Saturday, November 20, 2010
Thursday, November 18, 2010
Sunday, November 14, 2010
The Jewish People vs George Soros
The Jewish People vs George Soros
I spent yesterday evening in the company of a man whose grandfather spent much of the Holocaust dressed in a Nazi uniform. The difference between him and George Soros, is that he used that uniform as a disguise in order to find Jewish refugees and lead them to shelter. And that difference is a profound one. It is the difference between a perpetrator and a rescuer. Between a collaborator and a hero.
Soros did not wear a Nazi uniform, but he might as well have, because he aided in the persecution of the Jews of Europe, without compassion, without guilt and without regret. Various excuses have been made for his actions, and none of them hold the least bit of water.
Yes Soros was only a teenager at the time. So was my father, who nevertheless escaped to join the partisans, rather than accompanying a Nazi officer in his search for Jewish property he could loot. He had no choice? He certainly had a choice. Even in the worst of times, people still can and do make moral choices. And the choice for everyone, for Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Frenchmen and so on down the line-- was to collaborate with evil, or to do the right thing.
George Soros made the wrong choice then. As he has made the wrong choice over and over again. And he has never regretted any of them. And the one thing that clearly emerges from that, is that he has no understanding that evil is wrong. That participating in the persecution and murder of Jews is wrong. He didn't know it back then, while the Holocaust was going on. He doesn't know it today, when he helps set up and fund organizations like J Street, whose sole purpose is to help the Muslim terrorists who are murdering Jews today.
The liberal media which is busy defending Soros as a victim of the Holocaust and a survivor should find the bare decency to remain silent for once. To call Soros a Holocaust survivor is an obscenity. Soros was not victimized by the Holocaust. He was never targeted by it. He was on the other side of the line. The side that was pulling the trigger, running the gas chambers and sorting the gold teeth. Soros was not a victim, he was a perpetrator. Yes, he was only a teenager, but we do jail teenagers as accomplices to crimes much milder than that of collaborating in genocide.
Liberal using charges of Anti-Semitism to silence critics of Soros is one of the most profoundly cynical exercises imaginable, by people who routinely mock the idea that their bias again Israel is in any way motivated by Anti-Semitism. It is all the more cynical, because Soros has described himself as growing up in a "Jewish, Anti-Semitic home" and suggested that Jewish behavior causes Anti-Semitism. Defending criticism of a billionaire Anti-Semite as Anti-Semitism is thoroughly surreal. It's an inversion of the meaning of the word that punches a hole through reason and all the way over into the other side.
Soros has funded organizations that actively promoted Anti-Semitic smears against Jews. MoveOn's bulletins have linked to sites like CounterPunch, a site which actually published an article in defense of blood libels. One bulletin linked to pieces which accused Jews of dual loyalty, claimed that a small group of Jewish elites monopolize foreign policy and began with a "special feature" from former Klansman, Senator Byrd. All this is from an organization funded by George Soros. A man so reviled within the Jewish community that his funding for J Street had to be kept secret for fear of a backlash against the entire group.
The media's implication that criticism of Soros is an attack on Jews as a whole is mind-bogglingly false. When even an organization aimed at liberal Jews actually has to hide its Soros funding, it is safe to say that Herr Soros is not representative of the Jewish community. After a failed attempt to scam money out of a Jewish charity in his youth, Soros has avoided Jewish organizations and Jewish causes. J Street is one of those exceptions, only because it is an Anti-Jewish organizations masquerading as a Jewish organization.
Soros has said that he doesn't want to be part of any Jewish national existence, and that the solution to Anti-Semitism is for Jews to "give up on the tribalness". His narrative has always been to blame Anti-Semitism on Jews and on Israel. And frankly that is the essence of what Anti-Semitism is. Blame the victim. And there's every reason for Soros to do that. because he helps the perpetrators. And that seems to have been a lifelong hobby with him.
