Author: Spencer Ackerman

Wow.

Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair acknowledged Wednesday that government agencies may kill U.S. citizens abroad who are involved in terrorist activities if they are “taking action that threatens Americans.”

Blair told members of the House intelligence committee that he was speaking publicly about the issue to reassure Americans that intelligence agencies and the Department of Defense “follow a set of defined policy and legal procedures that are very carefully observed” in the use of lethal force against U.S. citizens.

That makes it sound an awful lot like there’s a thorough discussion of which Americans may be killed. Blair: “We take direct action against terrorists in the intelligence community. If that direct action, we think that direct action will involve killing an American, we get specific permission to do that.” The so-called assassinations ban isn’t ironclad, but still, this appears to be a fairly low standard for killing an American citizen:

The director of national intelligence said the factors that “primarily” weigh on the decision to target an American include “whether that American is involved in a group that is trying to attack us, whether that American is a threat to other Americans.”

The most significant quote in this Washington Post piece about the post-Northwest Airlines Flight 253 debate on national security comes from Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.):

“Instead of trying to excuse the inexcusable, the administration should take responsibility for the dire consequences of its decision to swiftly grant civilian rights to this foreign terrorist.”

There are no “dire consequences.” Sessions is, as they say in the legal profession, introducing facts not in evidence. That skirts the line between bloviation and untruth. Nor did President Obama “grant” any rights to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Attorney General Eric Holder explained yesterday that the administration recognized rights that the constitution grants to foreign nationals captured in the act of committing crimes on American territory. A left-wing Sessions could just as fairly say that the administration declined to break the law in this case, as the Republicans desire.

And that’s the state of the debate. The Senate GOP leader, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), reacted to the administration’s decision to charge Abdulmutallab in civilian court and interrogate him through the FBI by making evidence-free assertions that contradicted actual known facts of the case. A veteran FBI counterterrorism agent who has interrogated members of al-Qaeda without torturing them promptly refuted McConnell, point by point. After all, Abdulmutallab is cooperating with his interrogators, strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula are ongoing, and the civilian conviction of Abdulmutallab is practically assured. At this point, the best that Republicans like Sessions can do is say that the administration “lost” a month of information from the time Abdulmutallab’s initial interrogation ceased — but that also would introduce facts not in evidence, and would have to explain away a month of U.S.-Yemeni strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

This email came to reporters’ inboxes from the office of the director of national intelligence, Dennis Blair, objecting to this Politico story about Blair’s testimony to the House intelligence committee today. From spokesman Arthur House:

The article published by Politico today regarding testimony of the Director of National Intelligence before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is inaccurate and irresponsible. The DNI did not criticize the Administration in any way – the assertion that he did is simply wrong.

The DNI stated that the combination of reality and politics regarding the December 25 attempted terrorist attack is surprising and that the Intelligence Community is trying to bring intelligence and law enforcement to bear on those who threaten our country. To suggest that his statement is a “blast” at the White House distorts words clearly spoken and seeks to create a conflict where none exits.

The current version of Politico’s piece appears to have excised the relevant description. An addendum reads: “Blair’s office objected to an earlier version of this story which said that he had criticized the White House for leaks about the case.”

This is from a birther website, but I just can’t resist:

Women suicide bombers recruited by al-Qaida are known to have had the explosives inserted in their breasts under techniques similar to breast enhancing surgery. The lethal explosives – usually PETN (pentaerythritol Tetrabitrate) – are inserted during the operation inside the plastic shapes. The breast is then sewn up.

This is like terror porn starring John Candy as a Transportation Security Agency checker.

Just out from U.S. Central Command about the three soldiers who died yesterday in a Pakistan bombing. According to the statement — reprinted in full after the jump — the soldiers were part of a civil affairs training team that had been invited into Pakistan by the government and were in the Northwest Frontier Province “to attend an inauguration ceremony at a girls school that had recently been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance money.”

Three U.S. military members died of wounds suffered from an improvised explosive device today in the Lower Dir District of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, and two U.S. service members were wounded.

The service members were assigned to the Office of the Defense Representative, Pakistan to conduct civil affairs-related training at the invitation of the Government of Pakistan. They were in Lower Dir to attend an inauguration ceremony at a girls school that had recently been renovated with U.S. humanitarian assistance money.

