The Political Conundrum!

Demonstrating Washington's support for war-ravaged Georgia, Cheney said the U.S. was "fully committed" to Georgian efforts to join NATO. Cheney also condemned Russia for what he called an "illegitimate, unilateral attempt" to redraw the U.S. ally's borders by force.

Demonstrating Washington's support for war-ravaged Georgia, Cheney said the U.S. was "fully committed" to Georgian efforts to join NATO. Cheney also condemned Russia for what he called an "illegitimate, unilateral attempt" to redraw the U.S. ally's borders by force.

The U.S. military arrested an Iraqi cameraman and three family members Thursday during a raid on their home in Baghdad, an official with Baghdad TV said.

The Iraqi government is planning to open a museum inside the notorious Abu Ghraib prison to document the crimes committed there during Saddam Hussein's regime.

A man posing in a military uniform while shopping at local businesses who was afforded tax-free and soldier discounts has bilked mom and pop convenience store owners and other retail outlets out of thousands of dollars and today is in jail.

The almost-forgotten war on drugs has taken some serious hits recently, particularly in Latin America. This cyclical war waxes and wanes with the political will of each country involved and the consumption habits of drug users.

I take it seriously in large part because drug money is rapidly replacing state sponsorship for terrorist organizations that have reaches far beyond the world of drug trafficking. As I have written earlier, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) links 19 of the 43 designated terrorist organizations to drug trafficking activities at various levels.

These include Hezbollah, Hamas, the Taliban, Tamil Tigers, ETA, as well as the FARC and United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC).

A Washington Post story yesterday captured the paradox of the drug war, a paradox I have been pondering since my recent trip to Colombia.

It is this: The law enforcement community (particularly the DEA and Colombian National Police, along with the Colombian military) has made unprecedented strides in both dismantling drug trafficking organizations (in the case of Colombia, these include two designated terrorist organizations, the AUC and FARC rebels).

For the first time in 25 years there are no clearly identifiable drug kingpins running the cocaine trade from Colombia. The FARC and AUC are both seriously degraded.

Yet, production has not diminished, and, according to Colombian and U.S. officials, the amount of cocaine moving out of the Andean region (Colombia, Peru and Bolivia) has showed almost no variation despite the tactical successes against the organizations. My full blog is here.

Sami Al-Arian, convicted of supporting the terrorist organization Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), who has served a 57-month federal prison sentence for that offense is now under what is believed to be a final removal order (deportation order) requiring his departure from the United States. That removal order stems from his felony conviction relating to the support of a foreign terrorist organization. That support included assisting an alien relative who was a PIJ operative with immigration matters. Al-Arian continues to face federal criminal contempt charges in the Eastern District of Virginia due to his refusal to testify before a federal grand jury investigating northern Virginia Islamic organizations with whom he and his Tampa, Florida PIJ-affiliated front groups were associated and did business.

As reported by various media outlets, including the Investigative Project on Terrorism, Al-Arian was just released from the custody of immigration authorities to await further proceedings on the criminal contempt charges. His release by immigration authorities was likely because the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was caught between a legal "rock and a hard place."

U.S. immigration law and court decisions, particularly the 2001 Supreme Court decision, Zadvydas v. Davis, allow the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), to detain aliens who are under final removal orders only as long as it takes to make reasonable arrangements to physically deport them but generally no more than 90 days. There are certain limited exceptions, including aliens who are involved in terrorism activities, who could be detained for longer periods including an indefinite time if actual removal is not possible. Arguably, Al-Arian could fall into that category.

However, if ICE is ready to physically deport Al-Arian, having finalized all the arrangements of that process, yet the Department of Justice wants to keep Al-Arian in the U.S. for the pending contempt prosecution, there may have been no legal recourse but to release him under the conditions imposed by U.S. District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema.

On the other hand, if there is still some genuine pending, time-consuming arrangements left in the deportation process for Al-Arian, ICE would have legitimate cause to further detain him as a terrorism-related convicted alien felon and could have so argued before the Court. So far, neither ICE nor DHS has publicly commented on the specifics of Al-Arian's release.

