ABC's Brian Ross has a history of bizarre "scoops" (like this one, when he announced that Hillary Clinton had indeed been in the White House the day Monica went down on her knees). And yet, ABC News is still proud to have him as their chief investigative correspondent, for some odd reason.

Now he overreaches on yet another story, this one claiming Nidal Malik Hasan attempted to contact al Qaeda. You heard it all over the news, right? Via Gawker:

ABC News' Brian Ross has a breathtaking record of recklessly inaccurate, overhyped stories that don't live up to the headline. His scoop yesterday about Nidal Malik Hasan's "attempt to reach out to al Qaeda" was one of them.

Ross' report yesterday that Hasan had attempted to "make contact with people associated with al Qaeda" took over the internet yesterday and sparked a furious round of speculation that Hasan's attack was part of an Islamic terrorist plot. The headline, "Officials: U.S. Army Told of Hasan's Contacts with al Qaeda," said it all. The far more mundane truth emerged today in the pages of the New York Times and the Washington Post: Hasan had communicated via e-mail with Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American cleric living in Yemen who formerly served as the imam of a mosque Hasan had attended in Virginia. What did they talk about? From the Washington Post:

The FBI determined that the e-mails did not warrant an investigation, according to the law enforcement official. Investigators said Hasan's e-mails were consistent with the topic of his academic research and involved some social chatter and religious discourse.

We were confused this morning, because Ross had clearly reported that Hasan had made contact with "people associated with Al Qaeda," and the only contacts that other reporters were confirming were with al-Awlaki, who is, as far as we know, a single person. We called Ross and asked him if there were more "people." No, he told us, his initial report was only in reference to al-Awlaki.

"That's how it was initially described to me by my sources," he says. "Given what they told me, that's all I could say. It's a strange use of the word 'people.' But when pinned down, my sources said it's just al-Awlaki."

A strange use, indeed. How about false, too? Especially because Ross' original story did, in fact, report that al-Awliki was among the "people" Hasan was suspected of having contacted. So he reported that Hasan contacted more than one person associated with al Qaeda, and then named one person that he was suspected of contacting. What he apparently didn't bother to do was "pin his sources down" on exactly what they were saying. The result was a clear suggestion that Hasan had tried to communicate with the al Qaeda network on more than one occasion.

So did he? Al-Awlaki is routinely described by the FBI and others as an al Qaeda supporter, and a fiery inciter of violence against infidels. And he was the imam at the Virginia mosque attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers, as well as Hasan. But while it's clear that Al-Awlaki is a bad guy, what's not clear is whether he's simply a propagandist or someone who actually operates as a part of al Qaeda. It's one thing for Hasan to have sent e-mails to someone who vocally supports al Qaeda, and quite another for him to have sent e-mails to al Qaeda itself, or to operatives actively involved in trying to kill people. Ross told us that, according to his sources, "Al-Awlaki is considered a recruiter," which is how he justified invoking the name of the terrorist network. We'll defer to him on that point.

But without knowing what the e-mails are about, can it really be known that Hasan's communications were "attempts to reach out"? The FBI didn't consider them as such. Ross didn't know the contents of the e-mails when he described them that way, but felt perfectly justified in doing so based solely on the knowledge that Hasan had sent the e-mails.

We asked Ross if he had tried to contact Al-Awlaki in reporting the story:

"Yes."

So you reached out to al Qaeda, then?

"To al Qaeda? No. I reached out to him. Oh. I see what you're saying."

Look, we know most of the alleged Al Qaeda detainees are innocent, with far too many of them victims of horrifying tactics like the ones reported in this Raw Story article. Will there ever be justice for them, or will President Obama continue to turn a blind eye to the Bush torture policies? Because with recent reports of a known rendition plane in Birmingham, England, I have to wonder if those policies are still in place:

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, a country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said.

No Comment: CIA efforts to keep torture secrets suffer a key loss in British high court.

Amygdala: An epic tour of Afghanistan, part 1.

We Are Respectable Negroes: Crack, Limbaugh and Hitler.

Alicublog: Right-bloggers defend Rush with an NFL boycott.

The Hunting of the Snark: More Logic Fail by McArdle.

Guest post by Batocchio. BG takes over for Mike tomorrow; send tips to bluegalsblog AT gmail

All wars depress me, but this Afghanistan one in particular makes me want to scream. Why are we there? Theoretically, to hunt down Osama bin Laden and stop al Qaeda from using it as a base. But is al Qaeda still there? Is that likely to work? Is it even possible? And if it is possible, is it worth the cost?