“This attack demonstrates the terrorists’ lack of respect for life, and their willingness to use violence against women and children as a means for advancing their malign vision,” said Rear Adm. Hal Pittman, Director of Communication at U.S. Central Command. “The U.S. personnel were in Pakistan at the request of the Government of Pakistan to assist the Pakistanis with training in support of our long-standing partnership with Pakistan, and this horrific attack will not dissuade that partnership. We extend our sincere condolences to the families and loved ones of those innocent individuals who were killed or injured.”

The names of the deceased are being withheld pending notification of next of kin and release by the Department of Defense. The names of the service members are announced through the U.S. Department of Defense Official Website at http://www.defense.gov. The announcements are made on the Website no earlier than 24 hours after notification of the service members’ primary next of kin.

The wounded service members were evacuated for treatment.

Speaking of Attorney General Eric Holder’s reminder to Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that the criminal justice system “is an extremely effective tool for gathering information,” I just got off the phone with Jack Cloonan, a 27-year veteran of FBI counterterrorism who retired in 2002. Cloonan has interrogated several members of al-Qaeda, including Jamal Ahmed al-Fadl, a onetime bin Laden associate-turned-state witness, and if the FBI had been allowed to proceed with Jose Padilla’s interrogation, Cloonan would have been assigned to interrogate him as well. While Cloonan considers himself “apolitical,” he’s more than a little dissatisfied that conservative politicians who lack any experience  in interrogations are inveighing against the FBI’s handling of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. “What would you expect from Mitch McConnell?” Cloonan said. “They just don’t know what they’re talking about. They really don’t.”

For one thing, despite endless repetition on the right, reading a suspect his Miranda rights does not compel him to cease cooperation with interrogators. “People keep talking about Mirandizing as if it’s a preventive measure, getting someone to shut up, but most critics have never been in position have to Mirandize one,” Cloonan said. “It’s to keep pristine information you’ve already gotten and to have a prosecutable case. It’s not the end of an interview.” Nor does the presence of a lawyer mean a suspect has to be quiet. “The attorney’s gonna say the case against you is significant” and press Abdulmutallab to cooperate — as, he said, has doubtlessly happened by the fact that the would-be Christmas bomber’s family has been brought into his continued discussions with the FBI.

“A lot of people make big a deal out of Mirandizing Abdulmutallab, thinking he’ll clam up and will never talk,” Cloonan said. “What’s gonna work, over the next several weeks, is a bit of gamesmanship. Here’s what we’re looking for — from both the FBI and the attorney — and the U.S. Attorney in Detroit will say this is what he’s got to do. They’ll put together a proffer agreement outlining what his obligations are.” If it comes out that Abdulmutallab “exaggerated or lied about any of it, then it’s void.”

Cloonan ultimately thinks that’s the way the Abdulmutallab case will end: with some form of proffer deal, even one that ends with the 23-year old pleading guilty and serving life in prison. While U.S. intelligence officials are unlikely to get a wide array of information about active plots from al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula from Abdulmutallab — “the notion that Abdulmutallab might be an infinite fount of knowledge presupposes they brought him into inner workings [and] they wouldn’t do it,” he said — the most likely outcome will be to get a better sense of how the terrorist group recruits and trains its operatives. Cloonan even noted that in the days after Abdulmutallab’s initial FBI interview, the Yemeni security forces and CIA drones struck at AQAP. “They’re gonna get all kinds of information from this guy.”

Adam Serwer at The American Prospect gets ahold of a letter from Attorney General Eric Holder responding to some of GOP Senate leader Mitch McConnell’s (R-Ky.) more fact-averse claims about the Obama administration’s handing of would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. A choice excerpt:

Some have argued that had Abdulmutallab been declared an enemy combatant, the government could have held him indefinitely without providing him access to an attorney. But the government’s legal authority to do so is far from clear. In fact, when the Bush administration attempted to deny Jose Padilla access to an attorney, a federal judge in New York rejected that position, ruling that Padilla must be allowed to meet with his lawyer. Notably, the judge in that case was Michael Mukasey, my predecessor as Attorney General. In fact, there is no court-approved system currently in place in which suspected terrorists captured inside the United States can be detained and held without access to an attorney; nor is there any known mechanism to persuade an uncooperative individual to talk to the government that has been proven more effective than the criminal justice system.

