leave. Horne’s lawyer, Michael D. Kimerer, wrote in his court filing that police did so even though it violated their own written policy of not investigating cases involving less than $5,000 in private property damage.

Kimerer wrote that singling out Horne for prosecution violates the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection clause. The only logical explanation for doing so when others are not investigated or prosecuted for similar crimes is that Horne is an elected official.

Horne is accused in Phoenix city court of not stopping or leaving a note after he backed a borrowed car he was driving into another vehicle. FBI reports released by Phoenix police in October say he left the scene because he was having an affair with a female employee who was in the car and he didn’t want their relationship to be reported.

Horne has declined comment on allegations of an affair and repeatedly said he didn’t know he had caused any damage. He declined comment Wednesday, referring instead to the court filing.

The agents who were following Horne in March 2012 had apparently been doing so during the course of a campaign finance investigation, although agents interviewed by Kimerer refused to say that was the case.

The FBI waited seven months before notifying Phoenix police, until after the Maricopa County attorney’s office filed civil charges in the campaign finance case.

“It just shows animus the way they pursued this,” Kimerer said in an interview. “They were just rabid to get him.”

In the campaign finance case, Horne and employee Kathleen Winn are accused of illegally coordinating with an independent expenditure committee during the 2010 election. Horne is appealing Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery’s findings that Horne illegally coordinated his 2010 campaign with a group that was supposed to be operating independently. The group aired television advertising critical of Horne’s general election opponent.

Montgomery is demanding that Horne’s 2010 campaign and the other group, Business Leaders for Arizona, return up to $513,000 of contributions. There also could be large civil fines.

Because of the alleged coordination, the contributions made to a group headed by a Horne ally who now works in his office actually were contributions that exceeded campaign finance limits on money given to candidates, Montgomery said. Candidates aren’t allowed to discuss strategy or other matters with so-called independent expenditure committees, but there’s evidence that Horne was involved in both raising money and deciding how to spend it on advertising by Business Leaders for Arizona, Montgomery said in October.

Horne, a lawyer who is the top-elected law enforcement official for the state, denied any coordination. He had been considering running for governor but now says he’ll seek re-election in 2014.

Sassing a cop is constitutionally protected free speech!!!

Sassing a cop may be unwise, but it’s constitutionally protected

Talking back to a police officer while you’re under arrest is usually not the smartest move, a bit like tugging on Superman’s cape, or spitting into the wind. But it’s legal, according to a federal appeals court — and if the officer retaliates in some way, like hauling you off to jail instead of giving you a ticket and letting you go, you might be entitled to damages.

“Police officers may not use their authority to punish an individual for exercising his First Amendment rights,” the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a 2-1 ruling Feb. 8 that reinstated a lawsuit against the city of Yakima, Wash., and two of its policemen.

Eddie Ford, an African American who grew up in the central Washington community, was driving to his night-shift job at a bottling company in July 2007 when a police car came up from behind and stopped him, apparently for playing his stereo too loud. As Officer Ryan Urlacher approached, Ford got out of the car shouting that the stop was racially motivated. Urlacher told him to get back in the car, then said he would arrest Ford for violating a city noise ordinance, and commented, according to the court, that “he might only get a ticket if he cooperates.”

Ford kept talking for awhile after Urlacher handcuffed him, put him in the patrol car and threatened to jail him unless he shut up. He quieted down, but the officer drove him away and booked him at the suggestion of a superior officer, telling Ford that “your mouth and your attitude talked you into jail.” Urlacher later testified that he jailed Ford because of “his rageful … behavior towards the law enforcement,” which, the officer said, put public safety at risk.

Ford went to trial on the noise-violation charge, was found not guilty, and then sued for damages. A judge dismissed the suit, ruling that Urlacher had acted reasonably and had not punished Ford for freedom of speech, but the appeals court said a jury might conclude otherwise.

The Constitution protects “a significant amount of verbal criticism and challenge directed at police officers,” the court said, quoting a 1987 Supreme Court ruling. Even if police had reason to arrest Ford in the first place, they were not entitled to jail him in retaliation for speaking his mind, said the court majority, Judges Procter Hug and Dorothy Nelson.

Dissenting Judge Connie Callahan looked at the case through the other end of the telescope, the viewpoint of the officers. Once someone is under arrest, she said, that person’s free-speech rights are reduced, and police are entitled to jail someone like Ford based on what he says, which might indicate he posed a danger to himself or others. In this case, Callahan said, Urlacher may have simply been trying to give Ford “an opportunity to change his attitude,” and the court oversteps its bounds when it tries to “impose such etiquette upon peace officers.”

Robert Christie, a lawyer for the city and its police, said they agreed with Callahan and were considering whether to ask the full appeals court for a rehearing. Ford’s lawyer, William Pickett, said the court had reaffirmed a basic constitutional principle.

“Citizens have an absolute right to be critical of law enforcement, and they can vocalize that criticism without any fear of being retaliated against,” Pickett said.

The ruling can be viewed here.

Let the police decide which rights we have???

Vanessa Goldberg thinks the police should decide which rights we are allowed to have

And of course the police are the arm of government that tyrants use to force their will on us.

So if we let the "police" pick and choose which "rights" we get to keep, we will soon have no rights.

Source

Listen to police, not NRA

Wed Feb 13, 2013 9:08 PM

Listen to the police on the weapons issue!

Who would know the weapons issue better than the police, who are on the front lines of combating gun-related crimes and dealing with the horrific aftermaths? Should we not therefore listen to what they have to say about the question of gun control?

Should we not be made thoughtful by the fact that the International Association of Chiefs of Police has historically backed gun-control measures?

Their IACP website recently stated: “Our membership was, and remains, a leading proponent of universal background checks for gun purchases, the ban on military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and ensuring that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (and Explosives) has both a permanent director and sufficient resources to enforce our nation’s gun laws.”

I ask my fellow readers: Should we listen to police chiefs or to the NRA?

— Vanessa Goldberg

Scottsdale

Drones will be coming to the "drug war" in Arizona???

Of course later on in the article it says there will be exceptions for cops in the "drug war".

When you consider that two thirds of the people in American prisons are their for victimless drug war crimes, that means the police will be allowed to use drones in two thirds of police work they do which is about drug war crimes.

I am a little bit more negative on this issue, and my question is when will the police begin using drones to murder suspected "drug war" criminals, like the American government uses drones to murder suspected "terrorists" in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and other countries throughout the world.

