Benghazi will be back in the news this week, as a U.S. House committee will hold more hearings on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. Testimony by State Department whistleblowers is expected to contradict some earlier accounts by Obama administration officials. For example, Gregory Hicks, the deputy The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, maintains that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly to Benghazi during the attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa, CBS News reported.
The bombings in Boston and the explosion at the fertilizer plant in West, Texas, again showed Americans the bravery and dedication of law enforcement and other first responders. Boston police and medical personnel rushed to the bomb site to aid victims. Then local and federal law enforcement worked nonstop to identify and apprehend those responsible. In Texas, firefighters and other emergency responders gave their lives trying to prevent the explosion. Other acts of heroism occur every day in this country but often go unnoticed.
Law enforcement officials still haven’t apprehended Suspect No. 2 in the Boston Marathon bombings, reported as Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. They have parts of Watertown, Mass., and other areas blocked off. His brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, was killed after a shoot-out with police. On Thursday night the brothers reportedly were involved in robbing a convenience store, then shot and killed an MIT police officer and wounded another police officer. It’s a tense day for a city that has suffered greatly.
Is there more Congress can do to respond to the Boston Marathon bombings? “I don’t think so,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday, while noting that law enforcement officials “are going to have all the resources they need.” Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, predicted that cuts to police departments will become a big issue in the months ahead, and suggested the U.S. can better reallocate resources to reflect modern warfare. “Last month, the last M1 tank departed Europe for the first time since D-Day,” Pompeo told Politico. “We probably should’ve done that 10 years ago – we’re slow to change to the evolving threats.”
FBI officials don’t know who was behind Monday’s bombings at the Boston Marathon. They have made an appeal for amateur video and photos that might yield clues to the attack, which killed three people and wounded more than 170. “We will go to the ends of the Earth to identify the subject or subjects who are responsible for this despicable crime, and we will do everything we can to bring them to justice,” said Richard DesLauriers of the FBI. Go get them.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., got a lot of attention Wednesday for mounting an honest-to-God filibuster of President Obama’s nominee for CIA director, John Brennan. The nation’s political class marveled at his real-life Mr. Smith act. But it’s worth taking a moment to consider the substance of Paul’s objection. The libertarian and son of former presidential candidate Ron Paul has plenty of views that are far outside the mainstream, but in this case he zeroed in on an issue all Americans should find uncomfortable: Would it be legal for the U.S. government to use a drone strike to kill an American citizen on American soil? In the end, the Obama administration felt compelled to respond, and Thursday, Attorney General Eric Holder sent Paul a letter assuring him that the president does not “have the authority to use a weaponized drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on American soil.” That was good enough for Paul to drop his objection to Brennan’s nomination, which was approved by the Senate, but it still leaves open plenty of questions about the use of drones. – Baltimore Sun
Give Rand Paul credit for theatrical timing. As a snowstorm descended on Washington, D.C., the Kentucky Republican’s old-fashioned filibuster Wednesday filled the attention void on Twitter and cable TV. If only his reasoning matched the showmanship. The U.S. government cannot randomly target American citizens on U.S. soil or anywhere else. What it can do under the laws of war is target an “enemy combatant” anywhere at anytime, including on U.S. soil. This includes a U.S. citizen who is also an enemy combatant. The country needs more senators who care about liberty, but if Paul wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about. – Wall Street Journal
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., helped relieve Sen. Rand Paul (in photo), R-Ky., during his nearly 13-hour filibuster this week against John Brennan’s nomination as CIA director. The senators were challenging whether the United States could conduct drone strikes against U.S. citizens on American soil (which isn’t happening). Moran pondered how far such a policy might extend. “Most Americans would find it repulsive, unconstitutional, a terrible violation of public duty if a military officer on the streets of Wichita, Kan., pulled a gun and shot an American citizen,” Moran said on the Senate floor. “And, really, is that not the logical extension of the idea that a drone strike from above results in the death of a U.S. citizen without due process?” Others weren’t impressed by the filibuster. A Wall Street Journal editorial said that if Paul “wants to be taken seriously he needs to do more than pull political stunts that fire up impressionable libertarian kids in their college dorms. He needs to know what he’s talking about.” UPDATE: Attorney General Eric Holder sent Paul a letter Thursday assuring him that the president doesn’t have authority to use a drone to kill an American not engaged in combat on U.S. soil. Paul said he was happy with the answer.