Read the whole letter here. Holder adds, “History shows that the federal justice system is an extremely effective tool for gathering information.” More on that shortly.

Speaking of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he just published a blog post reiterating and expanding upon his commitment to repeal the ban on open homosexual military service in a deliberate manner:

“I also believe the great young men and women of our military can and would accommodate such a change, but I do not know this for a fact. I will not deny that during a time of two wars, such a major policy change will cause some disruption in the force. It also seems plausible that there will be legal, social, and perhaps even infrastructure changes to be made. These are some of the issues our review will address. “

Adm. Mike Mullen is now joined by the influential former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff:

“In the almost 17 years since the ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ legislation was passed, attitudes and circumstances have changed,” General Powell said in a statement issued by his office. He added: “I fully support the new approach presented to the Senate Armed Services Committee this week by Secretary of Defense Gates and Admiral Mullen.”

Powell was one of the leading forces behind the 1993 legislation that came to be codified as “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” For Powell to change his mind on the issue is a serious boost to the law’s repeal.

Via John Aravosis.

In an address to the Heritage Foundation filled with unsubstantiated assertions about the Obama administration’s counterterrorism policies, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the GOP Senate leader, made one concrete promise: If the Obama administration moves forward with its plans to try the 9/11 conspirators in civilian courts, “We will do everything they can do deny them the funds to do it. That is my pledge.”

That was about the only substantive remark McConnell made. The speech was filled with assertions that the intelligence community lost access to information from would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab on the very day when the intelligence community is saying the exact opposite and Abdulmutallab is cooperating. (He attempted to square that circle with a baseless assertion that Mirandizing Abdulmutallab cost the Yemeni security forces valuable information for the past several weeks.) McConnell blasted Abdulmutallab’s FBI interrogators for ostensibly not having any “foreign language skills” — which is an evidence-free assertion as well — even though Abdulmutallab speaks English. McConnell called the civilian trial of Zacharias Moussaoui a “disaster,” even though it ended in Moussaoui being sentenced to life in prison. He used Attorney General Eric Holder as a bogeyman, saying it was inappropriate for Holder to make decisions about trying al-Qaeda operatives in federal court given the military implications of that decision, even though Defense Secretary Robert Gates — a Bush appointee — endorsed Holder as the “most qualified” official to make that determination yesterday. He said the Bush administration made a “mistake” by trying terrorists in civilian courts, even though he didn’t raise a word of objection at the time.

Oh, and he even managed to screw up a joke about the Obama administration’s mantra being “ready, fire, aim” by saying it was “ready, aim, fire.”

Lately I’ve been bashing Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, for his performance in a recent Senate hearing. So let me take this opportunity to praise him for his detailed assessment to the House intelligence committee this morning on what al-Qaeda’s actual capabilities for attacking the U.S. look like. I’m going off Blair’s opening statement, which his office emailed to reporters.

“Some of the plots disrupted since 9/11 have involved attacks on a smaller scale than those in 2001, but the most recent plot for which we knew the target was the London-based aviation plot in 2006, which involved mid-air attacks on multiple aircraft,” Blair said in his annual congressional briefing on threats to the country. Nice and caveated. But there’s progress: “We can take it as a sign of the progress that while complex, multiple cell-based attacks could still occur, we are making them very difficult to pull off.”

At the same time, the recent successful and attempted attacks represent an evolving threat in which it is even more difficult to identify and track small numbers of terrorists recently recruited and trained and short- term plots than to find and follow terrorist cells engaged in plots that have been ongoing for years.

Third, while such attacks can do a significant amount of damage, terrorists aiming against the Homeland have not, as yet, been able to attack us with chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear weapons.

Recent disrupted plots, Blair continued, provide clues as to possible targets for attack in the United States: “the Metro system in Washington D.C., bridges, gas infrastructure, reservoirs, residential complexes, and public venues for large gatherings.” Another avenue of potential vulnerability: “We cannot rule out that al-Qa’ida’s interest in damaging the US economy might lead the group to opt for more modest, even ‘low-tech,’ but still high-impact, attacks affecting key economic sectors.” (At the risk of being macabre, AIG’s new bonuses might even make those attacks poll well. … OK, I’ll stop.)

Finally, homegrown Muslim extremism appears to be on the rise. But it has more to do with spreading extremist ideology than actually contributing to attacks, Blair said.