Ironically, in late 2000, Al-Arian's brother-in-law Mazen Al-Najjar (the PIJ operative Al-Arian assisted with his immigration case), had been similarly detained by then INS for several years pending deportation action while he appealed his deportation order, a deportation order that was issued by an Immigration Court after several weeks of public, open due process hearings wherein Al-Najjar was fully represented by legal counsel (hardly the "never charged" posture represented by most media and apologists at the time). INS, working with the FBI, attempted to keep Al-Najjar detained while he appealed that deportation order because the agencies knew he, like Al-Arian, was involved with the PIJ. Al-Najjar, however, had already been charged in U.S. Immigration Court and had a deportation order issued against him. The custody matter in his case was based, in part, on classified information. That, of course, stirred a hornet's nest with much of the media and Al-Najjar's supporters and apologists. The debate about using "secret" evidence in immigration proceedings became widespread and ultimately, because of the Al-Najjar case and the negative publicity, as misrepresented as it was, the utilization of classified information in immigration removal proceedings has been greatly curtailed, even after the 9/11 attacks and the so-called war on terror.

More ironically, during the Al-Najjar detention proceedings, then Attorney General Janet Reno ultimately authorized his release on a meager $8,000 bail after three and a half years of detention, knowing fully his terrorism support background, when she had the option of overriding an Immigration Judge's release order. That Reno release authorization was ordered, coincidentally, at the end of her tenure as the Attorney General and during a presidential election season. Al-Najjar ultimately lost his appeal, was re-arrested in November of 2001, detained and deported in 2002. Reportedly, he currently lives in Cairo.

We now have Sami Al-Arian similarly released from immigration custody. No doubt, due to the high profile nature of this case, DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff has been involved in the custody decision-making process. Notably, this occurs at the end of his tenure and during a presidential election season.

So, Al-Arian's release from custody really could be either a rock and a hard place decision or a cave-in as far as DHS is concerned.

The U.S. has taken the gloves are off: In a first, senior U.S. officials acknowledged that U.S. ground forces entered Pakistan to pursue high-value Al Qaeda targets, and the hunt for Osama bin Laden is moving at full speed before President Bush leaves office. "(A) small team of commandos crossed the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan to go after an al Qaida cell operating out of a village less than a mile from the border. The officials said the cell was using the village as a base to plan and conduct cross border raids into Afghanistan. The leader of the cell - whose name the officials did not release - was reported killed along with several women and at least one child." The reactions from the Pakistanis include not just the usual official protests, but also a column from the chairman of the PPP, Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated ex-Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the leading candidate for President. Writing in the Washington Post, Zardari didn't explicitly criticize any U.S. raid into Pakistan. "It is important to remember that Pakistan, too, is a victim of terrorism. Our soldiers are dying on the front lines; our children are being blown up by suicide bombers. We stand with the United States, Britain, Spain and others who have been attacked. Fundamentally, however, the war we our fighting is our war."

Two days ago, Jonathan Winer discussed the need for a broad counterinsurgency effort in the FATA and the Administration's recent determination to now rely on Zardari as a partner in the pursuit of Al Qaeda and the Taliban. The Pakistanis publicly claimed credit for an attack designed to kill Ayman al-Zawahiri, a positive sign of such cooperation. But for the U.S. to attack and admit it just days from the presidential vote appears to be a statement that, with or without Zardari's assistance, the U.S. will attack specific terrorist targets inside Pakistan with sufficient force. I assume that we will mount other such attacks, perhaps frequently, in President Bush's remaining term in office. That's a strategic direction of major consequence which the next President will have to review, but I cannot imagine either of the current candidates putting the gloves back on and withdrawing that capability.

American troops in Afghanistan will step up offensive operations this winter because insurgents are increasingly staying in the country to prepare for spring attacks, a U.S. commander tells The Associated Press.

American forces conducted a raid inside Pakistan on Sept. 3, a senior U.S. military official said, in the first known foreign ground assault against a suspected Taliban haven. Pakistan's government condemned the action, saying it killed at least 15 people.