Former Defense Secretary and CIA chief Robert Gates supports having a special court review drone strikes against Americans linked to al-Qaida. “I think that the rules and the practices that the Obama administration has followed are quite stringent and are not being abused,” the Wichita native said. “But who is to say about a future president?”
Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, has been appointed to the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. “I have long held great faith in our intelligence services, and I am excited at the prospect of working with them to ensure Americans’ national security,” Pompeo said in a statement. One of the issues that Pompeo needs to review is the Obama administration’s policy on using drones to kill suspected terrorists, including American citizens living abroad. An Eagle editorial notes that there are many questions about which suspects meet the criteria and when the policy can apply.
“I’m amazed that so few Americans – most notably, so few liberals – have protested President Obama’s secretive remote-control assassination program,” columnist Dick Polman wrote. “Drones have killed 3,000 people in Yemen and Pakistan, including collateral-damage civilians, but the actual numbers are secret. So is the process. We don’t know anything about the rules of engagement, how people wind up on Obama’s hit list, who reviews the evidence, and what criteria are applied to that evidence.”
The chief of the U.S. State Department’s security service, one of his deputies and an official from the agency’s Middle East bureau have resigned, Associated Press reported. The resignations follow the release Tuesday of a report by the Accountability Review Board that found “systematic failures” at the State Department contributed to security lapses in the Sept. 11 attacks in Libya that killed Ambassador Chris Stevens (in photo) and three other Americans.
The new movie “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the killing of Osama bin Laden (in photo), could set President Obama up for some criticism, Politico reported. The movie includes a news clip of Obama expressing his opposition to torture, while it portrays how waterboarding played a role in tracking down bin Laden. The movie also highlights how the Obama administration and defense officials took nine months to become convinced that bin Laden was at the compound in Pakistan, much to the frustration of the main CIA analyst in the film.
The shocking resignation of CIA Director David Petraeus over a sex scandal shouldn’t diminish his remarkable military record, including how he used his time in charge of the U.S. Army’s Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth to craft the counterinsurgency strategy that later helped turn around the Iraq War. President Bush gave him command of U.S. forces in Iraq in 2007, and “Petraeus’ new counterinsurgency approach got American soldiers out of their massive bases in Iraq and into Iraqi neighborhoods,” noted CNN national security analyst Peter Bergen. He predicted that “historians will likely judge David Petraeus to be the most effective American military commander since Eisenhower.” But the timing of the resignation – after President Obama’s re-election, but before Petraeus was due to testify to Congress on the Benghazi attack – is fueling suspicions that the Petraeus affair is about more than an affair. Among the questions, noted Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin: “Why was the White House and/or congressional members charged with national-security oversight not alerted before the election?” And “why did Petraeus, when briefing Congress on Sept. 14, purportedly push the bogus cover story on Benghazi (i.e., it was about a spontaneous demonstration over the anti-Muslim video) when his agency had information within two hours that it was a terrorist attack?”
U.S. and Pakistani officials have condemned the shooting this week of Malala Yousafzai, the 14-year-old Pakistani who was shot in the head and neck while riding home on a school bus. But speaking out after an atrocious act is not enough, former first lady Laura Bush wrote in the Washington Post. “We must speak up before these acts occur, work to ensure that they do not happen again, and keep our courage to continue to resist the ongoing cruelty and barbarism of the Taliban,” Bush wrote. “Malala Yousafzai refused to look the other way. We owe it to her courage and sacrifice to do the same.”
“The purpose of Wednesday’s hearing of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee was to examine security lapses that led to the killing in Benghazi last month of the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three others. But in doing so, the lawmakers reminded us why ‘congressional intelligence’ is an oxymoron,” wrote Dana Milbank of the Washington Post. “Through their outbursts, cryptic language and boneheaded questioning of State Department officials, the committee members left little doubt that one of the two compounds at which the Americans were killed, described by the administration as a ‘consulate’ and a nearby ‘annex,’ was a CIA base. They did this, helpfully, in a televised public hearing.”