Altogether, a picture of a determined terrorist network, but with significantly reduced capabilities than existed on 9/11.

Unclear why they were there as yet; according to the U.S. embassy in Islamabad they were helping train the Pakistanis in counterinsurgency. But there’s this:

The American soldiers, who may have been part of a training unit, were en route to inspect a proposed site for small-scale development projects that were to be undertaken by the Frontier Corps, a paramilitary force that the American Army has been training, a senior official in the North-West Frontier Province said. …

That American soldiers were involved in development assistance had not been previously known.

Given the sensitivities in Pakistan to a U.S. troop presence, how smart is it to be using soldiers for development work and not, say, civilian development experts? Of course, that’s assuming the embassy’s story is true.

To the Obama administration’s pattern of sticking up for itself on its counterterrorism record, add this:

None of about 48 Guantanamo Bay detainees released or transferred elsewhere by the Obama administration has participated or been suspected of participating in subsequent “recidivist” activity, compared with 20 percent of about 540 detainees released by the George W. Bush administration, according to White House counterterrorism chief John O. Brennan.

“We believe that significant improvements to the detainee review process have contributed to significant improvements in the results,” Brennan said in a letter Monday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

Why not also throw into the mix the administration’s decision to stick the money to close Guantanamo into the Afghanistan war funding, a direct dare to the Republicans to filibuster money for the troops in combat.

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Mo.), the Senate GOP leader, is giving a terrorism speech at the Heritage Foundation later this morning. Because when the nation’s security is imperiled, the first words on everyone’s lips are, “Get me Mitch McConnell.”

Two data points that are almost certainly connected. First:

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the Nigerian man accused of trying to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit on Dec. 25, started talking to investigators after two of his family members arrived in the United States and helped earn his cooperation, a senior administration official said Tuesday evening.

And second:

America’s top intelligence official told lawmakers on Tuesday that Al Qaeda and its affiliates had made it a high priority to attempt a large-scale attack on American soil within the next six months.

The assessment by Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, was much starker than his view last year, when he emphasized the considerable progress in the campaign to debilitate Al Qaeda and said that the global economic meltdown, rather than the prospect of a major terrorist attack, was the “primary near-term security concern of the United States.”

No threat determination like that is ever the result of one line of intelligence. But it’s impossible to believe Abdulmutallab’s resumed cooperation — the subject of heavy administration pushback to its critics, as Josh Marshall observes, after two weeks of attack following Blair’s disastrous congressional testimony — did not inform the assessment. The Times:

Another federal official said Mr. Abdulmutallab had provided information about people he met in Yemen, where he is believed to have receiving training and explosives from Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, a branch of the terrorist network.

“He’s retracing his activities over there,” said the official, who would discuss the case only on the condition of anonymity. “You run to ground what he tells you, validate it and follow up. You build a relationship. It’s a pretty standard process.”

And that cooperation would not have come without Abdulmutallab’s family trying to get him the best deal they can from federal prosecutors. Welcome to a law-enforcement-informed approach to terrorism.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Michael Mullen, right, and Defense Secretary Robert Gates at Tuesday's Senate hearing on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" (James Berglie/ZUMApress.com)

The Pentagon’s top civilian and military leadership made an unequivocal and at times emotional appeal Tuesday to end the decades-long ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the military, and spelled out a year-long process for securing uniformed and congressional support to change the policy.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates expressed his “full support” for President Obama’s call in the State of the Union address to end the so-called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law this year. He announced to the Senate Armed Services Committee that he had asked Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson and Army Gen. Carter Ham to lead a panel studying the implications of repeal across a variety of military concerns: unit cohesion and discipline — the main concern that led Congress to embrace “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in 1993; partner benefits; base housing; “fraternization and base conduct;” and others. In addition, Gates said he planned to ask the Rand Corporation, a leading defense think tank, to update its influential 90s-era study of the impact of gay service on unit cohesion.

Image by: Matt Mahurin

“It is clear to us we must proceed in a manner that allows for thorough examination of all issues” and “minimizes disruption” to a force stressed by two wars, Gates said. The panel will issue its recommendations before the end of 2010, and Gates told the senators he hoped its work would guide the Congress to pass a law overturning “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”

But it was Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who set the hearing’s tone. In 1993, when President Clinton attempted to overturn the ban, the uniformed military rejected the effort, particularly Mullen’s predecessor, Army Gen. Colin Powell. (Powell came out last year for “review[ing]” “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.”) In 2007, Mullen’s immediate predecessor, Marine Gen. Peter Pace, publicly called homosexuality “immoral” and likened it to adultery as a rationale for keeping the gay servicemember ban in place.

