As lawmakers fall all over each other to prove who's toughest on terrorism, critics from across the political spectrum are finally starting to decry the absurd results.
On his lawfareblog, conservative Brookings Institution fellow Benjamin Wittes (with whom I often disagree) lays out the absurdity of the scenario that the Senate has just created in its version of the defense spending bill. While the House bill is in some ways worse, the Senate bill (which ominously fills 666 pages) could actually have the ridiculous -- and dangerous -- outcome of disrupting ongoing terrorism investigations purely to make an ideological point.
As Wittes explains, Section 1032 of the Senate bill, titled "Required military custody for members of Al-Qaeda and Affiliated Entities," would require the U.S. government to place anyone believed to be a member of one of these terrorist organizations in immediate military custody. That could mean that if the FBI has arrested an al Qaeda member and is interrogating him and receiving valuable information, it would have to immediately stop the interrogation and hand him over to the U.S. military. Even worse, the bill could require the FBI to stop investigating suspected al Qaeda members so that they can be placed in U.S. military custody, even if the FBI's surveillance is leading to critical intelligence about an al Qaeda cell plotting a terrorist attack.
Sure, that would be completely counterproductive to the fight against terrorism, but calling in the U.S. military every time we've got a suspected terrorist in our sights would sure make Congress look tough, wouldn't it?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/daphne-eviatar/the-absurdity-of-the-nati_b_885293.html
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