Bush: Sending Troops into Buffalo

"Bush Weighed Using Military in Arrests"

This is a front page story in the print edition of today's New York Times.

A version of this article appeared in print on July 25, 2009, on page A1 of the New York edition.

Big news! Page A1!

What are they thinking at the NYT?

Mark Mazzetti and David Johnston write:

Top Bush administration officials in 2002 debated testing the Constitution by sending American troops into the suburbs of Buffalo to arrest a group of men suspected of plotting with Al Qaeda, according to former administration officials.

Some of the advisers to President George W. Bush, including Vice President Dick Cheney, argued that a president had the power to use the military on domestic soil to sweep up the terrorism suspects, who came to be known as the Lackawanna Six, and declare them enemy combatants.

Mr. Bush ultimately decided against the proposal to use military force.

A decision to dispatch troops into the streets to make arrests has few precedents in American history, as both the Constitution and subsequent laws restrict the military from being used to conduct domestic raids and seize property.

The Fourth Amendment bans “unreasonable” searches and seizures without probable cause. And the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 generally prohibits the military from acting in a law enforcement capacity.

In the discussions, Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

The memorandum — written by the lawyers John C. Yoo and Robert J. Delahunty — was directed to Alberto R. Gonzales, then the White House counsel, who had asked the department about a president’s authority to use the military to combat terrorist activities in the United States.

The memorandum was declassified in March. But the White House debate about the Lackawanna group is the first evidence that top American officials, after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, actually considered using the document to justify deploying the military into an American town to make arrests.

...Former officials in the administration said this debate was not as bitter as others during Mr. Bush’s first term. The discussions did not proceed far enough to put military units on alert.

...Mr. Bush ended up ordering the F.B.I. to make the arrests in Lackawanna, near Buffalo, where the agency had been monitoring a group of Yemeni Americans with suspected Qaeda ties. The five men arrested there in September 2002, and a sixth arrested nearly simultaneously in Bahrain, pleaded guilty to terrorism-related charges.

...In a Wall Street Journal op-ed article in March, Mr. Yoo defended his 2001 memorandum and its reasoning, saying that after Sept. 11 the Bush administration faced the real prospect of Qaeda cells undertaking attacks on American soil. “The possibility of such attacks raised difficult, fundamental questions of constitutional law,” he wrote, “because they might require domestic military operations against an enemy for the first time since the Civil War.”

So what? Where's the story?

I'm sure every option to combat terrorism here in the U.S. was on the table and discusssed.

There was a memorandum talking about the president's authority under the Constitution.

So what?

After 9/11, it would have been negligent of the Bush administration to not consider every avenue possible to protect Americans. There was no greater priority.

Big bad Dick Cheney argued that a president had the authority to employ domestic military operations against terrorists.

So what?

Mr. Cheney and others cited an Oct. 23, 2001, memorandum from the Justice Department that, using a broad interpretation of presidential authority, argued that the domestic use of the military against Al Qaeda would be legal because it served a national security, rather than a law enforcement, purpose.

“The president has ample constitutional and statutory authority to deploy the military against international or foreign terrorists operating within the United States,” the memorandum said.

OK.

So what?

The administration debated appropriate means to combat terror.

Is there a problem with that? No.

The media continue to demonize Cheney. It must have been a disappointment that they couldn't drag Sarah Palin into this.

Bottom line: Troops were not sent into Buffalo to arrest the terrorists.

Question: If a domestic military operation could have been used to prevent the 9/11 hijackers from slaughtering thousands of people on American soil and shattering the lives of their loved ones, would you have been OK with that?

I think it's a no-brainer.

This story was also picked up by the Associated Press and is being highlighted as BIG news.

I don't have a problem with examining the previous administration, but given all that's going on right now in the country it seems to be an orchestrated deflection.

The lib media appear to be more interested in putting the Bush administration under the microscope and trashing Cheney rather than dealing with the racial mess that Obama created by his disgraceful, ill-informed remarks on the arrest of his friend, Henry Louis Gates Jr.

They appear to prefer to talk history in the immediate wake after 9/11 rather than talk about current issues -- health care reform and what Obama's disastrous plan of rationed care would mean for Americans, especially seniors.

The more Americans know about that legislation the more support for it plummets, as does support for Obama himself.

An educated populace is not Obama's friend when it comes to passing this monstrosity.

Of course, the lib media want to divert attention from Obama's screw-ups -- stoking the flames of racial divides, slamming American law enforcement. They don't want to deal with Obama's lies about government-run health care and his lies about the deficit and taxation.

What better way to do that than to try to direct the national debate to focus on Cheney instead of the current administration and ghouls like Ezekiel Emanuel's recommendations to withhold health services from individuals suffering from dementia?