BLIC NUISANCES: The Posner Report/Send in the Clowns
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
PUBLIC NUISANCES R. EMMETT TYRRELL, JR. The Posner Report WASHINGTON J UDGE RICHARD A. POSNER WAS IN TOWN for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title...
...Such a reform, Posner agrees, creates civil liberties problems...
...While we attempt to thwart the next 9/11, the terrorists are working on something new...
...He mentions the loss that the Commission suffered when Henry Kissinger was barred as 86 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JULY/AUGUST 2005 PUBLIC NUISANCES chairman, apparently for political reasons...
...Well, send in a few lady lawyers with promises of legal assistance and the possibility of being sprung from this Gitmo calaboose and allowed to fly off to their Middle Eastern paradises...
...Posner goes on: "An active program of foreign intelligence of unprecedented scope and technological sophistication is needed—and more: a program that can anticipate technological surprises in the form of new, more lethal weapons of mass destruction or means of delivering them...
...Deadly pathogens, lethal gases, and even small atomic bombs can be fabricated almost anywhere in the world and, because of their small size, delivered surreptitiously to the United States and activated by a small number of terrorists or foreign agents...
...General Richard B. Meyers responded to these imbecilic statements by saying, "I think I'd ask them [Amnesty International's provocateurs] to go look up the definition of gulag as commonly understood...
...Then Amnesty International called for the arrest and trial of Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former CIA Director George Tenet...
...Says Johnson: "Intelligence reports are like reading spy novels with the last chapter missing, because you never know what actually has happened in the end...
...We've had 325 investigations into alleged abuse...
...They are among the most dangerous people on earth...
...He writes beautifully on issues that do not invite elegant prose and with a powerful analytical mind...
...We've had 68,000 detainees since this conflict against violent extremism started...
...Well, an American lady lawyer on a humanitarian mission will know the proper response...
...It rests on an insight into intelligence that the historian Paul Johnson made years ago...
...The detainees are all very pious Islamacists...
...Now he was in Washington to discuss his most recent book, Preventing Surprise Attacks: Intelligence Reform in the Wake of 9/11, which is part of a promising series of brief books that the Hoover Institution is publishing on pressing political, economic, and social issues...
...The Posner Report WASHINGTON J UDGE RICHARD A. POSNER WAS IN TOWN for a public appearance the other night, and as he is a leading candidate for the title World's Foremost Authority, I thought I would stop by the famous old Willard Hotel to see what he had to say about the 9/11 Commission Report and its legislative by-product, the Intelligence Report Act...
...Johnson's insight is useful to those who underestimate the difficulty of the topic...
...She might bill her office overtime...
...She might read the Bill of Rights to her client...
...Supposedly the legislation improves the capacity of our intelligence community in this time of terror attacks worldwide...
...Readers of this book will become aware of the huge job ahead in the struggle against terrorists...
...emerges to fill American courts with bogus legal charges to stoke international anti-Americanism...
...Unlike the FBI today, MI5 is not a police force vested with pursuing terrorists with the intent of prosecuting them...
...Frankly I would like to be on hand when these sleekAmerican lawyers arrive in Gitmo, particularly if they include members of the fair sex...
...In some instances they would reach for their toothbrushes and perform unspeakable acts with the brushes on parts of their anatomy that would amaze our female soldiers...
...Then accomplished poseurs such as the Clintons and Jean-Francois Kerry can chirp up about how the whole world is increasingly hostile to us...
...For instance, in his book on the impeachment of President Bill Clinton he reviewed the law and the transgressions of the culprit, concluding that Clinton could be impeached but should not be...
...Often he comes to conclusions with which I do not agree...
...Islamic sensibilities must be observed—and, incidentally, this custom is one for which I have some sympathy...
...JULY/AUGUST 2005 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 87...
...Yet they have these complaints about our soldiers treating them discourteously and in contravention of Geneva protocols on the humane treatment of prisoners...
...Posner makes the interesting point that the 9/11 Commission did not study intelligence gathering by other, possibly more seasoned, intelligence agencies in countries such as the UK and Israel...