Source

Arizona seeks to be a key player in drone work

By Alia Beard Rau The Republic | azcentral.com Wed Feb 13, 2013 11:35 PM

Arizona lawmakers are bidding to make the state a center for aerial-drone research, but they also want to make sure local police don’t use the unmanned surveillance aircraft to spy on Americans.

As the sophisticated eye-in-the-sky technology deployed by the military in the war on terror in Afghanistan and against drug cartels on the Mexican border becomes a Pentagon fixture, state lawmakers have introduced several bills this session to ensure that the state is part of the high-tech revolution, without turning Arizona into a “police state.”

The U.S. military has used drones around the world for more than a decade, patrolling hot spots, gathering evidence and launching airstrikes. The unmanned craft are nothing new to Arizona, either.

The federal government has used them within the state to help fight forest fires and patrol the border. The Fort Huachuca Army base in southern Arizona houses the largest unmanned-aircraft-system training center in the world, according to the Army, employing hundreds of private contractors and civilian instructors and training more than 1,300 students a year.

Arizona-based defense contractors are cashing in on what has become a $4 billion-a-year investment for the military alone, not to mention the growing private and foreign government uses.

And local universities are pushing to develop the necessary workforce. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, the University of Arizona and Arizona State University offer programs related to drones.

Arizona lawmakers are doing their part via legislation to prepare for greater growth.

House Concurrent Resolution 2009, sponsored by Rep. Tom Forese, R-Chandler, reinforces Arizona’s push to be selected by the Federal Aviation Administration as one of six national drone- testing sites.

The National Defense Authorization Act, which President Barack Obama signed in 2011, authorized the establishment of sites where officials could test drones in civil airspace near commercial air traffic. The sites were scheduled to be chosen in December, but the FAA delayed a decision indefinitely, saying it needed to address safety and privacy concerns.

Arizona officials said they are hopeful the state will still be chosen. HCR 2009 has passed the House Public Safety, Military and Regulatory Affairs Committee with unanimous bipartisan support. It now awaits a vote of the full House.

Officials are also preparing for what they fear could be a worst-case scenario in the future of drone technology.

House Bill 2574, sponsored by Rep. Jeff Dial, R-Chandler, makes it illegal for state or local law-enforcement officials to use a drone to collect information unless they have a search warrant.

It also makes it illegal to monitor individuals inside their homes or places of worship. It has exceptions for law-enforcement officials investigating human trafficking or drug smuggling as long as they are doing so on public property or with permission on private property.

Dial said he is working on the bill and expects to make some changes. It has been assigned to the House public-safety committee but is not yet scheduled for a hearing.

Rep. Carl Seel, R-Phoenix, also introduced a bill that would forbid the state and local governments from assisting in any way with enforcing portions of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 that allows the military to detain a U.S. citizen. But Seel said he is putting his support behind Dial’s bill.

The bills come amid controversy surrounding a White House legal argument justifying drone-missile strikes against U.S. citizens who are part of terrorist groups overseas.

“We need to protect something called the Fourth Amendment,” Seel said, adding that he has heard “unverified” reports of drones being used to survey citizens in Arizona. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from unreasonable searches.

He said the bills restricting drones are not intended to limit the federal government’s use of drones to protect the border.

Dial said his bill is intended to be pre-emptive.

“What I want to do is protect citizens’ rights,” he said. “We don’t want to live in a police state. We don’t want to have drones everywhere in society.”

Dial also supports the resolution seeking to make Arizona a test site and efforts to promote drone research and business opportunities in the state. “I want the jobs here, and there are definitely uses for drones,” he said. “But I don’t want civil liberties and privacy invaded.”

He said the two bills address separate issues and can work together.

“The problem isn’t technology,” Dial said. “It’s how humans use the technology.”

Assistant House Minority Leader Ruben Gallego, D-Phoenix, a former Marine who serves on the House public-safety committee, said he wants to see the final details of Dial’s bill but supports the effort in general.

“Technology is always advancing, and we have to put safeguards in place to protect people’s civil liberties while still allowing drones to be used as a law-enforcement tool,” he said. “As long as we can find that balance, I don’t have any problem with the bill.”

Tom Horne continues to self destruct

But sadly the police routinely selectively enforce the law. The police routinely apply the full force of the law to people they dislike while ignoring the same violations committed by other people that are not on the police hate list.

Of course one group of people the police routinely let violate the law are elected officials, and government employees. Cops are rarely if ever arrested and put on trial for crimes they commit. Source

Posted on February 14, 2013 8:25 am by Laurie Roberts

Tom Horne continues to self destruct

The attorney general of the state of Arizona is asking a judge to dismiss his misdemeanor hit-and-run charge.

Tom Horne says he’s being singled out because the head of the FBI in Arizona actually called the Phoenix police chief and asked him to investigate after his agents saw Horne back into a Land Rover and drive away without even checking for damage. Then, the Phoenix police chief actually agreed to investigate.

Oh, the agony, the utter unfairness of it all.

Horne’s attorney, Mike Kimerer, says police violated their own policy of not investigating such cases when the damage is less than $5,000.

And so it seems Horne’s constitutional rights have been trampled, shredded into bits just like his credibility.

There certainly are questions about why the FBI was following Horne in March 2012, as he and one of his employees at the AGs office were en route for a little lunchtime rendezvous at her apartment. Perhaps Horne will escape a misdemeanor conviction given the oh-so-outrageous conduct of the FBI and police chiefs.

Horne has denied doing anything wrong and pointed out that the damage, if any, was minor.

Perhaps so, as far as the Land Rover goes.

But damage to Horne’s career? That’s significant — and getting worse all the time as the top law enforcement official in the state attempts to wiggle his way out of responsibility for his own actions.

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Christopher Dorner Reward

Legal Loophole Could Hold Up $1M Dorner Reward

By RUSSELL GOLDMAN | ABC News

A legal loophole could prevent good Samaritans, instrumental in ending the manhunt for a fugitive ex-cop accused of killing four people, from claiming more than $1 million in reward money because Christopher Dorner died and was not captured.

Last weekend, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa pledged $1 million, sourced from private individuals, companies and unions, "for information that will lead to Mr. Dorner's capture."

The L.A. City Council followed up with its own promise of a $100,000 reward, for information "leading to the identification, apprehension and conviction of Christopher Dorner."

But Dorner, accused of killing four people and threatening the lives of several dozen more, was never captured, apprehended or convicted. Instead, he died following a standoff with police near Big Bear, Calif., when the cabin in which he was barricaded burned down with him inside.

The mayor's office has not yet determined if the reward could still be paid out given Dorner died.

