For me, the prospect of KSM grandstanding at his trial falls into I-wish-a-motherfucker-would territory. I want to hear how KSM builds a case against America, because everyone will hear how laughably conspiratorial and clownish it is. Think of what a cathartic moment it will be when America sees the face of the man considered to be UBL’s most efficient henchman and he delivers a pitiful harangue to a bank of cameras. No one will be emboldened to do anything but laugh. The only downside will be his inevitable discussion of how CIA operatives tortured him.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Thursday questioned why Pakistani officials have not been able to capture or kill members of al Qaeda taking refuge in the country.

“Al Qaeda has had safe haven in Pakistan since 2002,” she told a group of Pakistani journalists during her trip to the country.

“I find it hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where they are and couldn’t get them if they really wanted to … Maybe that’s the case,” she added. “Maybe they’re not gettable. I don’t know.”

Al Qaeda, she said, has launched attacks on Indonesia, the Philippines and many other countries, “so the world has an interest in seeing the capture and killing of the people who are the masterminds of this terrorist syndicate.”

“As far as we know, they are in Pakistan.”

Among the alternatives being presented to Mr. Obama is Mr. Biden’s suggestion to revamp the strategy altogether. Instead of increasing troops, officials said Mr. Biden had proposed scaling back the overall American military presence. Rather than trying to protect the Afghan population from the Taliban, American forces would concentrate on strikes against Qaeda cells, primarily in Pakistan, using special forces, Predator missile attacks and other surgical tactics.

The Americans would accelerate training of Afghan forces and provide support as they took the lead against the Taliban. But the emphasis would shift to Pakistan. Mr. Biden has often said that the United States spends something like $30 in Afghanistan for every $1 in Pakistan, even though in his view the main threat to American national security interests is in Pakistan.

American commandos killed one of the most wanted Islamic militants in Africa in a daylight raid in southern Somalia on Monday, according to American and Somali officials, an indication of the Obama administration’s willingness to use combat troops strategically against Al Qaeda’s growing influence in the region.

‘This type of radical fundamentalism or terrorism is a threat not only to the United States but to the global community,’ Jones said. ‘The world is coming together on this matter now that President Obama has taken the leadership on it and is approaching it in a slightly different way – actually a radically different way – to discuss things with other rulers to enhance the working relationships with law enforcement agencies – both national and international.’

Jones said that ‘we are seeing results that indicate more captures, more deaths of radical leaders and a kind of a global coming-together by the fact that this is a threat to not only the United States but to the world at-large and the world is moving toward doing something about it.’

President Barack Obama on Friday is to unveil a new offensive against terror havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan, aiming to deal a death blow to Al-Qaeda more than seven years after the September 11 attacks.

To win a war aides said was “adrift” the new president will dispatch 4,000 extra troops to train the Afghan army, on top of 17,000 deployments already authorized, in a bold move in defiance of critics who fear a quagmire.

Obama also will send hundreds more civilian officials into Afghanistan and stump up billions of dollars of extra aid to help anti-terror ally Pakistan secure its democracy, senior administration officials said.

“It is a clear, concise, attainable goal, and that goal is to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al-Qaeda in its safe havens in Afghanistan and Pakistan,” one of the officials said on condition of anonymity.

Al-Qaeda is watching the U.S. stock market’s downward slide with something akin to jubilation, with its leaders hailing the financial crisis as a vindication of its strategy of crippling America’s economy through endless, costly foreign wars against Islamist insurgents.

And at least some of its supporters think Sen. John McCain is the presidential candidate best suited to continue that trend.

‘Al-Qaeda will have to support McCain in the coming election,’ said a commentary posted Monday on the extremist Web site al-Hesbah, which is closely linked to the terrorist group. It said the Arizona Republican would continue the ‘failing march of his predecessor,’ President Bush.

“A federal appeals court has slammed the reliability of U.S. government intelligence documents, saying just because officials keep repeating their assertions does not make them true.

A guard looks over the U.S. military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in this file photo.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington likened the Bush administration’s case to a line in an 1876 nonsense poem by Lewis Carroll: ‘I have said it thrice: What I tell you three times is true.’”

Current and former military and intelligence officials said that the war in Iraq consistently diverted resources and high-level attention from the tribal areas. When American military and intelligence officials requested additional Predator drones to survey the tribal areas, they were told no drones were available because they had been sent to Iraq.

The Bush administration let Al Qaeda grow and fester inside Pakistan, refused to do anything lest they offend Musharraf, and then diverted the resources needed to bring the hammer down on Al Qaeda in order for Bush to exorcise his daddy’s demons by invading and occupying Iraq.

Heck of a job.

Yeah, this is a totally good reason for why we should elect more Republicans: not enough of us are dead yet, apparently.

The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let’s talk about 9/11.

The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors – the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we’d be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership – the people who murdered 3000 Americans – have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That’s the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism.

Al Qaeda killed Americans. Al Qaeda still lives and grows. Thanks to the right.

The only way to defeat the terrorists is to have a president like Barack Obama. Elect a Bush flunky like McCain and we’ll get what we’ve gotten the last 7 years: Dead Americans.

MORE: Obama Campaign Rolls Out Richard Clarke To Hit Back At McCain’s “Sept. 10th Mindset” Attack

The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the Constitution to challenge their detention in U.S. civilian courts.

In its third rebuke of the Bush administration’s treatment of prisoners, the court ruled 5-4 that the government is violating the rights of prisoners being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba. The court’s liberal justices were in the majority.

This is another reason we must elect Barack Obama. End the bull that passes for legal theory on the conservative side and return us to a system of laws that will always trump the terrorists.

These are not “gaffes” from John Mccain – who thinks we should stay in Iraq for at least 100 years – he honestly is clueless on these issues and uses his military service as a crutch for just being dumb.

When did we declare war?

We didn’t. We haven’t since 1942.

On or just after 9/11 I said we should declare war against Al Qaeda. We haven’t, yet conservatives regularly try to assert powers and exceptions that only apply as a result of a formal declaration of war.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has approved the military’s most ambitious plan yet to fight terrorism around the world and retaliate more rapidly and decisively in the case of another major terrorist attack on the United States, according to defense officials.

…

Details of the plans are secret, but in general they envision a significantly expanded role for the military — and, in particular, a growing force of elite Special Operations troops — in continuous operations to combat terrorism outside of war zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan. Developed over about three years by the Special Operations Command (SOCOM) in Tampa, the plans reflect a beefing up of the Pentagon’s involvement in domains traditionally handled by the Central Intelligence Agency and the State Department.

Because they’re so focused on selling the Iraq War mistake, the Bush administration and the media won’t admit that most of the fighting that needs to occur to defeat terror networks doesn’t involving a major league shooting war. Eliminating terror cells and support networks in nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia (among others) will take subterfuge and stealth, things our armed forces are capable of no matter how inept their civilian leadership is. There also needs to be – still – more resource sharing among the various agencies involved in this fight. That we’ve allowed these groups to grow while our resources are died up in protection and nation building in Iraq is a travesty. We’ll be dealing with the consequences of that for some time to come.

UPDATE: And look who’s alive and still taunting us.