Soros' father identified with Germans, more than with Jews. Like some of that type, he wanted to be more German, than the Germans. After Nazi Germany fell, George seemed to hold a special animus for the countries that had defeated the Third Reich. His political and economic primarily war targeted America, Europe and Russia. The countries and societies that had destroyed Hitler's dream of world conquest. Whether that is deliberate or not, is not a question I can answer. But if Soros had strongly resented the Allied forces that shut down National Socialism, then his likely course of behavior would be the same one that he has followed. To find weak spots in the system, exploit them to make money and then use that money to bring those societies and countries down.
Over the years Soros has made it very clear that he doesn't like Jews, and doesn't want to be associated with them. This wasn't an aberration that developed during the Holocaust, but runs in his family. His father changed his last name from Schwartz to Soros. His ex-wife has stated that Soros' mother disliked her, because she was "openly Jewish". In his biography, Soros agreed that his ex-wife's Jewishness was the problem. He even referred to his own mother as a "Jewish Anti-Semite". Indeed Soros' mother disliked Jews so much, she ended up converting.
George Soros has not converted, but he considers himself an atheist and like the rest of his family, is hostile to Jews. He has mentioned an "antipathy" to Jewish organizations, one which he dates back to his time delivering deportation orders to Jewish lawyers. At one point he describes his Jewishness as a "secret shame" that required psychoanalysis. While Soros has said that he has no guilt over his Nazi collaboration, he apparently did feel guilt for whatever Jewishness he still felt he had. That is not the attitude of a moral man, but of a man who enjoyed being a Nazi, but hated being Jewish. With that kind of attitude, it's no wonder that Soros acts the way he does.
But having excluded himself from the Jewish community and having waged war against the places and countries where Jews are secure-- having even funded Anti-Semitic organizations, he has absolutely no right to try and hide from criticism over his political activities by using his front groups to denounce critics as Anti-Semitic. Certainly not by claiming to be a Holocaust survivor, when he was actually a collaborator. His front groups have produced and circulated materials that accused American Jews of secret conspiracies, that certainly meet the same test that his front groups are now using to argue that Beck is engaging in Anti-Semitism.
But Soros is never held to the standards of the people he wages war on. Soros destroys the savings of British pensioners, while using the money to fund left wing groups which claim to care about the plight of the poor. Now left wing groups which promote Anti-Semitism are accusing Soros critics of being Anti-Semitic. To them it's just a word. Another weapon they can use to promote their agenda. To us however it's not just a word. It's a reality. It's a reality that Jews have been living with for a very long time now.
For thousands of years, the Jewish people have survived persecution, outlived genocide, and every form of oppression under the sun. And during all that time, there have been Jewish survivors and heroes, and collaborators as well. The upcoming holiday of Chanukah is the story of Jews who refused to collaborate. On the other hand, the story of Soros is the story of those who brought pigs on altars. Who hated their Jewishness and eagerly sought to join with the oppressors. Soros is only one of that number. But it is not the collaborators or the traitors who continue on. They die and turn to dust. Their malice may be great and the harm they cause terrible, but like all mortals, they still perish and pass away. But the Nation of Israel, like the lights of the Menorah, go on.
I spent yesterday evening in the company of a man whose grandfather spent much of the Holocaust dressed in a Nazi uniform. The difference between him and George Soros, is that he used that uniform as a disguise in order to find Jewish refugees and lead them to shelter. And that difference is a profound one. It is the difference between a perpetrator and a rescuer. Between a collaborator and a hero.
Soros did not wear a Nazi uniform, but he might as well have, because he aided in the persecution of the Jews of Europe, without compassion, without guilt and without regret. Various excuses have been made for his actions, and none of them hold the least bit of water.
Yes Soros was only a teenager at the time. So was my father, who nevertheless escaped to join the partisans, rather than accompanying a Nazi officer in his search for Jewish property he could loot. He had no choice? He certainly had a choice. Even in the worst of times, people still can and do make moral choices. And the choice for everyone, for Jews, Germans, Ukrainians, Poles, Frenchmen and so on down the line-- was to collaborate with evil, or to do the right thing.