"At this time, no decision has been made on the reward," Villaraigosa's spokesman Peter Sanders told ABC News.com in an email.

So far, none of the privately sourced "funds have been deposited into the City's 'Special Reward Trust Fund,'" according to the Frank T. Mateljan, spokesman for the city attorney.

That still leaves an additional $100,000 that the city council could pay with municipal money, but there legal questions there, as well.

"The reward is definitely still on the table," said Jessica Tarman, spokeswoman for Councilman Daniel Zine.

But there are still plenty of questions.

The council ultimately decides how and to whom the reward will get paid. If its members are feeling generous, they could interpret the language of the original offer to make sure a worthy recipient gets paid.

"Arguably, city law is broad enough to allow payment to persons who assisted in the "identification, apprehension OR arrest and conviction" of a suspect," Metaljan said in an email [emphasis his].

If the city decides to honor the reward, there are still multiple steps before a claimant can be paid.

Anyone who thinks they are worthy must apply in writing. That claim would then be reviewed by the LAPD robbery and homicide division, and a recommendation would be made to the police commissioner. The commissioner would tell the council to consider the claim, and the council would vote on it.

So far, no one has come forward to ask for the reward. More than 1,000 leads were called to a city hotline

One couple seems most deserving, if they decide to seek the reward. Jim and Karen Reynolds, a couple in whose Big Bear, Calif., home Dorner is believed to have hidden for days, called in the tip Tuesday that ultimately put police on the trail to Dorner's final location.

On Tuesday, the couple found Dorner at their home. He briefly held them captive, but they managed to escape and call in their tip.

Drones are taking to the skies in the U.S.

Source

Drones are taking to the skies in the U.S.

By Brian Bennett and Joel Rubin, Los Angeles Times

February 15, 2013, 5:20 p.m.

WASHINGTON — While a national debate has erupted over the Obama administration's lethal drone strikes overseas, federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in U.S. airspace, spurring growing concern about violations of privacy.

The Federal Aviation Administration said Friday it had issued 1,428 permits to domestic drone operators since 2007, far more than were previously known. Some 327 permits are still listed as active.

Operators include police, universities, state transportation departments and at least seven federal agencies. The remotely controlled aircraft vary widely, from devices as small as model airplanes to large unarmed Predators.

The FAA, which has a September 2015 deadline from Congress to open the nation's airspace to drone traffic, has estimated 10,000 drones could be aloft five years later. The FAA this week solicited proposals to create six sites across the country to test drones, a crucial step before widespread government and commercial use is approved.

Local and state law enforcement agencies are expected to be among the largest customers.

Earlier this month, TV footage showed a midsized drone circling over the bunker in southeast Alabama where a 65-year-old gunman held a 5-year-old boy hostage. After a tense standoff, an FBI team stormed the bunker, rescued the boy and shot his captor. Authorities refused to say who was operating the AeroVironment drone, which has a 9-foot wingspan.

In Colorado, the Mesa County Sheriff's Office has used a fixed-wing drone to search for lost hikers in the mountains, and a helicopter drone to help crews battling fires. Flying manned planes or helicopters would cost at least $600 an hour, explained Ben Miller, who heads the program.

"We fly [drones] for less than $25 an hour," Miller said. "It's just a new way to put a camera up that's affordable." [I kind of doubt that. In Arizona most cops start at $50,000/yr which is about $25 an hour. So in Phoenix the minimum cost of operating a drone would be about $25/hr before you figure in the cost of the drone and related equipment.]

Big-city police departments, including Los Angeles, have tested drones but are holding back on buying them until the FAA issues clear guidelines about operating in congested airspace, among other issues.

"You've got to take baby steps with this," said Michael Downing, the LAPD deputy chief for counter-terrorism and special operations.

Los Angeles Police Department officials went to Simi Valley in December, he said, to watch a demonstration of a helicopter-like device that measured about 18 inches on each side and was powered by four propellers. It could fly about 90 minutes on its battery.

Downing said the LAPD was "pursuing the idea of purchasing" drones, but wouldn't do so unless the FAA granted permission to fly them, and until the department could draw up policies on how to keep within privacy laws.

If the LAPD bought drones, Downing said, it initially would use them at major public events such as the Oscars or large protests. In time, drones could be flown to track fleeing suspects and assist in investigations. Tiny drones could even be used to fly inside buildings to shoot video if a suspect has barricaded himself within.

In theory, drones can offer unblinking eye-in-the-sky coverage. They can carry high-resolution video cameras, infrared sensors, license plate readers, listening devices and other high-tech gear. Companies have marketed drones disguised as sea gulls and other birds to mask their use.

That's the problem, according to civil liberties groups. The technology is evolving faster than the law. Congress and courts haven't determined whether drone surveillance would violate privacy laws more than manned planes or helicopters, or whether drone operators may be held liable for criminal trespassing, stalking or harassment.

"Americans have the right to know if and how the government is using drones to spy on them," said Catherine Crump, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which has called for updating laws to protect privacy.

A backlash has already started.

In Congress, Reps. Ted Poe (R-Texas) and Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) introduced privacy legislation Thursday that would require police to get a warrant or a court order before operating a drone to collect information on individuals.

"We need to protect against obtrusive search and surveillance by government and civilian use," Poe said in a telephone interview. A similar bill failed last year.

Legislatures in 15 states are considering proposals to limit drone use. The City Council in Charlottesville, Va., passed a resolution on Feb. 4 barring local police from using drones — which they don't yet have — to collect evidence in criminal cases.

In Seattle, Mayor Mike McGinn ordered police to return two Draganflyer X6 helicopter drones earlier this month after privacy advocates and others protested. The police said they had hoped to use them for search-and-rescue operations.

Federal agencies fly drones to assist in disasters, check flood damage, do crop surveys and more. U.S. Customs and Border Protection flies the largest fleet, 10 unarmed Predators, along the northern and southern borders to help track smugglers and illegal immigrants.

Although flying drones might appear as easy as playing a video game, pilots and crews require extensive training.

In 2004 and 2005, the U.S. Marshals Service tested two small drones in remote areas to help them track fugitives, according to law enforcement officials and documents released to the ACLU under the Freedom of Information Act. The Marshals Service abandoned the program after both drones crashed.

Except in rare cases, the military is barred from using drones in U.S. airspace to conduct surveillance or pursue individuals. No state or federal agency has proposed arming domestic drones with weapons, but the prospect has raised alarms in Congress and elsewhere.

In response to a question during an online Google chat Thursday, President Obama said drones had never been used to kill "an American citizen on American soil."

