Is Ashcroft overstating the success of his terror war? A new study of post-9/11 terrorism prosecutions, Criminal Enforcement Against Terrorists and Spies in the Year After the 9/11 Attacks shows that the cases often fizzle:

About 6,400 people were referred by investigators for criminal charges involving terror in the two years after the attacks, but fewer than one-third actually were charged and only 879 were convicted, according to government records reviewed by Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

The median prison sentence was just 14 days, according to a study by clearinghouse co-directors David Burnham and Susan P. Long. Only five people were sentenced to 20 years or more.

Critics seized on the numbers to question whether Attorney General John Ashcroft and other top law enforcement officials have been overstating the success of their anti-terrorism efforts.

Amnesty International has released a new report titled The Pain Merchants:

The administration of U.S. President George W. Bush is violating the spirit of its own export policy by approving the sale of tools to countries known to use them to torture detainees, according to new report released here Tuesday by Amnesty International.

In 2002, U.S. exports of electro-shock weapons and restraints that can be used for torture amounted to some US$14.7 dollars and $4.4 million, respectively, according to the report....

Along with the sales of such equipment, Washington is also reported to have handed over suspects in the ''war on terror'' to the same countries, the 85-page report said.

We've written a few times about the bill passed by Congress last week that now awaits Bush's sure signature--the bill expanding the power of the FBI to seize business records through submission of 'national security letters' without every having to approach a judge.

Warblogging has a long and scary analysis of what it means for non-terrorist Americans.

The military goofs again.....Guantanamo Chaplain Captain James Yee is freed, the espionage charges against him are dropped and now he faces new charges of adultery.

This is unbelievable. Canada, which at least has appeared to be sympathetic to the plight of Maher Arar, whom the U.S. grabbed at JFK changing planes and deported to Syria where he says he was tortured, is now preparing to do the same thing to a suspect in its custody.

The federal government is moving to deport a suspected terrorist to Syria. Hassan Almrei, who recently ended a 40-day hunger strike at a Toronto-area jail, has admitted to using a false passport and making several visits to Afghanistan as a guerrilla fighter. Almrei, 29, will be deported within 2 1/2 weeks, a government official told a judge at a hearing Monday.

The Syrian refugee has been detained for the last two years on a security certificate, accused of being a part of an international document forgery ring with ties to al Qaeda. Almrei's last chance to stay in Canada now rests with a federal court judge, who could stay the deportation order until a court determines his status. A stay application is set to be heard on Wednesday in Toronto.

Almrei, who fled to Canada from Syria fours years ago and was given refugee status, says he will be tortured and maybe even killed if he is returned to the country of his birth.

How can a civilized country like Canada even contemplate returning a human being, any human being, to a country that practices torture? Its government today said relations with the U.S. have been strained by the Maher Arar case and called upon us not to send any more of its citizens to third countries--it has given lip service to considering an inquiry into the Maher Arar torture allegations.....yet it turns around and commits the same injustice against one of its detainees that the U.S. committed against Maher Arar?

Maher Arar sued Syria and Jordan today, charging he was beaten during his ten month detention there. No charges were filed against him. Arar is seeking "$31 million for kidnapping, false imprisonment and torture." We hope he gets every penny.

Michael Isikoff of Newsweek reports on how the Justice Department is using a Patriot Act provision that allows it to obtain financial records of suspected terrorists or money launderers in non-terror cases:

In effect, the Patriot Act allows the Feds to search every financial institution in the country for the records of anybody they have suspicions about -- the very definition, critics say, of a fishing expedition. Law enforcement agencies can submit the name of any suspect to the Treasury Department, which then orders financial institutions across the country to search their records for any matches. If they get a "hit" -- evidence that the person has an account -- the financial institution is slapped with a subpoena for the person's records.