The $110,000 proposed for a fourth security checkpoint lane at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport promises to be money well-spent in the short term, even with a new $100 million terminal planned for the long term. It’s unacceptably poor customer service that some fliers are waiting more than 30 minutes to get through security, and worse that some are missing flights. The Wichita City Council, which will consider the fourth checkpoint lane at today’s meeting, should view the expenditure (of money left over from a 2011 airport renovation project) as necessary to serve both area businesses and Mid-Continent’s reputation. And it seems urgent, as airport officials anticipate an immediate increase in passenger traffic of more than 10 percent in Southwest Airlines’ first year serving Mid-Continent.
Last week’s U.S. drone strike, which killed al-Qaida’s No. 2 leader at a house in northern Pakistan, was by any measure a step forward in the war on terrorism. The attack also added a bit more fuel to the debate over the morality and effectiveness of such remote-control warfare. What’s missing from the arguments, though, is a viable alternative. Drones have been a remarkably effective way to hunt down terrorist leaders and keep others cowering. Six top al-Qaida leaders have been killed in Pakistan and Yemen in the past year. That success has generated bipartisan support and 83 percent public approval in the U.S. for the program. There are valid concerns about civilian casualties, rules of engagement and more. For the time being, though, the U.S. continues to confront a nonstate enemy bent on plotting terror attacks inside America. Unless someone comes up with a better way to protect the nation, the drone strikes should continue, at least until Osama bin Laden’s successor, Ayman al-Zawahri (in photo), is eliminated and al-Qaida is out of business. – USA Today
When our nation violates the law in the name of our national security, it gives propaganda tools to our enemies and alienates our allies. That is why the government’s targeted killing program, which has resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths, is both unlawful and dangerous. Today our government is killing people in countries in which the United States is not at war. It reportedly adds suspected terrorists – including U.S. citizens – to “kill lists” for months at a time, which by definition cannot be limited to genuinely imminent threats. When mistakes are made, our nation refuses to acknowledge them and does not compensate victims. Russia, China or Iran may claim tomorrow, as our government does today, the power to declare individuals enemies of the state and kill them far from any battlefield, based on secret legal criteria, secret evidence and a secret process. That is the world we are unleashing unless the program is stopped. – Hina Shamsi, American Civil Liberties Union’s National Security Project, in USA Today
Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, will newly represent Manhattan as a result of the federal judges’ redistricting, presumably making him the go-to congressman on matters pertaining to the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility planned for the city. But last week he voted against a Department of Homeland Security appropriations measure that included $75 million for NBAF’s construction. In a statement, Huelskamp said he has been supportive of NBAF but that “when the DHS appropriations bill came to the floor last week, I joined others in the Kansas House delegation in speaking and voting against numerous Democrat defunding amendments that would create further delays for the NBAF project. Fortunately, none of those amendments was adopted. However, because of the inclusion of $5 billion in unpaid-for disaster funding, I did vote against the entire $45 billion appropriations bill.” The president of the Manhattan Area Chamber of Commerce told the Manhattan Mercury that Huelskamp is “going to have to demonstrate leadership on the issue.”
Nuclear bombs and other weapons of mass destruction are hard to acquire. As he highlighted David Ignatius’ “Bloodmoney: A Novel of Espionage,” the Atlantic’s Steve Clemons asked a worrisome question: What happens when America’s enemies get drones? “While the U.S. is today preparing to further expand its drone force and as of late arm Italian drones, Iran is now trying to develop its own drones. So too it seems China and Russia,” Clemons wrote. “The question that President Obama, who has admitted direct, routinized involvement in creating the drone ‘kill list,’ should ponder is what will happen as the barriers to entry on drone technology fall enough so that an adversary’s drones can be deployed against U.S. and allied forces and interests.”
As President Obama prepared to welcome President Bush back to the White House for today’s unveiling of portraits of the former president and first lady, columnist Eleanor Clift was among those struck by how closely Obama has mirrored his predecessor on national security issues. “Bush, perhaps more than any recent president, must feel vindicated by the policies that Obama has chosen to pursue, many of them forged in the post-9/11 era under Bush’s leadership,” Clift wrote. She also said the reporting “by Newsweek and the New York Times on how Obama personally signs off on a ‘kill list’ of al-Qaida terrorists prepared by the CIA and the Pentagon is chillingly reminiscent of the deck of playing cards that Bush used to keep score of top terrorist targets when he was in the Oval Office.”
