New British leader reluctantly endorses Afghanistan war

Maybe David Cameron's endorsement of the U.S. and NATO mission in Afghanistan would have been more convincing had the British prime minister not been forced to re-route his helicopter because of threats from insurgent forces. Or maybe, just maybe, it would have been more convincing had it been an actual endorsement and not a bad facsimile of one. Cameron's remarks, delivered at a Kabul news conference with Afghani President Hamid Karzai, were apparently intended to reassure the war-ravaged country's leaders that the British were not planning to withdraw its 10,000 troops from the U.S.-NATO force fighting the Taliban. “This is the year when we have to make progress — progress for the sake of the Afghan people, but progress also on behalf of people back at home who want this to work,” Cameron said, according to the New York Times. "What we want — and in our national security interest — is to hand power over to an Afghanistan that is able to take control of its own security." Well, sure, but that's hardly the same thing as saying that Britain, like the United States, is committed to supporting NATO forces battling the Taliban until the government in Kabul is strong enough, and trustworthy enough, to stand on its own. The fact that Cameron left that part out is what's noteworthy. He didn't say it because Britain apparently doesn't think about Afghanistan in those terms. The British are fulfilling the commitment former British Prime Minister Tony Blair must have made to former U.S. President George Bush, but that's it. England is pulling out of the international force next year, success or failure notwithstanding. That probably doesn't come as news to current U.S. President Barack Obama, who recently increased the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan and who probably talks honestly with whomever lives at 10 Downing St., but may be a source of consternation for the soldiers who are doing the actual fighting and risking their actual lives. Then again, Cameron's trip to a military base in Afghanistan's Helmand Province had to be called off because of intelligence reports of threats against his helicopter. Maybe Western leaders, U.S. officials included, will eventually have the good sense to be embarrassed about having to sneak in and out of countries being occupied at a cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives -- for the benefit, of course, of the people who already lived there long before Western soldiers arrived.

Bush-era wiretapping goes on trial in San Francisco

Today's start of a court hearing on the federal government's post-9/11 wiretapping could herald a major step in undoing the years of constitutional mayhem of the Bush administration. A federal judge in San Francisco could decide that a now-defunct Islamic charity declared a terrorist organization in 2004 can proceed with its damage suit against the government for listening in on phone conversations with its attorneys without a warrant, according to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The Bush and Obama administrations have tried, and failed, to get the case dismissed on national security grounds. U.S. Judge Vaughn Walker of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California has already ruled in the case that public statements by the government indicated that the Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation had probably been wiretapped, the Chronicle said. The case is only the second in the country to challenge the Bush-era wiretapping program, instituted in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and Washington, D.C. In the first case, a federal judge declared the program unconstitutional but was overruled on appeal because the plaintiffs could not prove they had personally been wiretapped. But the Al-Haramain case is different in that the government already released documents apparently showing the charity had been wiretapped. The Bush administration said the documents had been improperly released, requested their return and declared them confidential. The foundation's attorney, Jon Eisenberg, argued before Walker that the president did not have the power to override a 1978 law requiring a special national security court to approve wiretapping of suspected terrorists, the Chronicle said. "May the president of the United States break the law in the name of national security? ... We're asking this court to say, 'no,'" Eisenberg argued at the hearing. Eisenberg also quoted now-President Barack Obama's statement while a candidate in 2007 that "warrantless surveillance of American citizens in defiance of (the 1978 law) is unlawful and unconstitutional." Walker told a government lawyer that the foundation had presented strong evidence that it had been wiretapped, the Chronicle said. The New York Times revealed the existence of the program in 2005 and Bush confirmed it. But Justice Department attorney Anthony Coppolino contended Al-Haramain's case had to be dismissed because the program, and everything connected to it, were protected secrets. Any ruling to the contrary would be "simply inappropriate," he argued, because it could reveal confidential information about "intelligence sources and methods," the Chronicle said.