This time, however, Mullen — emphasizing that he spoke for himself and not the service chiefs — firmly and powerfully argued for repeal. “It is my personal belief that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do,” Mullen said. He called it an issue of “integrity,” and said his personal experience and introspection led him to reject a policy that he said forces servicemembers to “lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens.”

Several Republicans on the panel, led by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the committee’s ranking Republican, blasted President Obama’s decision to end the gay ban and Gates’ decision to announce his support for it before the Johnson-Ham panel has issued its recommendations. Some suggested that Mullen was carrying Obama’s water instead of presenting his own advice. “If it was a trial, perhaps we’d raise the undue-command-influence defense,” said Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

That drew Mullen’s ire. “I have served with homosexuals since 1968,” the chairman said, raising his voice. “Everyone in the military has… A number of things, cumulatively, for me, get me to this position.” Sen. Carl Levin, the committee’s chairman and a “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” enemy, called Mullen’s comments a “profile in leadership.” After the hearing, Mullen tweeted, “Stand by what I said: Allowing homosexuals to serve openly is the right thing to do. Comes down to integrity.”

A Gallup poll from last May found that 69 percent of American adults favor allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly, and that acceptance of open homosexual military service has increased across all surveyed demographics over the past five years. Several close American allies — including those who have contributed to coalition military efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan — allow open gay military service, including Australia, Israel, the U.K., France, Denmark, Italy, Canada, the Czech Republic and Spain. When asked, Mullen said he was unaware of any problems related to such service that impeded coalition efforts in either war.

Gates signaled that he was disinclined to take unilateral steps to mitigate the enforcement of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” contrary to a piece in Tuesday’s Washington Post. “We obviously recognize that this is up to Congress,” Gates, adding that it was “critical this matter be settled by a vote of the Congress.” Still, the Servicemembers’ Legal Defense Fund, which advocates for the rights of gay servicemembers, said yesterday it had noticed a 30 percent drop in “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” enforcement cases during the first year of the Obama administration.

Congressional repeal is far from certain. Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), one of the few Iraq veterans serving in Congress, has introduced a bill in the House that would repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and claims the support of more than 180 representatives. Yet Rep. Ike Skelton, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is opposed to repeal. Rep. Joe Sestak (D-Penn.), a retired Navy admiral who is running for Senate in Pennsylvania, urged Obama not to wait for Congressional action and urged him to issue an executive order halting “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” enforcement. “In a time of war, we cannot lose any more troops that we depend on to keep our country safe,” Sestak said in a statement emailed to reporters.

Murphy is 36 years old and Skelton is nearly 80. The difference in their attitudes is reflective of what Paul Rieckoff, president of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, called a “generational shift within the military” during a 2007 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “The average 18-year-old has been around gay people, has seen gay people in popular culture, and they’re not this boogeyman in the same way they were to Pete Pace’s generation.” Rieckoff’s quote was cited in a recent anti-”Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” article in the military’s influential Joint Forces Quarterly publication. Among the article’s conclusions: “[T]here is sufficient empirical evidence from foreign militaries to anticipate that incorporating homosexuals will introduce leadership challenges, but the challenges will not be insurmountable or affect unit cohesion and combat effectiveness.”

Mullen indicated his respect for all points of view on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell,” and took pains to emphasize that he was not speaking for the entire military. But he said he believed there was a “gap between that which we value, the military — specifically the value of integrity — and where our policy is.”

Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is perhaps the barometric view here. Mullen said the heads of the military services did not yet have firm military advice for the president. But then, in a hearing just getting underway in the Senate Armed Services Committee, Mullen said that it was his “personal view” that “allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly would be the right thing to do.” It comes down to “integrity,” the nation’s top military officer said.

Robert Gates, the secretary of defense, vowed to proceed in a “thorough” and “deliberate” manner to repeal the law over the next year. He’s creating an advisory panel on the issue. It will be chaired by two Pentagon luminaries: Jeh Johnson, the department’s general counsel, and Gen. Carter Ham, commander of Army forces in Europe.

