The Allmendinger Chronicles

Of all the elements of the new terrorism interrogation teams set up by President Barack Obama and announced this morning, among the most important is the fact it will be headquartered at the Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than at the rival Central Intelligence Agency.

The new units will include personnel from a wide range of intelligence and law enforcement agencies, according to White House officials. But by bringing the interrogation units into the FBI, it moves them more definitively out from the world of black ops, where they have resided since the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.

Although the FBI has long been the agency responsible for domestic counterterrorism, its bureaucratic DNA has historically focused on gathering information and evidence to be used in federal prosecutions. The CIA, on the other hand, has traditionally been tasked to gather intelligence by any means necessary.

The shift could be a watershed for intelligence gathering. On top of making the FBI the lead agency, Obama also has ordered the new units to abide by the U.S. Army’s field manual on interrogations – a document based on the Uniform Code of Military Justice that closely incorporates international treaties like the Geneva Conventions.

Taken together, the two moves mark a definitive end to the Bush administration’s comparatively loose rein on interrogations.

SOURCE

It’s official. The U.S. is no longer engaged in a “war on terrorism.” Neither is it fighting “jihadists” or in a “global war.”

President Obama’s top homeland security and counterterrorism official took all three terms off the table of acceptable words inside the White House during a speech Thursday at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank.

“The President does not describe this as a ‘war on terrorism,’” said John Brennan, head of the White House homeland security office, who outlined a “new way of seeing” the fight against terrorism.

The only terminology that Mr. Brennan said the administration is using is that the U.S. is “at war with al Qaeda.”

“We are at war with al Qaeda,” he said. “We are at war with its violent extremist allies who seek to carry on al Qaeda’s murderous agenda.”

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* Al Qaeda says truce offer extended to Bush still stands

* Conditions include troops withdrawal from all Muslim land

* Al Qaeda wants Israel wiped from map
(Adds more quotes, details, background)

DUBAI, Aug 3 (Reuters) – Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahri said a truce offered to the last U.S. administration was still on the table, but President Barack Obama must withdraw troops from Muslim lands and meet other demands.

“If Obama wants to (reach) an understanding then he should respond to Sheikh Osama (bin Laden’s) two offers,” Zawahri said in an interview with al Qaeda’s media arm As-sahab, posted on an Islamist website on Monday.

Zawahri warned that militants would continue to fight “until doomsday” unless their conditions were met. “The minimum the mujahideen would accept (includes) … the exit of infidel troops from all of the land of Islam and an end to stealing Muslims’ wealth under the threat of military power”.

Zawahri said the conditions also include that Western countries stop backing “corrupt and apostate regimes in the Muslim world” and the release of all detained Muslims.

The “fair offers” bin Laden had made to the United States and European nations were meant “for them to stop their aggression against Muslims and start a relationship that is based on interests instead of oppression and looting”, said the Egyptian militant in the 90-minute interview.

“(But) they insist that the relationship should be based on oppressing us and doing us injustice,” he said.

Bin Laden said in 2006 “we do not mind offering a long-term truce based on just conditions that we will stand by … a truce which offers security and stability and the rebuilding of Iraq and Afghanistan which war has destroyed.”

The United States at the time dismissed the offer, saying it “does not negotiate with terrorists.”

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Thursday, July 09, 2009
By Mike Levine and Catherine Herridge

Memri.org.  A still image accompanying a new audio tape from Abu Mansour al-Amriki, a member of the Al Qaeda-linked Somali terrorist group al-Shabaab.

An American who left the United States to join an Al Qaeda-linked group in Somalia is strongly condemning President Obama’s efforts to seek “a new beginning” with the Muslim world, mocking Obama’s “magic of charisma” and warning of more attacks against U.S. interests.

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