"The rules outside of the United States are going to be different than the rules inside the United States, in part because our capacity, for example, to capture terrorists in the United States are very different than in the foothills or mountains of Afghanistan or Pakistan," Obama said.

No drone was sent up to help find suspected killer Christopher Dorner after his truck was found burning near Big Bear Lake on Feb. 7, said Al Daniel, an officer in the aviation division of the San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department. But Customs and Border Protection transmitted secure video from a Pilatus PC-12 plane to police commanders on the ground.

Despite a massive manhunt, Dorner vanished and authorities speculated he had escaped to Mexico. Five days later, however, he was found in a snowbound cabin near his truck and died after a shootout and fire.

The long delay, and the embarrassing fact that Dorner was hiding close by the police command post, sparked sharp criticism of police tactics and abilities.

Steve Whitmore, a spokesman for the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, said an aerial drone might have helped find Dorner more quickly.

"The search would have been much wider and quicker because you'd have an unmanned aircraft looking," he said. "You can cover more ground."

brian.bennett@latimes.com

joel.rubin@latimes.com

Bennett reported from Washington and Rubin from Los Angeles. Times staff writer Robert Faturechi in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

China to use drones to murder suspected drug war criminals????

Source

Chinese Plan to Kill Drug Dealer With Drone Highlights Military Advances

By JANE PERLEZ

Published: February 20, 2013

BEIJING — China considered using a drone strike in a mountainous region of Southeast Asia to kill a Myanmar drug lord wanted in the killings of 13 Chinese sailors, but decided instead to capture him alive, according to an influential state-run newspaper.

The plan to use a drone, described to the Global Times newspaper by a senior public security official, highlights China’s increasing capacity in unmanned aerial warfare, a technology dominated by the United States and used widely by the Obama administration for the targeted killing of terrorists.

Liu Yuejin, the director of the public security ministry’s antidrug bureau, told the newspaper that the plan called for using a drone carrying explosives to bomb the outlaw’s hide-out in the opium-growing area of Myanmar in the Golden Triangle at the intersection of Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

China’s law enforcement officials were under pressure from an outraged public to take action after 13 Chinese sailors on two cargo ships laden with narcotics were killed in October 2011 on the Mekong River. Photos of the dead sailors, their bodies gagged and blindfolded and some with head wounds suggesting execution-style killings, circulated on China’s Internet.

It was one of the most brutal assaults on Chinese citizens abroad in recent years. Naw Kham, a member of Myanmar’s ethnic Shan minority and a major drug trafficker, was suspected in the killings.

A manhunt by the Chinese police in the jungles of the Golden Triangle produced no results, and security officials turned to a drone strike as a possible solution.

China’s global navigation system, Beidou, would have been used to guide the drones to the target, Mr. Liu said. China’s goal is for the Beidou system to compete with the United States’ Global Positioning System, Russia’s Glonass and the European Union’s Galileo, Chinese experts say.

Mr. Liu’s comments on the use of the Beidou system with the drones reflects the rapid advancement in that navigation system from its humble beginnings more than a decade ago.

The experimental navigation system was started in 2000 and has since expanded to 16 navigation satellites over Asia and the Pacific Ocean, according to an article in Wednesday’s China Daily, an English-language state-run newspaper. The Chinese military, particularly the navy, is now conducting patrols and training exercises using Beidou, the newspaper said.

As an example, China Daily quoted the information chief at the headquarters of the North Sea Fleet, Lei Xiwei, saying a fleet with the missile destroyer Qingdao, along with the missile frigates Yantai and Yancheng, entered the South China Sea on Feb. 1 using the Beidou navigation system to provide positioning, security and protection for the fleet.

As China has been vastly improving its navigation system, it is also making fast progress with drones, and many manufacturers for the Chinese military have research centers devoted to unmanned aerial vehicles, according to a report last year by the Defense Science Board of the Pentagon.

Two Chinese drones, apparently modeled on the American Reaper and Predator unmanned aerial vehicles, were unveiled at the Zhuhai air show in November. A larger drone that Western experts say is akin to the American RQ-4 Global Hawk is also known to be in the Chinese arsenal.

One of the Chinese drones, the CH-4, had a range of about 2,200 miles and was ideal for surveillance missions over islands in the East China Sea that are the subject of a dispute between China and Japan, an official with the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation said at the Zhuhai air show.

China has acknowledged a pilot program that uses drones as part of its stepped-up surveillance of its coastal areas, as well as in the South China Sea and the East China Sea.

By 2015, the State Oceanic Administration has said it plans to use drones along China’s coastline on a permanent basis and would establish monitoring bases in provinces along the coastline for drones.

As for Naw Kham, the fugitive, he was captured by Lao authorities at the Mekong River port of Mong Mo after a six-month hunt in the jungles of the Golden Triangle by the combined police forces of China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos. After his extradition to China, Naw Kham received a death sentence from a Chinese court in Yunnan Province and awaits execution, according to Chinese press reports.

“We didn’t use China’s military, and we didn’t harm a single foreign citizen,” Mr. Liu bragged after the arrest in April 2012.

Bree Feng contributed reporting.

Drones have murdered 4,700 - U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham

If Obama, the CIA, DEA and Generals in the military don't have any qualms about being the judge, jury and executioner of suspect or accused criminals on foreign soil, I doubt if they won't have any qualms about murdering suspected drug dealers on American soil.

I wonder what the cost of each of these murders was.

The General Atomics MQ-1 Predator program cost $2.38 billion.

Dividing the $2.38 billion by the 4,700 drone murders gives us a cost of $506,382 per drone murder. Of course that doesn't count for the operation costs of the program, such as manpower and fuel.

Source

Drones have killed 4,700, U.S. senator says

By Olivier Knox, Yahoo! News

Just how many people have America’s drones killed? Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham has put the death toll at 4,700 — the first time an American official has publicly put a precise figure on the impact of strikes by unmanned aerial vehicles. The South Carolina lawmaker's office said he was citing an estimate already discussed on cable television.

Graham, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, used the figure during a question and answer session on Tuesday with the Rotary Club of Easley in his home state of South Carolina. His remarks were first reported by the Easley Patch.

“We've killed 4,700,” the lawmaker said. “Sometimes you hit innocent people, [like 4,700 innocent people] and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of al-Qaida.”

Drone strikes, President Barack Obama’s signature tactic for killing suspected al-Qaida and other extremist fighters, have been “very effective,” said Graham. “It's a weapon that needs to be used.”