George Soros made the wrong choice then. As he has made the wrong choice over and over again. And he has never regretted any of them. And the one thing that clearly emerges from that, is that he has no understanding that evil is wrong. That participating in the persecution and murder of Jews is wrong. He didn't know it back then, while the Holocaust was going on. He doesn't know it today, when he helps set up and fund organizations like J Street, whose sole purpose is to help the Muslim terrorists who are murdering Jews today.
The liberal media which is busy defending Soros as a victim of the Holocaust and a survivor should find the bare decency to remain silent for once. To call Soros a Holocaust survivor is an obscenity. Soros was not victimized by the Holocaust. He was never targeted by it. He was on the other side of the line. The side that was pulling the trigger, running the gas chambers and sorting the gold teeth. Soros was not a victim, he was a perpetrator. Yes, he was only a teenager, but we do jail teenagers as accomplices to crimes much milder than that of collaborating in genocide.
Liberal using charges of Anti-Semitism to silence critics of Soros is one of the most profoundly cynical exercises imaginable, by people who routinely mock the idea that their bias again Israel is in any way motivated by Anti-Semitism. It is all the more cynical, because Soros has described himself as growing up in a "Jewish, Anti-Semitic home" and suggested that Jewish behavior causes Anti-Semitism. Defending criticism of a billionaire Anti-Semite as Anti-Semitism is thoroughly surreal. It's an inversion of the meaning of the word that punches a hole through reason and all the way over into the other side.
Soros has funded organizations that actively promoted Anti-Semitic smears against Jews. MoveOn's bulletins have linked to sites like CounterPunch, a site which actually published an article in defense of blood libels. One bulletin linked to pieces which accused Jews of dual loyalty, claimed that a small group of Jewish elites monopolize foreign policy and began with a "special feature" from former Klansman, Senator Byrd. All this is from an organization funded by George Soros. A man so reviled within the Jewish community that his funding for J Street had to be kept secret for fear of a backlash against the entire group.
The media's implication that criticism of Soros is an attack on Jews as a whole is mind-bogglingly false. When even an organization aimed at liberal Jews actually has to hide its Soros funding, it is safe to say that Herr Soros is not representative of the Jewish community. After a failed attempt to scam money out of a Jewish charity in his youth, Soros has avoided Jewish organizations and Jewish causes. J Street is one of those exceptions, only because it is an Anti-Jewish organizations masquerading as a Jewish organization.
Soros has said that he doesn't want to be part of any Jewish national existence, and that the solution to Anti-Semitism is for Jews to "give up on the tribalness". His narrative has always been to blame Anti-Semitism on Jews and on Israel. And frankly that is the essence of what Anti-Semitism is. Blame the victim. And there's every reason for Soros to do that. because he helps the perpetrators. And that seems to have been a lifelong hobby with him.
Soros' father identified with Germans, more than with Jews. Like some of that type, he wanted to be more German, than the Germans. After Nazi Germany fell, George seemed to hold a special animus for the countries that had defeated the Third Reich. His political and economic primarily war targeted America, Europe and Russia. The countries and societies that had destroyed Hitler's dream of world conquest. Whether that is deliberate or not, is not a question I can answer. But if Soros had strongly resented the Allied forces that shut down National Socialism, then his likely course of behavior would be the same one that he has followed. To find weak spots in the system, exploit them to make money and then use that money to bring those societies and countries down.
Over the years Soros has made it very clear that he doesn't like Jews, and doesn't want to be associated with them. This wasn't an aberration that developed during the Holocaust, but runs in his family. His father changed his last name from Schwartz to Soros. His ex-wife has stated that Soros' mother disliked her, because she was "openly Jewish". In his biography, Soros agreed that his ex-wife's Jewishness was the problem. He even referred to his own mother as a "Jewish Anti-Semite". Indeed Soros' mother disliked Jews so much, she ended up converting.