....It's the Patriot Act's money-laundering language that has allowed the Feds
to stretch the way the law can be used. Essentially, money laundering is an effort to disguise illicit profits. But it's such a broad statute that prosecutors can use it in the pursuit of more than 200 different federal crimes, Isikoff reports. Treasury Department figures reviewed by Newsweek show that this year the Feds have used the Patriot Act to conduct searches on 962 suspects, yielding "hits" on 6,397 financial records. Of those, two thirds (4,261) were in money-laundering cases with no terror connection. Among the agencies making requests, Newsweek has learned, were the IRS (which investigates tax fraud), the Postal Service (postal fraud) and the Secret Service counterfeiting). One request came from the Agriculture Department -- a case that apparently involved food stamp fraud.

The FBI is returning to tactics used during the days of J. Edgar Hoover. According to an FBI memo sent to local law enforcement agencies last month, the F.B.I. is investigating anti-war protest movements and protesters:

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has collected extensive information on the tactics, training and organization of antiwar demonstrators and has advised local law enforcement officials to report any suspicious activity at protests to its counterterrorism squads, according to interviews and a confidential bureau memorandum.

The memorandum, which the bureau sent to local law enforcement agencies last month in advance of antiwar demonstrations in Washington and San Francisco, detailed how protesters have sometimes used "training camps" to rehearse for demonstrations, the Internet to raise money and gas masks to defend against tear gas. The memorandum analyzed lawful activities like recruiting demonstrators, as well as illegal activities like using fake documentation to get into a secured site.

Is this supposed to reassure us?

F.B.I. officials said in interviews that the intelligence-gathering effort was aimed at identifying anarchists and "extremist elements" plotting violence, not at monitoring the political speech of law-abiding protesters.

It doesn't.

The House-Senate conference negotiators Wednesday hammered out a compromise version of separate bills passed by the House and Senate granting more power to the FBI in obtaining business records.

The measure gives the Federal Bureau of Investigation greater authority to demand records from businesses in terrorism cases without the approval of a judge or a grand jury. While banks, credit unions and other financial institutions are currently subject to such demands, the measure expands the list to include car dealers, pawnbrokers, travel agents, casinos and other businesses.

The expansion, included in the 2004 authorization bill for intelligence agencies, has already been approved by both the House and the Senate, and lawmakers from both chambers approved the provision as part of the larger bill in a private session late Wednesday, officials said. Law enforcement officials said the F.B.I. would gain greater speed and flexibility in tracing suspected terrorist money.

Senator Richard J. Durbin (D-IL) unsuccessfully tried to get the negotiators to pass a sunset provision to the new bill.

At the Center for Democracy and Technology, you can read the testimony provided by its executive director at Tuesday's hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee on government abuses in the name of the war on terror.

Since 9/11, the federal government has engaged in serious abuses of constitutional and human rights, CDT Executive Director Jim Dempsey testifies before the Senate Judiciary Committee November 18. The most egregious of these abuses have taken place outside of the PATRIOT Act or any other Congressional authorization. In the PATRIOT Act itself, Congress eliminated crucial checks and balances that should now be restored in the interest of both freedom and security.

This is very funny....from Big Channel News....the war on terror has ended with the capture of a famous suspect.

Via Patriot Watch:

"The Senate Committee on the Judiciary will hold a hearing on Tuesday, November 18, 2003, at 9:30 a.m. in Room 226 of the Senate Dirksen Office Building on “America after 9/11: Freedom Preserved or Freedom Lost?”

The Republican strategy is to make this a hearing about and only about the ACLU and the PATRIOT Act. Republicans will attempt to limit the scope of the hearing to the PATRIOT Act and avoid other post 9-11 administration policies like the incommunicado detention of enemy combatants (including U.S. citizens) without charge, trial, or access to counsel, and the abuse of post 9-11 detainees.

The Center for American Progress in their Progress Report suggests the following questions for tomorrow's hearing:

Via Behind the Homefront.....American troops in Iraq are becoming more antagonistic to the media:

Media people have been detained, news equipment has been confiscated and some journalists have suffered verbal and physical abuse while trying to report on events. Although the number of incidents involving soldiers and journalists is difficult to gauge, anecdotal evidence suggests it has risen sharply the past two months.

The Associated Press has complained to the Pentagon about the hostile treatment.

``The effect has been to deprive the American public of crucial images from Iraq in newspapers, broadcast stations and online news operations,'' wrote Stuart Wilk, managing editor of The Dallas Morning News.