Nice to see a high-ranking Democrat asking these questions, too:

The veteran chairman of the House Appropriations Committee posed a series of tough questions Thursday to his colleagues and the Obama administration about the wisdom of further U.S. engagement in that war-torn country.

Rep. David R. Obey , D-Wis., in a statement expressed significant skepticism about the prospects for success of any major effort to stabilize the country, either through additional U.S. troops or by a concerted effort to train more Afghan troops and improve the country’s governance and economy.

“The problem with increasing the number of troops is that we become the lightning rod, and our presence runs the risk of inciting more anti-American sentiment that can become a recruiting tool for the very forces we seek to curtail,” Obey said of one option President Obama is weighing.

“If any adjustment is made in U.S. troop levels, it would be much better if those troops were focused on the job of training Afghani troops and police to take on the job of securing the population and maintaining law and order,” he said. “But even there, we have to ask what is achievable. My understanding is that there have never been more than about 90,000 troops under the sway of the central government. Now we are told that the goal is to train up to 400,000 soldiers and police personnel. I think it is reasonable to ask whether that is a realistic and achievable goal.”

As for a policy bent on counter-insurgency and nation-building, Obey said, “We should be asking not what policy is theoretically the most intellectually coherent, but which policy is actually achievable given the only tools we have in the region; the Afghani and Pakistani governments. Is there sufficient leadership, popular support, and political will, not in the United States but in Afghanistan, necessary for effective governance to take hold? “

Equally important, he said, “Do we really have the tools to overcome language, culture, history and a 90 percent illiteracy rate to sufficiently transform such a country?”

Politics in the Zeros: Populist Party Platform, 1892 (It could have been written for today)

Liberal Values: Nuclear engineer at Cern Lab arrested for alleged ties to al Qaeda

Alas, a blog: Every time a racist criticizes the president, someone cries, "racism."

Seeing the Forest: Modern Governing

AfterDowningStreet: Rep. Obey joins us idiot liberals

ANNALS OF JOURNALISM: NYT out of ideas...Coffee talk...The Corner in a corner...Conservative gullibility...Bad faith and sloth...Politico Fail...Beachwood Reporter...Anatomy of a column...WaPo partisan goldmine...World Nut Daily...

There's been a Condi Rice sighting, everybody! And she brings good news with her. She says that we'll get hit with another terrorist attack if we leave Afghanistan.

In a new interview with Fortune Magazine, Rice offered extremely sharp criticism of the idea of withdrawal and painted the consequences of this course of action with an almost Cheneyesque bluntness.

"The last time we left Afghanistan, and we abandoned Pakistan," she said, "that territory became the very territory on which Al Qaeda trained and attacked us on September 11th. So our national security interests are very much tied up in not letting Afghanistan fail again and become a safe haven for terrorists.

"It's that simple," she declared, "if you want another terrorist attack in the U.S., abandon Afghanistan."

As the Washington Post reported Monday, Obama is rethinking all aspects of the U.S. strategy in the Afghanistan in light of the disputed presidential election, an increase in U.S. casualties and waning public support here in America.

In the interview, Rice did acknowledge the recent election as a setback. But she argued that our own experience with democracy proved that it takes time to get things right: "Our democracy wasn't so perfect at the beginning either," she said, citing her own family's experience in the pre-Civil Rights era.

This comes from the woman who ignored the NSA memos about Osama Bin Laden which warned her that terrorists might fly planes into buildings. This comes from the woman who lied about those nasty aluminum tubes and said: "We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud." Let's continue to follow her down the road paved of blood.

Blue America is just beginning our campaign against the Afghanistan war with our new action titled "No Means No!" We are slowing bringing in other partners to join in before we amp it up....

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September 21, 2009 C-SPAN

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September 15, 2009 News Corp

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It's one thing for the Bernie Sanderses and Russ Feingolds to openly question the mission in Afghanistan. It's quite another for Dianne Feinstein to do so.

KING: Well Senator Feinstein, you're the chair of the Select Committee on Intelligence. To the question of where this ends, it is eight years after 9/11. We've paused and reflected on that just the other day. You see the things that we can't see, the intelligence. Are we winning in Afghanistan? Are we any closer to finding Osama bin Laden, and does the president have a clear strategy, in your view?