George Soros has not converted, but he considers himself an atheist and like the rest of his family, is hostile to Jews. He has mentioned an "antipathy" to Jewish organizations, one which he dates back to his time delivering deportation orders to Jewish lawyers. At one point he describes his Jewishness as a "secret shame" that required psychoanalysis. While Soros has said that he has no guilt over his Nazi collaboration, he apparently did feel guilt for whatever Jewishness he still felt he had. That is not the attitude of a moral man, but of a man who enjoyed being a Nazi, but hated being Jewish. With that kind of attitude, it's no wonder that Soros acts the way he does.
But having excluded himself from the Jewish community and having waged war against the places and countries where Jews are secure-- having even funded Anti-Semitic organizations, he has absolutely no right to try and hide from criticism over his political activities by using his front groups to denounce critics as Anti-Semitic. Certainly not by claiming to be a Holocaust survivor, when he was actually a collaborator. His front groups have produced and circulated materials that accused American Jews of secret conspiracies, that certainly meet the same test that his front groups are now using to argue that Beck is engaging in Anti-Semitism.
But Soros is never held to the standards of the people he wages war on. Soros destroys the savings of British pensioners, while using the money to fund left wing groups which claim to care about the plight of the poor. Now left wing groups which promote Anti-Semitism are accusing Soros critics of being Anti-Semitic. To them it's just a word. Another weapon they can use to promote their agenda. To us however it's not just a word. It's a reality. It's a reality that Jews have been living with for a very long time now.
For thousands of years, the Jewish people have survived persecution, outlived genocide, and every form of oppression under the sun. And during all that time, there have been Jewish survivors and heroes, and collaborators as well. The upcoming holiday of Chanukah is the story of Jews who refused to collaborate. On the other hand, the story of Soros is the story of those who brought pigs on altars. Who hated their Jewishness and eagerly sought to join with the oppressors. Soros is only one of that number. But it is not the collaborators or the traitors who continue on. They die and turn to dust. Their malice may be great and the harm they cause terrible, but like all mortals, they still perish and pass away. But the Nation of Israel, like the lights of the Menorah, go on.
Thursday, October 21, 2010
Parallels of Lincoln and Obama .....
I'm sure most of us have read the so-called comparison of Lincoln and Kennedy, but did you ever consider the relationship between Obama and Lincoln? You might be surprised.
Parallels of Abraham Lincoln and B. H. Obama:
1. Lincoln placed his hand on the Bible for his inauguration. Obama used the same Bible.
2. Lincoln came from Illinois . Obama comes from Illinois .
3. Lincoln served in the Illinois Legislature. Obama served in the Illinois Legislature.
4. Lincoln had much experience before becoming President. Obama had very little experience before becoming President.
5. Lincoln rode the train from Philadelphia to Washington for his inauguration. Obama rode the train from Philadelphia to Washington for his inauguration.
6. Lincoln was a skinny lawyer. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
7. Lincoln was a Republican. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
8. Lincoln was in the United States military. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
9. Lincoln believed in everyone carrying their own weight. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
10. Lincoln did not waste taxpayers' money on personal enjoyments. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
11. Lincoln was highly respected. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
12. Lincoln was born in the United States . Obama is a skinny lawyer.
13. Lincoln was honest, so honest he was called Honest Abe. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
14. Lincoln saved the United States . Obama is a skinny lawyer.
Parallels of Abraham Lincoln and B. H. Obama:
1. Lincoln placed his hand on the Bible for his inauguration. Obama used the same Bible.
2. Lincoln came from Illinois . Obama comes from Illinois .
3. Lincoln served in the Illinois Legislature. Obama served in the Illinois Legislature.
4. Lincoln had much experience before becoming President. Obama had very little experience before becoming President.
5. Lincoln rode the train from Philadelphia to Washington for his inauguration. Obama rode the train from Philadelphia to Washington for his inauguration.
