France is experiencing what other Western nations are, or will soon, experience: millions of Muslim youth who identify with the larger and borderless "Muslim World" and less, or not at all, with their host countries. Mosques erected in these countries are growing as rapidly as Starbucks or McDonald's franchises. The same is true in the United States.
[...]
In the United States, a concerted effort is being made to convert more of us to Islam... Why shouldn't we fight back by reaching out to them with our religious and political doctrines? I know Muslims who have been converted and now live peaceful and productive lives among us. We shouldn't passively allow them to proceed with their conversion agenda with no response. Let's peacefully and lovingly share our far better religious and cultural message with them.

The Americans must clearly have been aware of the overall situation at the interior ministry as well as of the specific accusations being made.

Was their dramatic move on Sunday night, surrounding a ministry building, driving its guards out and taking it over, conducted simply in pursuit of a missing teenager, as they asserted?

Or was there a political angle to the development and its timing?

Discrediting Iranian-backed religious Shia factions in advance of the December elections is clearly not something that would cause officials in Washington to lose sleep.

Many students and citizens are eager to take on the mantle of international leadership. Yet most Americans have never been abroad, even on a vacation. Just 20 percent of Americans hold a passport. The United States leads by necessity and default, but it is not as well equipped to exercise its leadership role as it could be. This is not an issue of the left or the right, of Democrats or Republicans. It is an issue of how we as a society prepare this and future generations for the leadership that will be required for the American democratic experiment's ongoing success in the world.

Advocates for flexibility argue that, in fighting terrorism, sometimes the stakes are so high that repugnant measures are justified. One is the so-called "ticking time bomb" scenario, in which a captured terrorist has information on an imminent attack that could kill hundreds or thousands of civilians. Two administration officials, who asked not to be identified because they aren't authorized to speak to the press, said Cheney had described such a scenario several times, in which interrogators using generally approved methods can't pry the particulars out of the prisoner in time to prevent an attack.

He is 33 years old, a student at Birzeit University. He was among the 400 Hamas and Jihad activists whom the Rabin government deported to Lebanon in 1992. According to the GSS [General Security Services], he received training there in terrorist techniques. After a year he was allowed to return with the others to his home in the West Bank, although Israel promptly jailed him for two months (and again for a month in 1994). In March of this year it was the turn of the Palestinian Authority, which put him away until August 27. He was scarcely out when, on October 6, Israel shipped him off to the Megiddo prison under administrative detention. This is a special arrangement, derived from the emergency regulations of the British Mandate, enabling the State to incarcerate people who are not accused of any crime, on the grounds that they might make trouble. After only two weeks, however, on October 24, Hamdan was transferred to the notorious Russian Compound in the heart of West Jerusalem's shopping district. At two a.m. six GSS men began to interrogate him. They tied him into an awkward position, tightening the cuffs on his wrists and ankles, and proceeded with the technique known as shaking. Here an interrogator grabs the victim's shirt collar and whips his head back and forth violently over a prolonged period. This method killed another client of [attorney, Andre] Rosenthal's, Abed Harizath, a year and a half ago.

Later that morning the State of Israel was tied up in traffic jams. The police had placed roadblocks everywhere, looking for terrorists. The jams continued in the following days. It is now claimed (Ha'aretz , Nov. 15) that the information which led to these massive tie-ups came from none other than Muhammad Hamdan. He too was tied up -- in contortions, with a stinking sack over his head, deprived of sleep, for eleven days. As far as we know, no plot was foiled. No terrorist ring was caught. No bomb went off. The roadblocks were eased, and on November 10 the long-standing closure was suddenly relaxed, and thousands of Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza streamed into Israel. Muhammad Hamdan remained tied-up, without sleep, the stinking sack on his head.

Through a released prisoner he managed to get a message out to his family, asking them to find a lawyer. They went to Rosenthal, who got [a] restraining order... . But two days later, in [a] hastily-called night-session of November 14, the GSS lawyers appealed to the High Court. They claimed to have a well-grounded suspicion, based on checked information, that Hamdan possessed vital knowledge which, if extracted immediately, would help prevent major terrorist strikes. Rosenthal was not made privy to the checked information. [...]

The court decided to lift the restraint, thus giving its approval to the continuing torture of Muhammad Hamdan. Rosenthal went home, picturing his client once again being tied-up, sacked, and shaken. In fact the GSS waited till the next morning. The bomb was allowed to tick for ten more hours. So much for immediate danger. They had gotten the judges out of bed, but they let the torturers sleep. (Kol Ha'ir, Nov. 22, 1996.)

Please note: By the time of that night session, five weeks had passed since Hamdan's arrest, and three since the GSS had started torturing him. If there was a ticking bomb, you'd think it would have gone off already!