The Lichfield Group

The United States has captured and detained several Al Qaeda enemy combatants implicated in the 9/11 abominations. Extracting intelligence from the detainees is urgent to thwart new editions of 9/11. That wartime objective would be frustrated by their contact with defense counsel representing Al Qaeda operative, Zacarias Moussaoui, under indictment for six conspiracies linked to the 9/11 mass murders. Access could disclose sources and methods, and shipwreck any further cooperation with the United States military or intelligence services.

The Senate should balk at cluttering the Constitution when it votes next Friday on a crime victims’ rights amendment (VRA). To forgo the VRA is not to cherish victims’ rights less, but to venerate the brevity and accessibility of the Constitution more. Amendments are appropriate only when flexible and adaptable statutes would be insufficient to achieve a compelling objective; or, to protect discrete and insular minorities from political oppression. Neither reason obtains for the VRA.

“The President [George W. Bush] congratulates [Algerian] President [Abdelaziz] Bouteflika on his [April 8] re-election. These elections represent another step on the road to democracy in Algeria,” according to the lavish praise from the White House. Indeed, Algeria’s landmark presidential election featuring six candidates, including a woman, a 60% voter turnout, and unprecedented transparency stole a march on President Bush’s greater Middle East democracy initiative. It culminated a decades-old indigenous and ongoing embrace of political liberalization despite the formidable vexations Algeria encountered in plucking the flower of democracy from the nettle of Islamic extremism. Algeria is eager to thicken trade, investment, and counterterrorism ties with the United States, to accelerate its democratic advances, and to set a model for President Bush’s democracy goals.

Why are American soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq?

Extrapolating from President George W. Bush’s radio address broadcast last Saturday, the cause for which they are giving that last full measure of devotion is not government of the people, by the people, for the people. It is an irrevocable transfer of sovereignty on June 30 to an undemocratically appointed interim Iraqi government, probably chosen by United Nations envoy Lakhdar Brahimi. The envoy is likely to anoint either the existing discredited 25-member Iraqi Governing Council (IGC) or crown an expanded version of that political ink blot.

National security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, will testify next Thursday publicly and under oath regarding the Bush administration’s forewarnings and counterterrorism planning before the 9/11 abominations. Her questioning by the independent National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States will not cause the constitutional sky to fall. It will not engender distortion or suppression of advice received by presidents. Absolutely nothing adverse to a president’s constitutional powers will ensue from Dr. Rice’s disclosures of confidential counterterrorism communications which steer wide of intelligence sources or methods.