6. Lincoln was a skinny lawyer. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
7. Lincoln was a Republican. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
8. Lincoln was in the United States military. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
9. Lincoln believed in everyone carrying their own weight. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
10. Lincoln did not waste taxpayers' money on personal enjoyments. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
11. Lincoln was highly respected. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
12. Lincoln was born in the United States . Obama is a skinny lawyer.
13. Lincoln was honest, so honest he was called Honest Abe. Obama is a skinny lawyer.
14. Lincoln saved the United States . Obama is a skinny lawyer.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
Barney Frank, Then and Now
by Greg Mankiw
A news story from 2003:
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry....
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
A news story from yesterday:
In a sharp-edged debut debate, US Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat, and Sean Bielat, his Republican challenger, squared off yesterday over national security, illegal immigration, and the roots of the mortgage crisis....
Bielat, a former Marine officer from Brookline, said Frank had contributed to the downfall and subsequent recession by supporting lenient lending standards for prospective home buyers.
“He has long been an advocate for extending homeownership, even to those who couldn’t afford it, regardless of the cost to the American people,’’ said Bielat, 35.
Frank, a leading liberal who has represented the state’s Fourth Congressional District for nearly 30 years and became chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007, said he and other Democrats fought to curb predatory lending practices before the recession but were thwarted by Republicans. He said he had supported efforts to help low-income families rent homes, rather than buy them.
“Low-income home ownership has been a mistake, and I have been a consistent critic of it,’’ said Frank, 70. Republicans, he said, were principally responsible for failing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants the government seized in September 2008.
A news story from 2003:
The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago.
Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry....
Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the National Association of Home Builders and Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.
''These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis,'' said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ''The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.''
A news story from yesterday:
In a sharp-edged debut debate, US Representative Barney Frank, a Democrat, and Sean Bielat, his Republican challenger, squared off yesterday over national security, illegal immigration, and the roots of the mortgage crisis....
Bielat, a former Marine officer from Brookline, said Frank had contributed to the downfall and subsequent recession by supporting lenient lending standards for prospective home buyers.
“He has long been an advocate for extending homeownership, even to those who couldn’t afford it, regardless of the cost to the American people,’’ said Bielat, 35.
Frank, a leading liberal who has represented the state’s Fourth Congressional District for nearly 30 years and became chairman of the House Financial Services Committee in 2007, said he and other Democrats fought to curb predatory lending practices before the recession but were thwarted by Republicans. He said he had supported efforts to help low-income families rent homes, rather than buy them.
“Low-income home ownership has been a mistake, and I have been a consistent critic of it,’’ said Frank, 70. Republicans, he said, were principally responsible for failing to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage giants the government seized in September 2008.
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
President Obama Quotes Jimi Hendrix
From Little Green Footballs
Right wingers are getting all huffy about President Obama’s off the cuff line, but this is Obama at his best. Our quote of the day, by far:
They talk about me like a dog.
In case you didn’t recognize the quote (and I don’t know if Obama really intended it), it’s a verbatim line from Jimi Hendrix’s ode to being a total freak, “Stone Free.”
Right wingers are getting all huffy about President Obama’s off the cuff line, but this is Obama at his best. Our quote of the day, by far:
They talk about me like a dog.
In case you didn’t recognize the quote (and I don’t know if Obama really intended it), it’s a verbatim line from Jimi Hendrix’s ode to being a total freak, “Stone Free.”
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Dr Laura
To Dr Laura I say scoot
You make me tear my hairs out at the root
When I hear you I shudder
And I always mutter
Wishing that you could be rendered mute
You make me tear my hairs out at the root
When I hear you I shudder
And I always mutter
Wishing that you could be rendered mute
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Joys of Muslim Women
This was written by a woman born in Egypt as a Muslim. This is not heresy, and it will scare you.
Joys of Muslim Women by Nonie Darwish
In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child, consummating the marriage by 9. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.
Even though a woman is abused, she can not obtain a divorce.
To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses.
Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and the man does not have to say why he has beaten her.
The husband is permitted to have 4 wives and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.
The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.
In the Western World ( America ) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending US and Canadian Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.
By passing this on, enlightened US and Canadian women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law.
Ripping the West in Two. Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.
She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.
Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to the US in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel . He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza
When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.