Mullen, however, is the one who has set the tone for the uniformed military here. He just made repealing DADT kosher.

Update: I initially misheard Mullen as calling it the “right view.” I corrected the quote; apologies.

The only one on the Senate Armed Services Committee this morning who says the defense budget should be on the table for President Obama’s spending freeze is a former Navy secretary — Sen. Jim Webb (D-Va.). Saying that there’s no reason military spending should be “sacrosanct,” Webb urged Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen to “take a hard look at programs that don’t produce a clear bottom line.”

Webb shot out three programs. First, he questioned the wisdom of giving $60 million to Blackwater to train sailors in self-defense on board ships — or, as Webb put it, “how to do their job.” He attacked sending military officers to defense think tanks to serve as fellows, specifically calling out the well-connected Center for a New American Security, which has sent a lot of its own analysts to the Obama State and Defense Departments. “The American taxpayer is funding think tanks that don’t really produce any added value to the Department of Defense,” Webb said. Finally, Webb called out the Pentagon’s “mentorship” program — recently the subject of a USA Today investigative report — that basically allows retired officers who serve in many cases on defense contractor boards to still get Pentagon cash for advising active-duty officers.

Gates deflected Webb’s criticism, saying merely, “We will certainly continue to look at these things.” He defended the mentorship program, but said vaguely to expect “fairly dramatic changes” to its administration, thanks to a study by Deputy Secretary William Lynn.

Carrying forward a conservative attack on the Obama administration’s handling of the interrogation and prosecution of would-be Christmas bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), at this morning’s Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, asked Defense Secretary Robert Gates whether Abdulmutallab should be tried in a military commission instead of a federal court. Gates deferred, not wanting to be dragged in. McCain pressed him for a “candid” answer. “I think the attorney general is in the best position to determine where these people should be tried,” Gates replied. Attorney General Eric Holder, of course, opted to try Abdulmutallab in civilian court — and McCain, in frustration, said that Holder has “botched this very, very badly.”

McCain tried to get Gates to say that military interrogators should have interrogated Abdulmutallab, but Gates replied that “a team of high-expertise FBI and other interrogators could be as effective at interrogating prisoners as anyone operating under the military field manual.” That’s a reference to the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group, whom Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence, erroneously told Congress last week was capable of interrogating Abdulmutallab, even though it isn’t operational yet. McCain didn’t care about this fact, and got Gates to reiterate that the so-called HIG ought to have been on scene. He gave up after failing to get Gates to affirm that FBI interrogators didn’t have enough time to extract information from Abdulmutallab.

Marc Ambinder has a preview of what Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, will tell the Senate Armed Services Committee today about the administration’s plans to end Don’t Ask Don’t Tell. This is step one:

According to an administration official, the most visible of those steps will be to revise the rule that allows third parties — other soldiers or outside accusers — to “out” soldiers and precipitate investigations that lead to their dismissal. Basically: if someone else outs you, you won’t be dismissed. It’s not clear what percentage of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell dismissals would be effected [sic] by this revision.

That’s basically saying the Pentagon will decline to enforce that element of the ban on openly gay servicemembers. The rest of it will take a year and will require a legislative fix. (Rep. Patrick Murphy (D-Pa.), a 36-year old Iraq veteran, is proposing one in the House.) Why a year? Ambinder: “Gates and Mullen will argue that full integration of gays and lesbians must be pursued carefully, in order to protect the rights of gay soldiers and to make sure that the policy, when finally implemented, is well-accepted and seen as legitimate.” That’s the defense secretary’s modus operandi.

Gates and Mullen will talk first about the Pentagon budget and the QDR. This afternoon they’ll pivot the hearing to DADT repeal.

OK, one more Pentagon budget chart. This should give a sense of the Pentagon budget in a broader context. Even through the Bush years, there ran a critique that the U.S. was “only” spending 3.5 percent of GDP on defense. One Rumsfeld enthusiast called that paltry sum dominance “without even breathing hard.” Well, now it’s 4.7 percent of GDP. Feel safer?

Now, it isn’t just increases to the base budget that account for that growth alone. It’s the ongoing expenses of Iraq and Afghanistan — which will end at some point; the Iraq deployment will end next year — and the miserable state of the economy. So we’ll have to see what this looks like going forward. But still — nearly five percent of GDP…