Amid a controversy sparked by Obama’s targeted assassination of American citizens overseas suspected of consorting with terrorists, Graham came down sharply against any judicial oversight of the drone war, calling the idea “crazy.” [Hey, I'm a Senator and have a God given right to murder anybody I want to???]

“I can't imagine, in World War [II] for Roosevelt to have gone to a bunch of judges and said, 'I need your permission before we can attack the enemy,'” Graham said.

Drone war expert Micah Zenko of the Council on Foreign Relations noted on his blog that Graham’s figure lined up with the high-end estimate by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism.

“Either Graham is a big fan of TBIJ’s work, or perhaps he inadvertently revealed the U.S. government’s body count for nonbattlefield targeted killings,” Zenko said.

Asked about the disclosure, Graham's office forwarded a clip from MSNBC in which the anchor cites the figure of 4,700 killed. Asked whether the Obama Administration harbored any concerns about Graham's comments, National Security Council Spokesman Tommy Vietor sent along a blog post including the same clip.

Graham's remarks, as reported, did not specify whether he was discussing CIA drone strikes or military drone strikes.

Obama's expanded drone war has broad popular support in the U.S., according to a poll released earlier this month by the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. That survey found 56 percent support such strikes and 26 percent oppose them. At the same time, 53 percent worry about potential civilian casualties. But overseas it faces majority opposition, Pew found last year.

TSA apologizes for screening that upset girl, 3

I'm just joking, but I suspect the TSA thugs are 100 percent serious when it comes to suspecting that all 3 year old children are armed with AK-47s and members of the Taliban. Especially the ones with brown skin.

Source

TSA apologizes for screening that upset girl, 3

Associated Press Thu Feb 21, 2013 10:35 AM

ST. LOUIS — The Transportation Security Administration is apologizing after agents at Lambert Airport in St. Louis sought to screen a 3-year-old girl in a wheelchair.

The mother of the child shot video that caused a stir in social media after it was posted online.

The incident happened Feb. 8. The girl and her family were about to fly to Disney World in Orlando, Fla. A TSA agent asked to pat down the 3-year-old and screen her wheelchair. The agent initially told the girl’s mother, Annie Schulte, it was illegal to tape the activity.

On the video, the little girl, Lucy, who has spina bifida, is seen crying.

Agents eventually decided against a pat-down.

The TSA says it regrets the incident and will address concerns with its workers.

Afghanistan - a jobs program for generals???

Source

NATO Plan Tries to Avoid Sweeping Cuts in Afghan Troops

By THOM SHANKER

Published: February 21, 2013

BRUSSELS — NATO defense ministers are seriously considering a new proposal to sustain Afghanistan’s security forces at 352,000 troops through 2018, senior alliance officials said Thursday. The expensive effort is viewed as a way to help guarantee the country’s stability — and, just as much, to illustrate continued foreign support after the NATO allies end their combat mission in Afghanistan next year.

The fiscal package that NATO leaders endorsed last spring would have reduced the Afghan National Security Forces to fewer than 240,000 troops after December 2014, when the NATO mission expires. That reduction was based on planning work indicating that the larger current force level was too expensive for Afghanistan and the allies to keep up, and might not be required. Some specialists even argued that the foreign money pouring into Afghanistan to support so large a force was helping fuel rampant official corruption.

Recruiting, training, equipping and operating Afghanistan’s army and national police forces at their present level will cost about $6.5 billion for the current American fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30. Afghanistan pays $500 million of that total, its international partners add $300 million, and the United States provides the remaining $5.7 billion.

Senior NATO officials said Thursday that the allies were examining a new assistance package to Afghanistan that would last at least five years and keep the security forces at the higher troop level.

The alliance is “strongly considering” the proposal, said one senior NATO official, although many of its provisions are not yet settled, including how the cost would be shared. That official and others who described the closed-door deliberations did so on standard diplomatic rules of anonymity.

Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta joined his counterparts at the alliance’s headquarters here in Brussels on Thursday to open a two-day conference, their first since President Obama announced in his State of the Union address that the United States would draw down its forces in Afghanistan by 34,000 troops within a year.

NATO officials acknowledged that the Taliban and other insurgent groups in Afghanistan were pointing to the approaching end of the coalition combat mission as proof that the United States and its allies were abandoning Afghanistan, repeating a cycle of intervention and withdrawal. Alliance officials worry that ordinary Afghan citizens and even some Afghan leaders could adopt the same view. So NATO is discussing expanded financial aid and the continued presence of a small contingent of American and allied troops after 2014 as concrete proof of continued foreign support for Afghanistan, officials said.

“The will and the endurance and the commitment of the coalition equals the confidence and hope on the part of the Afghans,” said one NATO official.

“There is a post-2014 mission,” the official added. “There is a train-advise-and-assist mission. And we are going to use that as an insurance policy, to ensure that the success we’ve had over the past 12 years will continue.”

One thing NATO forces are trying to achieve as they hand off security responsibilities to Afghan forces is to diminish the insurgents’ ability to depict foreign forces as invaders and occupiers.

“The Afghans will be in the lead across the nation this spring,” the official said. “At that point, we now will have Afghans fighting Afghans. It’s pretty hard to talk about the coalition as occupiers at that point.”

NATO officials who have been briefed on the current military plans say that even with the new withdrawal timeline set by Mr. Obama, the bulk of American forces now in Afghanistan will stay there through the summer fighting season and then withdraw in late autumn and early winter.

“The commanders on the ground believe they have the flexibility to do this mission and absorb the drawdown,” one NATO official said. “This drawdown can be done without interfering with our campaign objectives.”

Senior NATO officials also said Thursday that Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, currently the commander of United States Air Force units in Europe and Africa, was emerging as the Mr. Obama’s likely nominee to be the alliance’s supreme military commander, who is customarily an American. Gen. John R. Allen, of the Marine Corps, had been in line for the post, but he announced his retirement recently.

General Breedlove is the Air Force’s top officer for the European Command and for the Africa Command, and thus is well known at NATO. He was commissioned into the Air Force in 1977 from the R.O.T.C. program at Georgia Tech. According to his official biography, he has commanded a fighter squadron, an operations group and three fighter wings, and rose to vice chief of staff of the Air Force before being appointed to his current commands.

Mandatory Gun Insurance??? A round about way to disarm Americans???

I suspect this so called "mandatory gun insurance" is designed to do the same thing.

Requiring people who own guns to purchase insurance which will be made unaffordable to prevent people from legally buying and owning guns by making the insurance too expensive.

