At 4:30 pm ET, Attorney General Eric Holder will explain and attempt to legally justify the U.S. policy on targeted killings in a speech at Northwestern University in Chicago. He will also discuss the revamped military commission trials and successes of federal terror prosecutions.

Update: Prepared remarks here.

As someone who supported American action in Afghanistan, it has become time for me to render a mea culpa - I was wrong. The people in charge of the action are simply not competent. Consider the Koran burning incident in Bagram:

The holy books and texts came from the library in the detention center in Parwan, where Americans house people suspected of being insurgents, including many of those captured during night raids. A military official said detainees had been using the books to communicate with each other and potentially incite extremist activity.

(Emphasis supplied.) It seems that for incitement of extremist activity, Americans are the champions. How in Gawd's name could this have happened? And this is not an isolated incident. The NATO commander General James Allen said:

The New York Times has an article about the unfair trial of a Palestinian proceeding through Israel's military court system. It involves a juvenile who was arrested and provided information about a neighbor. The neighbor was then arrested and charged. What's striking, although not mentioned, is how much the Israeli system is like ours. I don't see how anyone can complain about one and not the other. Here are the things the article portrays as unfair, and each one is something that has occurred or is standard in our treatment of Guantanamo inmates and military commission trials:

It begins with a 14 year old named Islam who was arrested at home one night:

• He was blindfolded, handcuffed and whisked away in a jeep.
• After he was pulled from his home at night, Islam was taken to a nearby army base where, his lawyer said, he was left out in the cold for hours. In the morning, he was taken to the Israeli police for interrogation.
• The young man was interrogated and pressed to inform on his relatives, neighbors and friends.

[More...]

Remember Operation Pipeline from the '90's and the DEA's ridiculous list of what cops should look for when making traffic stops? On the list were things like "fast food wrappers" in the vehicle, too much luggage, not enough luggage. (Law review article on it here, on p. 748.) It was a blueprint resulting in racial profiling.

Now the FBI has come up with a list of what ordinary citizens should look for and report when patronizing an internet cafe. It's called Communities Against Terrorism: Potential Indicators of Terrorist Activities Related to Internet Cafe. Among the suspicious indicators:

• attempts to shield the screen from view of
  others
• Always pay cash
• Signs onto Comcast, AOL or another residential-based internet provider

It's not just internet cafes. The FBI has distributed flyers for 25 types of businesses. You can view them all here.

Bump: In an interview on "60 Minutes" tonight, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta criticizes Pakistan for arresting Shakil Afridi, the doctor that the CIA asked to run a fake vaccine program in hopes of getting DNA to confirm Osama bin Laden's presence at the Abbottabad compound. An inquiry commission in Pakistan has since recommended that Dr. Afridi be charged with high treason. Panetta says Pakistan should release Afridi:

“For them to take this kind of action against somebody who was helping to go after terrorism, I just think is a real mistake on their part.

[More...]

At the Washington Post: A long report on the Obama Administration's "global drone killing apparatus."

In the space of three years, the administration has built an extensive apparatus for using drones to carry out targeted killings of suspected terrorists and stealth surveillance of other adversaries. The apparatus involves dozens of secret facilities, including two operational hubs on the East Coast, virtual Air Force cockpits in the Southwest and clandestine bases in at least six countries on two continents.

....The rapid expansion of the drone program has blurred long-standing boundaries between the CIA and the military. Lethal operations are increasingly assembled a la carte, piecing together personnel and equipment in ways that allow the White House to toggle between separate legal authorities that govern the use of lethal force.

It's also a billion dollar industry that has "created blind spots in congressional oversight."

Bump and Update: On Frontline tonight, don't miss A Perfect Terrorist, about former DEA informant David Coleman Headley, aka Daood Giliani, who pleaded guilty in Chicago in exchange for a life sentence for his role in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

FRONTLINE and ProPublica investigate the mysterious circumstances behind David Headley’s rise from heroin dealer and U.S. government informant to master plotter of the 2008 attack on Mumbai.

By most accounts except its own, the DEA turned Headley from a drug informant into a terror informant. And failed to notice he had joined the terrorists for real. [More..]

Law Professor David Cole in the New York Times Review of Books writes about the secret memo of authorizing the extra-judicial, targeted killing of American citizens, Anwar al-Awlaki and drone attacks. Shorter version: We need established defined rules and transparency.

In a democracy the state’s power to take the lives of its own citizens, and indeed of any human being, must be subject to democratic deliberation and debate. War of course necessarily involves killing, but it is essential that the state’s power to kill be clearly defined and stated in public—particularly when the definition of the enemy and the lines demarcating war and peace are as murky as they are in the current conflict.

Secret memos, with or without leaked accounts to The New York Times, are no substitute for legal or democratic process. As long as the Obama administration insists on the power to kill the people it was elected to represent—and to do so in secret, on the basis of secret legal memos—can we really claim that we live in a democracy ruled by law?

[More...]

Do any of these Republicans know what they are talking about? For whatever reason, there's another Republican debate tonight. Newt Gingrich falsely claimed Anwar al-Awlaki was convicted. When the moderator challenged him on it, he said something like "well he was convicted by a military report given to the President." When challenged that's not what the law means by conviction, he said he's an enemy combatent so that's exactly what it means.

I'd bet he wasn't paying attention and confused al-Awlaki with someone else (a brain lapse), and instead of admitting it, tried to swim out of it. He sank.

The Patriot Act was signed into law 10 years ago today by then President George W. Bush. We've written 570 posts on the Patriot Act. The bottom line is it didn't make us safer, only less free.

Check out the ACLU's illustration of the law over the past decade.
And its report on the sections that most need revision.

The U.S. is warning Americans in Kenya a terror attack may be imminent.

The embassy in a note to U.S. citizens living in or visiting Kenya said on Saturday that reprisal attacks could be directed at "prominent Kenyan facilities and areas where foreigners are known to congregate, such as malls and night clubs."

Kenya launched an attack on al Shabaab militants in Somalia blaming them for recent kidnappings in Nairobi. Al-Shabaab said they didn't do it.

The rebels have warned Nairobi to withdraw from its southern strongholds or risk bringing the "flames of war" into Kenya.

President Barack Obama today said the Iraq War is over and American troops will be leaving.

"After nearly 9 years, America's war in Iraq will be over," said Mr. Obama, who said the last American troops will depart the country "with their heads held high, proud of their success, and knowing that the american people stand united in our support for our troops" by January 1st. ..."Our troops are finally coming home,"

Iraq, he said, will now be our equal.

"it will be a normal relationship between sovereign nations, an equal partnership based on mutual interests and mutual respect."