But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.
In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.
For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.
Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.
While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.
While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.
It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.
While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.
In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. and Canada to elect the President or Prime Minister by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA and Canada , Dearborn Mich. is one, Brampton , Ontario is another and there are others...
I think everyone in the U.S. and Canada should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!
It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.. the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion. While the US and Canada are getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on the US and Canada..
Joys of Muslim Women by Nonie Darwish
In the Muslim faith a Muslim man can marry a child as young as 1 year old and have sexual intimacy with this child, consummating the marriage by 9. The dowry is given to the family in exchange for the woman (who becomes his slave) and for the purchase of the private parts of the woman, to use her as a toy.
Even though a woman is abused, she can not obtain a divorce.
To prove rape, the woman must have (4) male witnesses.
Often after a woman has been raped, she is returned to her family and the family must return the dowry. The family has the right to execute her (an honor killing) to restore the honor of the family. Husbands can beat their wives 'at will' and the man does not have to say why he has beaten her.
The husband is permitted to have 4 wives and a temporary wife for an hour (prostitute) at his discretion.
The Shariah Muslim law controls the private as well as the public life of the woman.
In the Western World ( America ) Muslim men are starting to demand Shariah Law so the wife can not obtain a divorce and he can have full and complete control of her. It is amazing and alarming how many of our sisters and daughters attending US and Canadian Universities are now marrying Muslim men and submitting themselves and their children unsuspectingly to the Shariah law.
By passing this on, enlightened US and Canadian women may avoid becoming a slave under Shariah Law.
Ripping the West in Two. Author and lecturer Nonie Darwish says the goal of radical Islamists is to impose Shariah law on the world, ripping Western law and liberty in two.
She recently authored the book, Cruel and Usual Punishment: The Terrifying Global Implications of Islamic Law.
Darwish was born in Cairo and spent her childhood in Egypt and Gaza before immigrating to the US in 1978, when she was eight years old. Her father died while leading covert attacks on Israel . He was a high-ranking Egyptian military officer stationed with his family in Gaza
When he died, he was considered a "shahid," a martyr for jihad. His posthumous status earned Nonie and her family an elevated position in Muslim society.
But Darwish developed a skeptical eye at an early age. She questioned her own Muslim culture and upbringing. She converted to Christianity after hearing a Christian preacher on television.
In her latest book, Darwish warns about creeping sharia law - what it is, what it means, and how it is manifested in Islamic countries.
For the West, she says radical Islamists are working to impose sharia on the world. If that happens, Western civilization will be destroyed. Westerners generally assume all religions encourage a respect for the dignity of each individual. Islamic law (Sharia) teaches that non-Muslims should be subjugated or killed in this world.
Peace and prosperity for one's children is not as important as assuring that Islamic law rules everywhere in the Middle East and eventually in the world.
While Westerners tend to think that all religions encourage some form of the golden rule, Sharia teaches two systems of ethics - one for Muslims and another for non-Muslims. Building on tribal practices of the seventh century, Sharia encourages the side of humanity that wants to take from and subjugate others.
While Westerners tend to think in terms of religious people developing a personal understanding of and relationship with God, Sharia advocates executing people who ask difficult questions that could be interpreted as criticism.
It's hard to imagine, that in this day and age, Islamic scholars agree that those who criticize Islam or choose to stop being Muslim should be executed. Sadly, while talk of an Islamic reformation is common and even assumed by many in the West, such murmurings in the Middle East are silenced through intimidation.
While Westerners are accustomed to an increase in religious tolerance over time, Darwish explains how petro dollars are being used to grow an extremely intolerant form of political Islam in her native Egypt and elsewhere.
In twenty years there will be enough Muslim voters in the U.S. and Canada to elect the President or Prime Minister by themselves! Rest assured they will do so... You can look at how they have taken over several towns in the USA and Canada , Dearborn Mich. is one, Brampton , Ontario is another and there are others...
I think everyone in the U.S. and Canada should be required to read this, but with the ACLU, there is no way this will be widely publicized, unless each of us sends it on!