And of course after the government passes a law requiring mandatory gun insurance, the next step would be to pass laws that make it impossible for insurance companies to sell the mandatory gun insurance, effectively making guns illegal.

This isn't a new trick by our government rulers. They did the same thing when they made drugs illegal.

The "1914 Harrison Narcotic Tax Act" and the "1937 Marihuana Tax Act" effectively made drugs illegal by slapping a tax on them, while at the same time the government stopped issuing the tax licenses.

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Latest Front in the Gun Debate Is Mandatory Insurance

By MICHAEL COOPER and MARY WILLIAMS WALSH

Published: February 21, 2013 609 Comments

In a nation sharply divided over efforts to curb violence and the right to bear arms, both sides of the gun debate seem to agree on at least one thing: a bigger role for the insurance industry in a heavily armed society.

David P. Linsky is a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance.

But just what that role should be, and whether insurers will choose to accept it, are very much in dispute.

Lawmakers in at least half a dozen states, including California, Connecticut, Maryland, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania, have proposed legislation this year that would require gun owners to buy liability insurance — much as car owners are required to buy auto insurance. Doing so would give a financial incentive for safe behavior, they hope, as people with less dangerous weapons or safety locks could qualify for lower rates.

“I believe that if we get the private sector and insurance companies involved in gun safety, we can help prevent a number of gun tragedies every year,” said David P. Linsky, a Democratic state representative in Massachusetts who wants to require gun owners to buy insurance. He believes it will encourage more responsible behavior and therefore reduce accidental shootings. “Insurance companies are very good at evaluating risk factors and setting their premiums appropriately,” he added.

Groups representing gun owners oppose efforts to make insurance mandatory, arguing that law-abiding people should not be forced to buy insurance to exercise their constitutional right to bear arms. But some groups, including the National Rifle Association, endorse voluntary liability policies for their members. And as several states pass laws making it easier for people to carry concealed weapons and use them for self-defense, some gun groups are now selling policies to cover some of the legal costs stemming from self-defense shootings.

The United States Concealed Carry Association recently began selling what it calls Self-Defense Shield. “If you’re forced to justifiably use your gun in self-defense,” its Web site says, “Self-Defense Shield will help pay for your expert pro-2nd Amendment lawyer by reimbursing your legal-defense expenses following your acquittal — an ingenious system critical to the arsenal of any responsibly armed citizen.”

Premiums for such insurance range from around $200 to $300 per year; in general, the coverage is narrowly written and excludes cases where a gun is used to commit a crime.

Some specialized underwriters are reviewing what their policies cover when it comes to shootings, and weighing whether they should offer new types of coverage for gun owners. And as more states pass laws allowing people to bring guns to public venues — including restaurants, bars, churches and the parking lots of their workplaces — some business groups have expressed concerns that they could be held liable for shootings on their properties, which could drive up their insurance costs.

On Thursday, when Gov. Dannel P. Malloy of Connecticut outlined his proposals to reduce gun violence — which included universal background checks, a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines and a stronger assault weapons ban — he called for officials to study “whether owners of firearms should be required to carry additional insurance.”

The insurance industry is wary of some of the proposals to require gun owners to buy liability coverage — and particularly of bills, like one that was filed in New York that would require coverage for damages resulting not only from negligence but also from “willful acts.”

Robert P. Hartwig, the president of the Insurance Information Institute, said that insurance generally covered accidents and unintentional acts — not intentional or illegal ones. “Insurance will cover you if your home burns down in an electrical fire, but it will not cover you if you burn down your own house, and you cannot insure yourself for arson,” he said.

Some claims stemming from shootings have been covered by homeowners’ insurance — even by policies that said they did not cover illegal acts.

The families of the two students responsible for the 1999 killings at Columbine High School in Colorado were able to use money from their homeowners’ policies to settle a lawsuit brought by families of most of the victims. In 2001, a California court ordered an insurance company to defend a policyholder whose 16-year-old son shot and killed a friend with a Beretta handgun that he had found in his mother’s coat. But the year before, a North Carolina court ruled that an insurance company did not have to cover the expenses of a policyholder who had shot and wounded a prowler on his property.

Christopher J. Monge, an insurance agent and gun owner in Verona, Wis., recently wrote a book, “The Gun Owner’s Guide to Insurance for Concealed Carry and Self-Defense,” which he sells at gun shows. Mr. Monge said that the problem with most liability insurance is that it promises coverage only in cases of a gun owner’s negligence, or an accidental shooting — and not if the gun owner shoots someone intentionally in self-defense. “A negligent act is covered by your liability policy, but if you intentionally shoot somebody, it could be excluded,” he said.

So as more states pass self-defense laws, Mr. Monge said that he found several insurance companies that would specifically offer liability coverage in cases of self-defense, usually in the form of an “umbrella” policy that added a higher level of coverage than the routine coverage for negligence in a homeowners’ policy. An umbrella policy adds coverage for unusual, but potentially expensive, incidents.

But he opposes proposals to make liability insurance mandatory. “They’re barking up the wrong tree, if you ask me,” he said. “Ninety-nine percent of gun owners are going to be safe and not go crazy.”

States have been considering mandatory gun insurance bills for years, but no state has passed one yet, said Jon Griffin, a policy associate at the National Conference of State Legislatures. When Illinois considered a bill in 2009, the National Rifle Association wrote that it would “put firearms ownership out of reach for many law-abiding Illinoisans.” The N.R.A. endorses a policy that offers excess liability coverage — “because accidents do happen no matter how careful you are” — and another that offers “self-defense insurance.”

The recent trend of allowing guns in more public places has alarmed some business groups. When Ohio enacted a law allowing guns in bars in 2011, the Ohio Restaurant Association opposed it, writing officials that restaurant owners “expect that this law would be perceived by insurance companies as increasing the risk of injury in establishments that sell alcohol, which of course would result in increased liability insurance costs.” Owners have not reported higher premiums because of the new law, said a spokesman for the association, Jarrod A. Clabaugh, but some worry that a shooting could drive up their insurance costs.

The current debate over mandatory liability laws is being watched with interest by Nelson Lund, the Patrick Henry professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason University School of Law. Professor Lund proposed the idea of mandatory insurance in a 1987 article in the Alabama Law Review, seeing it as a form of gun control that could be consistent with the constitutional right to bear arms. But he said that he had not studied any of the current proposals, and noted that it made a great deal of difference how they are written.

“If this were done, the private insurance market would quickly and efficiently make it prohibitively expensive for people with a record of irresponsible ownership of guns to possess them legally,” he wrote in the 1987 article, “but would not impose unreasonable burdens on those who have the self-discipline to exercise their liberty in a responsible fashion.”