The intelligence complex at McConnell Air Force Base is scheduled to be named this morning in honor of Robert Gates, former defense secretary and CIA director. It’s fitting that a native Wichitan who has played such a crucial role in the nation’s defense and intelligence gathering for four decades will have a permanent tribute to his service in his hometown. It’s what goes on within the complex that will be the real tribute, of course – the handling by the Kansas Air National Guard’s 184th Intelligence Wing of intelligence collected by manned and unmanned aircraft around the globe.
With Capitol Hill so focused on spending less, proponents of the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility slated for Manhattan need to be aggressive about securing the lab’s funding. So it was encouraging to see $75 million for NBAF garner bipartisan support on the House Appropriations Committee, which includes Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park. The threat of bioterrorism isn’t going to ease while the federal government rights its finances. As Yoder said in a statement, “Numerous studies have confirmed Kansas is the safest location for a biosafety Level 4 facility, and the research completed in Manhattan will ensure our nation remains safe from bioterrorism.”
Because it’s a “she-said-they-said” incident, it’s hard to know exactly what happened earlier this month when Michelle Brademeyer’s 4-year-old daughter went through the Transportation Security Administration checkpoint at Wichita Mid-Continent Airport. As described by Brademeyer on Facebook and recounted widely via media, the encounter cast the TSA agents as insensitive at best and overzealous at worst. Safeguarding the airplanes from terrorism shouldn’t necessitate terrifying 4-year-olds. But the stakes are high and TSA’s vigilance has worked, making it hard to argue for less scrutiny. In a SurveyUSA poll, co-sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, just 29 percent of Kansans surveyed said the screening was too thorough, while 62 percent said they thought relaxing security would make sabotage easier.
President Obama’s decision to speed up visa processing for low-risk Chinese and Brazilian travelers will give the recovering U.S. economy a welcome jolt of new energy this summer and beyond. The president’s executive order, which he announced at Walt Disney World earlier this year, is projected to create 1.3 million jobs and produce more than $860 billion in economic activity. From 2000 to 2010, the U.S. experienced a lost decade when it came to attracting international visitors to our country. The president’s new initiative can help put the United States back on top as the world’s No. 1 destination. Americans should rest assured that speeding up our tourist turnstiles does not mean relaxing post-Sept. 11 security measures. The fact is that our surveillance and security systems, and the technology that buttresses them, have become increasingly sophisticated over the past decade. Making the entry process more efficient for highly trusted travelers allows our nation’s security force to concentrate on more likely suspects and expands its overall effectiveness. – Roger Dow, U.S. Travel Association
President Obama’s willingness to sacrifice national security to raise his public approval rating was glaringly evident when he flew to Walt Disney World to tout looser visa restrictions for Brazilian and Chinese visitors to the United States. While the leaders of Brazil and China often take anti-U.S. positions on the world stage, Obama claimed the move would help the slumping travel industry by bringing millions of new free-spenders into the country without weakening national security. But the Government Accountability Office conceded last year that there still is no effective way to track the more than 70 million foreign visitors who annually come to these shores on tourist and other short-term visas. The GAO also has estimated that half of the nation’s illegal aliens are people who have overstayed their visas. – Amy Ridenour, National Center for Public Policy Research
Many Americans agree with global observers about the unbecoming conduct of the four Marines caught on video urinating on the dead bodies of Taliban fighters. There is some important context to consider, though, not only of the long, scary and bloody war the men were fighting but of a broader confusing war on terrorism, noted author Sebastian Junger in the Washington Post: “The Internet and the news media are filled with self-important men and women referring to our enemies as animals that deserve little legal or moral consideration. We have sent enemy fighters to countries like Syria and Libya to be tortured by the very regimes that we have recently condemned for engaging in war crimes and torture. They have been tortured into confessing their crimes and then locked up indefinitely without trial because their confessions – achieved through torture – will not stand up in court. For the past 10 years, American children have absorbed these moral contradictions, and now they are fighting our wars. The video doesn’t surprise me, but it makes me incredibly sad – not just for them, but also for us. We may prosecute these men for desecrating the dead while maintaining that it is OK to torture the living.”
Benghazi will be back in the news this week, as a U.S. House committee will hold more hearings on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. Testimony by State Department whistleblowers is expected to contradict some earlier accounts by Obama administration officials. For example, Gregory Hicks, the deputy The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, maintains that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly to Benghazi during the attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa, CBS News reported.