...The prosecution of them is a distraction best left to a police force, namely the FBI...
...Will the intelligence community anticipate it and prevent it...
...His book is among the finest analyses of intelligence gathering and of intelligence reform I know of...
...Also I suspect the ladies will know enough to walk several paces behind their men folk...
...Yes, general, and now we have the lawyers involved...
...Imagine Amnesty International recently comparing our facility at Guantanamo Bay with the Gulag where millions of Russians perished...
...I am told that the lawyers might have difficulty gaining the trust of the aggrieved detainees at Gitmo...
...If such garments are not available in New York or Washington perhaps purchasing a small tent from L.L...
...Banfield, a Harvard government professor of two decades back, employed vast learning and a skeptical intelligence to arrive at conclusions that ended up being commonsensical and thus to his fellow scholars, deeply disturbing...
...Surely these enlightened lady lawyers will have the decency to wear the requisite abaya, the national dress of Saudi Arabia that covers Saudi cuties in one heap of cloth from head to toe...
...Yes, there is farce surrounding the arrival of American lawyers at Gitmo to assist these savage men whose favorite pastime is murder...
...Yet even here there is farce...
...It leaves the President and intelligence reformers much room in which to revise the Commission's recommendations, and they had better use all the room available because they will need it to improve intelligence...
...As for the reforms in place, Posner is skeptical of their usefulness...
...The very thought of Westerners provokes them to blow themselves up and anyone nearby...
...It is only a matter of time before a new Ramsey Clark Jr...
...As usual Posner's approach puts me in mind of another brilliant, if unconventional, policy scholar, the late Edward Banfield...
...They will, of course, urge the Bush administration to heed the concerns of "the world community...
...Surprise attacks are by their nature surprising...
...With a little luck they will turn Guantanamo into Bill Clinton's impeachment revels or the Michael Jackson trial...
...To be sure, Posner is aware of the murkiness of intelligence...
...Surely our lady lawyers will not be so disrespectful as to wear perfume or for that matter even deodorant, which among the devout detainees is sure to be considered sacrilegious...
...Yet there is one reform that he seems to favor, though it is not now in place...
...The humane treatment of prisoners is a Western idea, and it is good that we have organizations devoted to monitoring that treatment...
...The detainees are not soldiers, conventionally understood...
...Bean will do...
...On the 9/11 Commission's findings and the consequent legislation, Posner's most optimistic judgment is that the legislation is hazy...
...Yet he believes the problems can be overcome for the good of prosecuting criminals and of gathering still more information on domestic terror plots...
...For a certitude, our government is faced with a very difficult set of problems in handling them, either for intelligence purposes or to keep them from going back and killing more of their neighbors and our forces...
...Send in the Clowns WASHINGTON 0 UR WAR AGAINST TERROR is in trouble now...
...That is hard to say, though we had better try "The commission's report," Posner writes, "mentions only in passing the greater potential threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in the hands of terrorists or enemy states...
...Do you remember the reports in the Weekly Standard of some of the detainees' response to the presence of female American soldiers at Gitmo...
...to wit, there is no "solution" to the intelligenceproblem...
...That new authority would operate as does the United Kingdom's Security Service (MI5...
...The domestic intelligence function now in the hands of the FBI should be "carved out" and placed in a different authority...
...Well, Judge, I was with you part of the way...
...Posner, a federal judge and lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, writes on a broad range of public matters...
...His additional judgment is very much like a judgment Banfield might render...
...If any group in America can bring a project to foozle, it would be a group of American lawyers intent on humanitarian service...
...Lawyers from some of our most prestigious law firms are trundling down to Guantanamo Bay to represent detainees...
...The chaps exposed their male members and masturbated...
...They are a touchy bunch...
...We've had 100 cases of substantiated abuse and there are 100 individuals that have had some sort of action taken, either court-martial or administrative action...
...Nor did the 9/11 Commission avail itself sufficiently to the expertise of Americans with superior knowledge and experience in intelligence...
...It has worked well in the UK and might work well here...
Vol. 38 • July 2005 • No. 6