Military service chiefs warn budget cuts will undermine readiness

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Military service chiefs warn budget cuts will undermine readiness

By Ernesto Londoño and Lisa Rein, Published: February 21

After staying largely on the sidelines of the debate over deficit reduction, the U.S. military’s service leaders have begun painting a stark picture of the toll a congressionally mandated budget cut could take on the readiness of the world’s largest armed forces.

The $46 billion dent to the Pentagon’s fiscal 2013 budget, long considered by the brass as nothing more than a political pawn, has taken on an air of inevitability, forcing commanders across the military to plan for painful reductions and argue that American lives and livelihoods are hanging in the balance.

Injecting ominous warnings about national security into policy debates has in the past snapped elected leaders into action, but there is no sign that Republicans and the White House are close to compromising on a more measured approach to reducing the deficit. Some lawmakers and analysts have dismissed the caution as posturing by a force reluctant to shrink too much in a postwar era.

In response, the military’s service chiefs are amplifying the months-long warnings of Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta and others and providing what they have described as the specific and serious consequences of the across-the-board cuts.

Gen. Ray Odierno, the Army’s chief of staff, recently warned that the cuts may curtail training for 80 percent of ground forces, including some in the deployment pipeline, forcing him to extend the deployments of troops already in Afghanistan.

Facing a $8.6 billion shortfall, the Navy has delayed the deployment of the USS Harry Truman, leaving just one aircraft carrier instead of two in the Persian Gulf, where tensions continue with Iran. The budget crunch also will mean delays for repairs of a carrier and the construction of another.

The Air Force has warned that slashing $12.4 billion from its budget for the remainder of the fiscal year would require cutting 200,000 flying hours. That means that by May, two-thirds of the force’s pilots would “drop below acceptable level of readiness,” Air Force chief Mark Welsh told lawmakers recently.

After holding out hope for a compromise, Pentagon civilians were startled Wednesday when Panetta notified 800,000 employees that they might face a 20 percent pay cut if furloughs are implemented starting in April. Although the payroll for uniformed personnel is spared, the threat of extended deployments has confounded troops in Afghanistan.

“It’s like I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop,” said one service member there, Maj. Dustin Navarro, 31. “I’d rather have higher taxes and fewer base resources at home than have this kind of uncertainty while deployed.”

With cuts set to begin March 1, Odierno said in a speech last Friday that the Army is scrambling to find up to $24 billion in reductions for the last seven months of the fiscal year. The shortfall will affect training, he said, presenting a thankless choice between sending untrained troops to Afghanistan and keeping certain units there months beyond their exit dates. American lives are at stake, he warned.

“It is our responsibility to ensure that we never send soldiers into harm’s way that are not trained, equipped, well-led and ready for any contingency, to include war,” Odierno told lawmakers last week. “If we have to reduce the amount of training we give our pilots, they will go in with a hell of a lot less capability. That means mistakes will be made. That means we’ll have accidents. That means we’ll be more likely to be shot down by enemy fire.”

Some lawmakers have reacted apologetically to the predictions of a dangerous drop in readiness. But other lawmakers and analysts say the Pentagon’s doomsday predictions have a measure of hyperbole and might be, at least in part, an attempt to protect budgets and programs as the war in Afghanistan draws to an end.

“Across-the-board cuts are bad policy,” said Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), one of 22 Congress members from both parties who wrote to President Obama and congressional leaders arguing that defense spending should be part of any debt-reduction deal. “At the end of the day, if cuts are going to be made, the military cannot be spared.”

Anthony Shaffer, a senior fellow at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies, said he was skeptical of the dire predictions about readiness.

“A lot of us who look at this hard say it’s disingenuous to say, ‘We can’t deploy the Truman because the money’s not there,’ ” said Shaffer, a former Defense Intelligence Agency official. “This is all political theater. It’s being prompted by those in the Pentagon who do not want to make hard choices and cut back.”

Among the most striking examples in a country where most people pledge steadfast support for the troops, Odierno warned that some might have to do without air conditioning later in the year at bases nationwide. But the cuts also probably would have consequences for U.S. forces overseas — Panetta planned to warn NATO defense chiefs during a two-day meeting that began Thursday in Brussels that the belt-tightening could impair the United States’ ability to pay its bills to the alliance and to participate in alliance programs.

Few members meet NATO’s defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product. In recent weeks, the Obama administration has warned allies with their own economic problems, including NATO stalwarts such as Britain and France, that significant cuts would undermine its arguments to Congress on the need to support defense spending.

“What is particularly tragic to me is that sequestration is not the result of an economic recession or emergency,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter told the House Armed Services Committee last week, using the term for the automatic cuts. “It’s not in reaction to a more peaceful world. All this is purely the collateral damage of political gridlock.”

Pentagon contractors are making preemptive moves that could affect thousands of employees. BAE Systems Ship Repair, a major defense contractor, issued layoff warnings this week to 3,500 shipyard workers — including 1,600 in Virginia’s Hampton Roads area — who could lose their jobs if the Navy puts ship maintenance on hold. The Navy told BAE that it plans to cancel or defer maintenance and upgrades on 13 destroyers and cruisers the company is contracted to work on.

“We regret the anxiety [this] causes our employees and their families,” BAE Systems President Bill Clifford said in the letter that warned of layoffs.

The potential cuts are creating anxiety in Hampton Roads, where 40,000 people work in shipbuilding and repair.

“Once these availabilities are missed, they can’t be made up,” said Tom Taylor, the owner of MF&B Marine in Chesapeake, a small ship-repair company in Hampton Roads, referring to contracts.

Taylor said he fears he might have to lay off some of his 46 employees as he waits to see whether the Navy will lock in plans to cancel or delay billions of dollars more in ship maintenance and repairs.

“There’s no HR department I can send them to,” he said. “I’ve got to look them in the face and tell them they’re out of a job. If we’re going to have a smaller defense, fine, but this is nothing but politics. How can a ship go to sea without its capability?”

Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

U.S. drone strikes up sharply in Afghanistan

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U.S. drone strikes up sharply in Afghanistan

By Shashank Bengali and David S. Cloud, Los Angeles Times

February 21, 2013, 3:41 p.m.

KABUL, Afghanistan — One morning recently, a teenager named Bacha Zarina was collecting firewood on her family's small farm in eastern Afghanistan. About 30 yards away, as family members recall, two Taliban commanders stood outside a house.

