Amnesty International took their video camera to the street and asked Americans about torture, indefinite detention, impunity for war crimes and enemy combatants. Their responses were illuminating -- check them out here:

Isn't it funny that Democrats keep showing up on "no fly" lists? Does TSA think Democrats are terrorists by definition?

Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a Democrat who has been a critic of the no-fly list, said her staff had booked her a one-way ticket from Boise, Idaho, to Cincinnati through Denver. But they were prevented from printing her boarding pass online and at an airport kiosk.

Sanchez said she was instructed to check in with a United employee, who told her she was on the terrorist watch list.

The Wall St. Journal (free link) today analyzes how the war on terror affects voters.

The latest research shows that because such violent political acts are brutal reminders of death, they make conservatives, but not liberals, more hostile toward those perceived as different, and more supportive of extreme military policies, according to a study in April in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin.

Although some voters would feel betrayed by incumbents who failed to protect them, researchers say, these days that trend would more likely be swamped by a surge toward candidates perceived as hawks on national security.

This says to me there will be another October surprise that results in elevating the terror threat. As I've said many times before, the goal of this Administration is to use the war on terror to strike fear in the heart of every American. Fear that will translate into votes. This time around, with all their current problems, they need a doozie. Don't put it past them.

by TChris

Even as the president assures us that Democrats can't be trusted to conduct the war against terror, his administration intends to do nothing to assure that Luis Posada Carriles is prosecuted for the role he allegedly played in causing an explosion that killed all 73 people aboard a Cubana Airlines flight in 1976. Posada was arrested last year for illegal entry into the United States, and is being held in an El Paso detention center. Venezuela and Cuba are seeking his extradition, but the Bush adminstration wants to deport him to a country that will likely set him free.

His case presents a quandary for the Bush administration, at least in part because Mr. Posada is a former C.I.A. operative and United States Army officer who directed his wrath at a government that Washington has long opposed.

In Bush's world, some accused terrorists deserve to be held without trial forever, while others enjoy a favored status. The sister of a passenger on the ill-fated Cubana Airlines flight wonders why the United States is following a double standard.

"If this were a plane full of Americans, it would have been a different story."

by TChris

Do you deserve to be hassled every time you try to board a plane, just because your name is John Williams? If you share a name with someone Homeland Security has added to its terrorist watch list, you probably dread going to an airport or encountering a customs agent or police officer.

Thousands of people [including more than 30,000 airline passengers] have been mistakenly linked to names on terrorist watch lists when they crossed the border, boarded commercial airliners or were stopped for traffic violations, a government report said Friday. ... The list also contains such generic names as Gary Smith, John Williams and Robert Johnson. When "60 Minutes" spoke with 12 people named Robert Johnson, it reported, all said that they are detained almost every time they fly.

Saddam Hussein is among the 44,000 names on the list because Homeland Security apparently is unaware that he's in custody. Bizarrely, names of some terrorists have been deliberately omitted from the list.

by TChris

Doesn't this sound like "cut and run" and "appeasement"?

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) said Monday that the war against Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan could never be won militarily, and he urged support for efforts to bring "people who call themselves Taliban" into the government.

If Frist thinks a war can't be won militarily, does that make him a Defeatican? If he wants to make peace with the Taliban -- the terrorists who, we're repeatedly told, are anxious to kill Americans -- does that mean he's "coddling terrorists"? Did Frist forget all the Republican talking points during his trip overseas?

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

So I have been following this story:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.

It is incomprehensible, and now we know it is true:

A review of White House records has determined that George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, did brief Condoleezza Rice and other top officials on July 10, 2001, about the looming threat from Al Qaeda, a State Department spokesman said Monday.

Path to 9/11? Rewrite!!

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

UPDATE: Meeting was independently reported in a 2002 Time article, H/T commenter Croatoan, see extended update below.

Now Secretary of State and then National Security Advisor Condi Rice can't believe how incompetent she is and was:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she cannot recall then-CIA chief George Tenet warning her of an impending al-Qaida attack in the United States, as a new book claims he did two months before the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. "What I am quite certain of is that I would remember if I was told, as this account apparently says, that there was about to be an attack in the United States, and the idea that I would somehow have ignored that I find incomprehensible," Rice said.

It is incomprehensible. And sadly, completely believable. Remember the title of the August 6, 2001 PDB?

Bin Laden Determined to Strike in the US

Condi ignored that too. More on the flip.

by TChris

This is what happened when "Gordon R. England, the acting deputy secretary of defense, and Philip D. Zelikow, the counselor of the State Department, urged the administration to seek Congressional approval for its detention policies":

[The recommendation] so angered Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that his aides gathered up copies of the document and had at least some of them shredded.

"It was not in step with the secretary of defense or the president," said one Defense Department official who, like many others, would discuss the internal deliberations only on condition of anonymity. "It was clear that Rumsfeld was very unhappy."

England and Zelikow also wanted the administration to obey the Geneva Conventions. Nothing ticks off Rumsfeld like these crazy liberal notions of following the law or respecting the other branches of government.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

John Aravosis notes E&P's essential post on the explosive revelation in Woodward's new book:

Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser. " For months," Woodward writes, "Tenet had been pressing Rice to set a clear counterterrorism policy... that would give the CIA stronger authority to conduct covert action against bin Laden.... Tenet and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.

"Tenet had been having difficulty getting traction on an immediate bin Laden action plan, in part because Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld had questioned all the intelligence, asking: Could it all be a grand deception? "

. . . The result? "Tenet and Black felt they were not getting though to Rice. She was polite, but they felt the brush-off . President Bush had said he didn't want to swat at flies." "Tenet left the meeting feeling frustrated. Though Rice had given them a fair hearing, no immediate action meant great risk. Black felt the decision to just keep planning was a sustained policy failure. Rice and the Bush team had been in hibernation too long....

In the pants on fire department, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice says she doesn't recall seeing this memo from Richard Clarke in January, 2001, describing the severity of the al-Qaeda threat.

In it, Clarke advocates for a principal level review of Al Qaeda threat, calling Al Qaeda "not some narrow, little terrorist issue" but a "transnational challenge."

Update: Hillary weighs in on Condi issue.

(Guest Post by Big Tent Democrat)

The scramble on the Right in the wake of the NIE Report that the Iraq Debacle has worsened the terrorism situation has led to some very strange contortions.

Michelle Malkin says:

If our intelligence agencies are laboring under the moonbat illusion that Muslim hatred of the infidel West didn't really start bubbling until the year 2003, we are really in deep, deep doo-doo.

So no "emboldening" by the Iraq Debacle says The Wild One. But James Joyner says:

[I]t's quite likely that an American withdrawal from Iraq without accomplishing the barest part of our mission-a reasonably stable, democratic society-would embolden the jihadists.

I see. So the Iraq Debacle could not possibly have embolden the terrorists (Malkin) but withdrawing from Iraq will embolden the terrorists (Joyner). This makes a much sense as the "safer but not safe" nonsense from Bush.