[UPDATE]: Shorter Obama administration: “We’re just doing what Bush did!” Which is: a), a direct contradiction of the video below; and b), a direct contradiction of the LA Times article below. Impressive: you would have thought that they’d pick one or the other.

Representative Mike Rogers (R-MI) has a serious problem with our new GWOT strategy in Afghanistan. Specifically, the way we plan to read captured, foreign illegal combatants their Miranda rights:

…the Obama Justice Department has quietly ordered FBI agents to read Miranda rights to high value detainees captured and held at U.S. detention facilities in Afghanistan, according a senior Republican on the House Intelligence Committee. “The administration has decided to change the focus to law enforcement. Here’s the problem. You have foreign fighters who are targeting US troops today – foreign fighters who go to another country to kill Americans. We capture them…and they’re reading them their rights – Mirandizing these foreign fighters,” says Representative Mike Rogers, who recently met with military, intelligence and law enforcement officials on a fact-finding trip to Afghanistan.

Rogers, a former FBI special agent and U.S. Army officer, says the Obama administration has not briefed Congress on the new policy. “I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

Partial confirmation of this can be found in this LA Times article, which does in fact indicate that the intent is that even foreign jihadis captured on the battlefield will be assumed to be eventually put on trial - and thus, require that they be given the same basic rights that we extend to anyone arrested for a domestic crime on American soil.  The Weekly Standard piece also reports that human rights organizations in Afghanistan are already routinely counseling captured enemy combatants to keep silent except to demand an attorney.

If you’re asking yourself right now, “Didn’t the President say something reassuring about this precise situation?” - the answer is Yes.  Yes, he did.

(Video links via here)

But you didn’t believe him, did you?

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.