As I explain below, the capture of Abu Omar right before the war was pretty dag-blasted crucial because he was recruiting terrorists for combat in Iraq. This is a guy we need to A: stop and B: interrogate. And the only way to do that was, apparently, to kidnap him from within an allied country. Italy claims they were investigating him as well, but I can see how, with the urgency of the invasion drawing near, it wasnÂ’t feasible to leave the timing of his arrest to the Italian justice process.

IÂ’m sure this decision wasnÂ’t made lightly. If a covert operation goes awry in Syria or North Korea, well, whoÂ’s really going to be surprised? Oh, no, SyriaÂ’s going to be mad at us! Doing something like this within an allied nation, however, is really tricky. Imagine how freakinÂ’ nuts everyone here would go if, say, the Mossad or MI6 snatched a refugee off the streets of New York City. And after the Sgrena affair, this is especially troublesome for Italy.

ItÂ’s funny how prosecutors and judges can influence foreign policy. Back in the late eighties, a Florida US Attorney named Dick Gregorie indicted Manuel Noriega for drug trafficking. The CIA and State Department went spastic, since they considered Pineapple Face a valuable ally in the Cold War and were quite willing to overlook his drug dealing. But with that indictment hanging out there it became impossible to overlook it and America began moving toward the invasion of Panama.

The kidnapping is embarrassing enough, but then there’s the fact of Abu Omar’s rendition to his home country of Egypt where he claims he was tortured—like real torture, involving electric shocks, not fake Gitmo Dick Durbin torture. (Bear in mind, this is all just according to a phone call Abu Omar made. Apparently they just stopped and took the cables off and said, hey, you wanna call your family? Cause you’re going to be here a while, dude.) Now, unlike some conservatives, I don’t have much of a problem with the rendition of terrorists, or for that matter, with the rending of terrorists, or even with the rendering of terrorists in a Hormel plant where potted pork products are prepared. This case, however, kind of surprises me.

Why would we trust the interrogation of this guy to the Egyptians? Well, this is an important prisoner. We need to squeeze this dude fast because the invasion starts in about a month. We need actionable intelligence about foreign fighters as soon as we can so it can be incorporated into the war plans, and their communications, supply lines, caches, etc. can be shut down. Ordinarily, I say if you want to see something done right, youÂ’ve got to do it yourself. But maybe we knew that our techniques at Gitmo were so hampered by concerns about the ACLU that we couldnÂ’t trust our own interrogators to get the job done in time. I donÂ’t know; thatÂ’s just speculation.

As for what we do now, I’m just not sure. We’ve got indictments on thirteen of our spooks, and we’ve got to get them out of Italy, if they’re still there, and beyond the reach of Italian law. Italy has a lot of info on these guys, including pictures, but I wonder whether the names they have are real or just covers. If it’s just cover, this whole thing will blow over. But if not, and they’ve got a line on our guys, then this will be trouble. Will we honor extradition requests? Not in this matter, I hope. Our guys in the field need to know that their government and their president back them up. None of this “deny all knowledge of your actions” crap. We’ve got to protect our people who were engaged in a mission authorized under US law.

But thatÂ’s going to hurt us even more with Italy. TheyÂ’re a valuable ally and a good friend to the USA. WeÂ’ll need to find a way to smooth things over with them, if one exists. I just hope Abu Omar was worth it.

Posted by: seedubya at 04:39 AM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
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