A missile screamed down from the sky, killing the two men instantly. Two chunks of shrapnel flew at Bacha Zarina and lodged in her left side.

Her family raced her to the nearest hospital, a half-hour's drive away, but she died en route, an accidental victim of the rapidly escalating U.S.-led campaign of drone strikes in Afghanistan. She was 14 or 15 years old.

The U.S. military launched 506 strikes from unmanned aircraft in Afghanistan last year, according to Pentagon data, a 72% increase from 2011 and a sign that American commanders may begin to rely more heavily on remote-controlled air power to kill Taliban insurgents as they reduce the number of troops on the ground.

Though drone strikes represented a fraction of all U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan last year, their use is on the rise even as American troops have pulled back from ground and air operations and pushed Afghan soldiers and police into the lead. In 2011, drone strikes accounted for 5% of U.S. air attacks in Afghanistan; in 2012, the figure rose to 12%.

Military spokesmen in Kabul and at the Pentagon declined to explain the increase. But officers familiar with the operation said it was due in part to the growing number of armed Reaper and Predator drones in Afghanistan and better availability of live video feeds beamed directly to troops on the ground.

The increase has coincided with a shift by the Obama administration toward a new strategy in Afghanistan that relies on a smaller military footprint to go after the Taliban and remaining Al Qaeda fighters.

The use of armed drones is likely to accelerate as most of the 66,000 U.S. troops in the country are due to withdraw by the end of 2014. The remotely piloted long-range aircraft, which kill targets with virtually no risk to American lives, carry an unmistakable attraction for military commanders.

"With fewer troops, and even with fewer manned aircraft flying overhead, it's harder to get traditional support in combat missions," said Joshua Foust, a Washington-based analyst who has advised the U.S. military in Afghanistan. "Drones provide a good way to do that without importing a bunch of pilots and the support infrastructure they'd need to remain based there."

The strategy isn't without risk: Drone strikes can kill civilians, as underscored by the Sept. 23 incident that claimed Bacha Zarina's life.

After Marine Gen. John R. Allen, the former coalition commander, issued an order limiting airstrikes in populated areas last year, U.S. and NATO forces reduced civilian casualties in air attacks by 42% in 2012, according to United Nations figures.

But after an airstrike this month that reportedly killed 10 civilians in addition to four Taliban leaders, Afghan President Hamid Karzai banned his forces from requesting coalition airstrikes in residential areas, a decree that also would apply to drones.

Defenders of drones say they are more accurate and less prone to causing civilian casualties than manned aircraft, because they can watch a potential target longer and often use smaller munitions.

When civilians are inadvertently killed, it is sometimes because they are close to a location where an airstrike is carried out, one U.S. officer said. But there also are instances when troops on the ground mistakenly call for an airstrike against a target where only civilians are present.

The U.S. military has acknowledged multiple times that it has accidentally killed civilians in drone strikes, including in 2010 when 24 Afghans were killed in Oruzgan province after being mistaken for insurgents, based on drone camera images. They were later determined to be noncombatants.

Last year, five coalition drone strikes killed 16 civilians and injured three, according to the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, which documented just one such incident in 2011. It wasn't immediately clear whether those were strikes from U.S. drones; Britain's Royal Air Force also flies armed Reaper drones in Afghanistan, although the vast majority of the coalition's unmanned aircraft belong to the U.S.

Many of the recent strikes have hit eastern Afghanistan, where Taliban insurgents retain control of many villages. In Marawara district of Kunar province, where Bacha Zarina lived, the two Taliban commanders killed in the Sept. 23 strike led a group of hard-line fighters who had banned cigarettes and shaving for men, littered the area with roadside bombs, and threatened to kill Afghans who worked for the U.S. military at an outpost an hour's drive away, villagers said.

Bacha Zarina's older brother Saidaa, who, like many Afghans, has just one name, said in a telephone interview that the U.S. military at first denied that the airstrike had killed a civilian, citing the accuracy of drones. After Afghan officials vouched for the family's story, the Americans paid Bacha Zarina's father about $2,000 in compensation.

"Do mistakes happen? Yes," said the U.S. officer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss drone operations. "But they also happen with an F-16, maybe more so."

Cmdr. Bill Speaks, a Pentagon spokesman, said, "We have always made safeguarding civilians a top priority in all operations. These strict guidelines apply to all of our weapons platforms."

The Obama administration has come under increasing pressure this month from Congress to disclose details and legal underpinnings for drone strikes, especially a 2011 attack that killed Anwar Awlaki, an American citizen and a leader of the group Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

On Tuesday, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said U.S. drone strikes worldwide had killed 4,700 people, the first public estimate of the death toll by a U.S. official since the attacks began early in the George W. Bush administration.

"Sometimes you hit innocent people, and I hate that, but we're at war, and we've taken out some very senior members of Al Qaeda," Graham told the Easley Rotary Club in South Carolina, according to news reports.

The increase in Afghan drone strikes also has coincided with a greater U.S. military focus in the region on deterring Iran, which has put more demands on the Navy fighters flying off two U.S. aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea. In the past, one of the carriers had focused on air operations over Afghanistan.

The U.S. military drone strikes in Afghanistan are separate from the CIA drone campaigns against suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan and Yemen. In Afghanistan, analysts say, drones often are used to back up ground forces or for killing insurgents who are spotted trying to plant roadside bombs.

But another strike last year demonstrated that U.S. forces are also using drones for targeted killings, much as the CIA is in Pakistan and Yemen.

In late July, according to officials in the eastern province of Nuristan, a teacher and another Afghan civilian were traveling in a sport utility vehicle along a rocky road toward the Taliban-held village of Waygal. Three senior Taliban leaders and a junior operative stopped the car and demanded a ride, said Shamsuddin Aselzai, the head of the provincial council, who is from that village.

Minutes later, Aselzai said, a drone strike destroyed the SUV, killing the three Taliban leaders and the teacher, Abdul Qayum, a 48-year-old father of four. The other civilian and the junior Talib were injured but survived.

Since then, Taliban leaders in Waygal have gone almost into hiding, Aselzai said, fearful of the next drone attack.

"They are afraid, otherwise they wouldn't hide even for a second," Aselzai said by phone. He called Qayum's death a tragedy and a mistake, but said the drone strikes were "very useful."

"The Taliban are destroying our country," he said, "and we need to take some serious steps."

shashank.bengali@latimes.com

david.cloud@latimes.com

Bengali reported from Kabul and Cloud from Washington. Special correspondent Hashmat Baktash in Kabul contributed to this report.

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