I'm sure plenty of people remember Dick 'n Dubya hooting and hollering like drunks at a lynching when folks like John Kerry suggested that the GWOT might REALLY work if we added the extra dimension of law enforcement to the mix (indeed, if we made law enforcement the MAJOR component, things like 9/11 might be prevented, instead of reacted upon).
Yeah, stopping crimes from happening sure is lame:
The Justice Department blocked efforts by its prosecutors in Seattle in 2002 to bring criminal charges against Haroon Aswat, according to federal law-enforcement officials who were involved in the case.
British authorities suspect Aswat of taking part in the July 7 London bombings, which killed 56 and prompted an intense worldwide manhunt for him.
But long before he surfaced as a suspect there, federal prosecutors in Seattle wanted to seek a grand-jury indictment for his involvement in a failed attempt to set up a terrorist-training camp in Bly, Ore., in late 1999. In early 2000, Aswat lived for a couple of months in central Seattle at the Dar-us-Salaam mosque.
A federal indictment of Aswat in 2002 would have resulted in an arrest warrant and his possible detention in Britain for extradition to the United States.
"It was really frustrating," said a former Justice Department official involved in the case. "Guys like that, you just want to sweep them up off the street."
British intelligence officials now think that in the days and hours before the July 7 bombings, Aswat was in cellphone contact with at least two of the four suicide bombers, according to The Times of London.
But hey, pursuing the war angle has resulted in the capture of
Three men in an unmarked sedan pulled up near the headquarters of the national police major crimes unit. The two passengers, wearing traditional Arab dishdasha gowns, stepped from the car.
At the same moment, a U.S. military convoy emerged from an underpass. Apparently believing the men were staging an ambush, the Americans fired, killing one passenger and wounding the other. The sedan's driver was hit in the head by two bullet fragments.
The soldiers drove on without stopping.
This kind of shooting is far from rare in Baghdad, but the driver of the car was no ordinary casualty. He was Iraqi police Brig. Gen. Majeed Farraji, chief of the major crimes unit. His passengers were unarmed hitchhikers whom he was dropping off on his way to work.
"The reason they shot us is just because the Americans are reckless," the general said from his hospital bed hours after the July 6 shooting, his head wrapped in a white bandage. "Nobody punishes them or blames them."
And the war approach sure has reduced terrorist activity by Al Qaeda--let's see...we went from six suspected acts of terrorism by those lunatics from 1993-2000 to...um, nineteen between 2001-2005...
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