Lakhdar Boumediene, an Algerian-born citizen, was held for seven years and six months at Guantanamo Bay, where he said he was relentlessly interrogated and routinely tortured. Boumediene said that he was living in Sarajevo, Bosnia, and working as an aide at a boarding school for orphans of the Balkan conflicts of the s.
I had a good job," he said. Following the Sept. When a judge ordered Boumediene released in for lack of evidence, he said he was inexplicably turned over to the U. But until now, I still didn't get anything. No compensation, no apologies. Twenty years later, I can't find the truth behind my imprisonment at Guantanamo," Boumediene said. Boumediene became the lead plaintiff in a federal lawsuit by detainees accusing the Bush administration of denying them the right to habeas corpus, or the ability to challenge their detentions before a natural judge, in violation of the constitution.
The U. Supreme Court in a narrow decision sided with the detainees in June Bush said he would abide by the high court's decision, but "that doesn't mean I have to agree with it. Four months after the ruling, Boumediene was released to France when federal Judge Richard Leon, a Bush appointee, ruled the Bush administration "relied on insufficient evidence to imprison" him and others deemed "enemy combatants.
Panetta was the secretary of defense when bin Laden was killed on May 2, But a decade after bin Laden's death, America remains under the constant threat of terrorist groups that have metastasized around the world, and, according to Panetta, "without a comprehensive strategy to defeat terrorism in the world. You have an enemy. You go after that enemy. You defeat that enemy. And that's it," Panetta said. We're now focused on China and Russia. I think it is very important for those responsible for protecting our country to never just go with the times, but to always ask the question: What are the potential threats that are out there?
Tom Ridge, the former secretary of Homeland Security, said the Jan. A former Republican governor and congressman, Ridge said the attack on the Capitol by American citizens was "shameful.
We'll notify you here with news about. Congress shoehorned politically charged immigration and border-security agencies into the same department with uncontroversial emergency-management programs—a setup that left the latter neglected.
Unlike the Justice Department, it has no institutional culture rooted in respect for the rule of law. Homeland Security has helped set up scores of so-called state fusion centers, little-scrutinized entities that ostensibly promote intelligence sharing among multiple levels of government but, in practice, have targeted people, such as members of antiwar groups, who do not remotely qualify as terrorists.
The department has also accelerated the militarizing of local and state police departments, which recast themselves as potential front-line responders to terror attacks on the American homeland. Only the shock of that moment at a. One DHS section, the newly formed Customs and Border Protection, experienced a surge of growth so poorly executed that the agency became a major corruption threat in the region near the border with Mexico.
New agents and officers were sent into the field before background checks were completed. This mismatch of resources, training, and personnel helps explain why morale among DHS employees is far lower than in the federal government as a whole. Last summer, DHS agents and officers ran amok across the country following the protests around the murder of George Floyd.
Federal officers snatched citizens off the street in Portland, Oregon, and hustled them into unmarked rental vans. Such episodes reveal all too starkly the danger of creating a new law-enforcement bureaucracy at a moment of national anxiety, effectively enshrining fear into law forever.
But nearly every step the U. The military and diplomatic mistakes that America made in Afghanistan and Iraq are so obvious in hindsight and have been so thoroughly chronicled by others that they need little recounting here.
Afghanistan, at the start, appeared set to be a remarkable victory. Within weeks of our invasion, in the fall of , the U. The Iraq debacle led to defeat in Afghanistan, too, despite trillions of dollars in spending and far too much bloodshed in both countries.
In an embrace of cynicism and realpolitik, we relied on allies—most notably Egypt, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia—that made our fight more bloody and more costly.
Their own officials funded and even harbored the very terror networks we were fighting. In Afghanistan, we made common cause with awful men—warlords and corrupt politicians who pillaged communities, laundered and stole American taxpayer money, trafficked drugs, and made backroom deals with the people we were supposed to be fighting.
We condoned child rape. We propped up a government that never reflected the will of the people and that looked so illegitimate to its own citizens that it collapsed in days as American forces withdrew this summer. Its leaders were among the first to flee. The hijackers deliberately crashed the planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and onto a field outside of Shortly after the Twin Towers fell on September 11, , the nation began to mourn, and around the country Americans began to commemorate the victims and demonstrate their patriotism.
Some flew the American flag from their front porches and car antennas. Others pinned it to Meanwhile, intense debate raged over how best to rebuild the World The coordinated terrorist attacks of September 11, unfolded at nightmarish speed.
Sixteen minutes later, a second jet hit the South Tower. At , an airliner hit the Pentagon. Within hours, Six minutes later, the first contingent of New York City firefighters—two ladder and two engine companies—had arrived at the stricken Live TV.
This Day In History. History Vault. World Trade Center On September 11, , at a. Firefighters Osama bin Laden. Recommended for you. Soil The September 11 attacks struck the nation on a clear, late summer morning on the East Coast.
Flight 93 On the morning of September 11, , the deadliest terrorist attack in U. Firefighters At a. See More. The king pressed the president to take action to restart Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. But the president was focused on Iraq. The United States did go to war with Iraq soon enough. Consequently, the United States went to war in Iraq on a false pretense that it was somehow avenging those killed by al-Qaida. Both were utterly false.
One lesson of the past 20 years is the imperative of an informed public. Sadly, we are still a long way from an enlightened public.
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