FEINSTEIN: Well, I can tell you this. A lot of the leadership has been taken out of al Qaeda. I can say and I think you would agree that Afghanistan and the Pakistani border are still the major safe haven, the major safe haven for terrorists in the world. And these are people who will, if they can, come after us, not necessarily the Taliban, but certainly al Qaeda and other affiliated groups.

So we have to consider that. We have about 60,000 troops there, another 8,000 are moving in with our allies, it about equals the force that is in Iraq. To the best of my knowledge, the president has had no request for additional troops up to this time. My view is that the mission has to be very clear. I don't believe --

KING: Has to be means it is not now?

FEINSTEIN: I believe it is not now. I do not believe we can build a democratic state in Afghanistan. I believe it will remain a tribal entity.

I do believe that clearing out Al Qaida, clearing out the Taliban is a bona fide part one of the mission. I do agree that training Afghan troops, Afghan -- Afghan police is an important piece of the mission.

I believe the mission should be time limited, that there should be no, well, we'll let you know in a year and a half, depending on how we do. I think the Congress is entitled to know, after Iraq, exactly how long are we going to be in Afghanistan.

Feinstein is actually more charitable about the presence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan than the commanding general on the ground, Stanley McChrystal, who said this week that there are no signs of major Al Qaeda anywhere in the country.

But as far as the wariness of the viability of Constitutional democracy in Afghanistan, you need only look to their recent election, into which the opposition leader is now seeking a criminal investigation. He has accused Hamid Karzai of treason and "state-engineered fraud". Despite this, Karzai will probably win election on the first ballot, and a vote that has been horribly compromised will be made official. We saw in Iran how this can lead to violence and chaos, and Afghanistan is not nearly as stable. Without a viable partner in the government, as Feinstein says we cannot expect an endless commitment. Yet because Karzai is Pashtun the US will likely back him in this fight, alienating the other ethnic groups in the region. Kalashnikovs are flying off the shelves in the Tajik areas. Civil war is not an unlikely scenario at this point.

This further limits the mission, away from state-building and toward dealing with the elements in the country willing to deal. Otherwise we set ourselves up for a decade-long slog that will only end with more dead and more treasure squandered, to little effect. And yes, as Sen. Feinstein says, that process should have an end date.

(h/t Heather)

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September 10, 2009 ABC News- FBI Informant Says Agents Missed Chance to Stop 9/11 Ringleader Mohammed Atta:

On the eve of the eight year anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, an FBI informant who infiltrated alleged terrorist cells in the U.S. tells ABC News the FBI missed a chance to stop the al Qaeda plot because they focused more on undercover stings than on the man who would later become known as 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta.

In an exclusive interview to be broadcast tonight on ABC World News with Charles Gibson and Nightline, former undercover operative Elie Assaad says he spotted and became suspicious of Atta in early 2001, when he was sent by the FBI to infiltrate a small mosque outside Miami. Atta was there with Adnan Shukrujuman, an al Qaeda fugitive who now has a $5 million U.S. reward on his head.

"There was something wrong with these guys," Assaad, a 36-year-old Catholic native of Lebanon who pretended to be an Islamic extremist, says.

The FBI initially declined to comment but released a statement following the ABC News report, saying: "The 9/11 investigation, the most extensive ever conducted by the FBI, has been reviewed in its totality by the 9/11 Commission, Congress and others. The claims made in the news report and the factual conclusions contained in the story are not supported by the evidence."

The FBI did not specify which claims or conclusions it referred to.

Asaad said he told ABC News the truth and stands by his story.

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Sen. John McCain disagrees with former Vice President Dick Cheney's claim that enhanced interrogation techniques helped keep the country safe. "I think the interrogations were in violation of the Geneva Conventions and the convention against torture that we ratified under President Reagan," McCain told CBS' Bob Schieffer Sunday.

"I think these interrogations, once publicized, helped al Qaeda recruit. I got that from an al Qaeda operative in a prison camp in Iraq... I think that the ability of us to work with our allies was harmed. And I believe that information, according go the FBI and others, could have been gained through other members," said McCain.

McCain disagreed with Attorney General Holder's decision to probe interrogation techniques that went beyond legal recommendations.

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John McCain thinks it's just amazing that a Colonel decided to volunteer for his sixth, yes, his sixth tour of duty in Iraq. Isn't that wonderful? Incredible in McCain's words. Well, I agree, but not for the same reason McCain does. It horribly incredible that anyone is over there for a sixth tour of duty.

I agree with Thom Hartmann who thinks that Afghanistan is going to be Obama's Vietnam if we don't get the hell out of there. Any time I hear Mr. "I Know How to Win Wars" John McCain agreeing with the President on anything I figure we're pretty well screwed.

Stephanopoulos points out the strain this is putting on the enlisted military and their families, but that doesn't seem to phase McCain and his insistence that somehow our military can sustain that kind of prolonged presence in the region.

STEPHANOPOULOS: How do you answer the argument, though, of others who say that adding more troops now to Afghanistan is a fool's errand in nation-building? That we can achieve the goal of denying a safe haven to al Qaeda by letting the Afghan government take the lead and taking them out with drones when necessary?

MCCAIN: Well, I say with respect, and I understand that argument, but that was the same argument under Rumsfeld and Casey that didn't work. I think the fundamental to success of a counterinsurgency is to clear and hold and secure an environment for people so that the political and economic progress can be made.

STEPHANOPOULOS: That's a 40-year effort, isn't it?

MCCAIN: I think within a year to 18 months you could start to see progress. It's very hard. It's very tough. We're facing a very determined enemy that will stand and fight in some instances that are very adaptable, and obviously with safe havens in Pakistan.

But as the president described it in the campaign, this is a good war and one that we have to win. And I think he'll hold to that.

STEPHANOPOULOS: We're seeing now that the American public is turning against the war.

MCCAIN: Yes.

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There's been a lot of talk on the teevee -- particularly Fox -- the past couple of days about domestic terrorism, sparked by the arrests of 7 men in North Carolina for supposedly planning acts of terrorism on the behest of Al Qaeda.

What strikes so many of them -- including the Fox "All Star" panel yesterday -- was that the suspects were so successful at blending in as regular American neighbors. But not once does it ever seem to cross their minds that this, indeed, has long been a feature of right-wing domestic terrorism in this country.

There's no doubt that the addition of Al Qaeda as a player on the domestic terrorism scene is cause for special concern. America has been fortunate in that, for the most part, its many would-be domestic terrorists have not typically been very competent. Adding a highly competent organization like Al Qaeda to the mix ratchets up the potential danger on this front significantly.

Attorney General Eric Holder was fairly thoughtful in his interview with ABC in addressing this:

"I mean, that's one of the things that's particularly troubling: This whole notion of radicalization of Americans," Holder told ABC News during an interview in his SUV as his motorcade brought him from home to work. "Leaving this country and going to different parts of the world and then coming back, all, again, in aim of doing harm to the American people, is a great concern."

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Rachel came to the same conclusion I did when first hearing about this story and trying to make some sense of it. Since it was public information that the CIA was going after al Qaeda terrorists, what made CIA Director Leon Panetta feel the need to come running to Congress as soon as he knew about this program, and to stop it immediately? Something isn't adding up here.

MADDOW: It has now been five full days since we first got news that the CIA had been operating some sort of secret program that it was actively hiding from the Congress. It‘s been three days since that allegation that the CIA was hiding that program at the direction of former Vice President Dick Cheney—in what would appear to be a direct violation of federal law.

Since the story broke, there has been lots of speculation about what the secret program was that Cheney didn‘t want Congress to know about. And while all the speculation is really titillating and makes for great headlines, it does seem—when you start to look more closely at it—that there‘s something not quite right here, at least something is yet unexplained.

Here‘s what we‘ve seen: “Newsweek” says, “CIA squads to track and kill al Qaeda terrorists.” “The Wall Street Journal” says, the program “was looking for ways to capture or kill al Qaeda chieftains.” “New York Times” says, “CIA Had Planned to Assassinate al Qaeda Leaders.” Liz Cheney, her own very special voice of America, described the program as “ways that we could capture or kill al Qaeda leaders.”

The reason that doesn‘t make sense is because this strategy of capturing and killing top leaders of al Qaeda, it‘s not exactly classified. It‘s not exactly a secret plan. That‘s the war on terror. That‘s the war on terror strategy we heard articulated again and again and again by the Bush administration.

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As President Obama was attempting to ease tensions in the Middle East with his speech in Cairo, Rush Limbaugh was busy saying the President had done a better job of destroying the country than al Qaeda. Eugene Robinson weighs in on whether Limbaugh has crossed a line, again, with what should be considered unacceptable political rhetoric. As Robinson notes, all Limbaugh cares about is enriching his bank account no matter what the consequences.