It is too bad that so many are disillusioned with life and Christianity to accept Muslims as peaceful.. some may be but they have an army that is willing to shed blood in the name of Islam.. the peaceful support the warriors with their finances and own kind of patriotism to their religion. While the US and Canada are getting rid of Christianity from all public sites and erasing God from the lives of children the Muslims are planning a great jihad on the US and Canada..
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
HARRY REID TAKES FUNDS FROM A BROTHEL.
So hail to thee, Harry Reid
In November we will throw you out with speed
I knew you were a whore
Right down to the core
But I never knew that pimping was your creed
In November we will throw you out with speed
I knew you were a whore
Right down to the core
But I never knew that pimping was your creed
Saturday, August 21, 2010
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Economic terms
" A recession is when your neighbor loses his job. A depression is when you lose yours. And recovery is when Obama loses his".
-Michael Reagan
-Michael Reagan
Dr. Charles Krauthammer on Obama
Last Monday was a profound evening, Dr. Charles Krauthammer spoke to the Center for the American Experiment.. He is a brilliant intellectual, seasoned & articulate. He is forthright and careful in his analysis, and never resorts to emotions or personal insults. He is NOT a fear monger nor an extremist in his comments and views . He is a fiscal conservative, and has received a Pulitzer Prize for writing. He is a frequent contributor to Fox News and writes weekly for the Washington Post.
The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free....
Summary of his comments:
1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!
3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .
4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada. God forbid!
5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.
6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world.. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!
7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.
8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. Republicans are pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future... We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state's rights.
9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don't have.. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.
10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.
11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.
The entire room was held spellbound during his talk. I have summarized his comments, as we are living in uncharted waters economically and internationally. Even 2 Dems at my table agreed with everything he said! If you feel like forwarding this to those who are open minded and have not drunk the Kool-Aid, feel free....
Summary of his comments:
1. Mr. Obama is a very intellectual, charming individual. He is not to be underestimated. He is a cool customer who doesn't show his emotions. It's very hard to know what's behind the mask. The taking down of the Clinton dynasty was an amazing accomplishment. The Clintons still do not understand what hit them. Obama was in the perfect place at the perfect time.
2. Obama has political skills comparable to Reagan and Clinton. He has a way of making you think he's on your side, agreeing with your position, while doing the opposite. Pay no attention to what he SAYS; rather, watch what he DOES!
3. Obama has a ruthless quest for power. He did not come to Washington to make something out of himself, but rather to change everything, including dismantling capitalism. He can't be straightforward on his ambitions, as the public would not go along. He has a heavy hand, and wants to level the playing field with income redistribution and punishment to the achievers of society. He would like to model the USA to Great Britain or Canada .
4. His three main goals are to control ENERGY, PUBLIC EDUCATION, and NATIONAL HEALTHCARE by the Federal government. He doesn't care about the auto or financial services industries, but got them as an early bonus. The cap and trade will add costs to everything and stifle growth. Paying for FREE college education is his goal. Most scary is his healthcare program, because if you make it FREE and add 46,000,000 people to a Medicare-type single-payer system, the costs will go through the roof. The only way to control costs is with massive RATIONING of services, like in Canada. God forbid!
5. He has surrounded himself with mostly far-left academic types. No one around him has ever even run a candy store. But they are going to try and run the auto, financial, banking and other industries. This obviously can't work in the long run. Obama is not a socialist; rather he's a far-left secular progressive bent on nothing short of revolution. He ran as a moderate, but will govern from the hard left. Again, watch what he does, not what he says.
6. Obama doesn't really see himself as President of the United States, but more as a ruler over the world.. He sees himself above it all, trying to orchestrate & coordinate various countries and their agendas. He sees moral equivalency in all cultures. His apology tour in Germany and England was a prime example of how he sees America, as an imperialist nation that has been arrogant, rather than a great noble nation that has at times made errors. This is the first President ever who has chastised our allies and appeased our enemies!
7. He is now handing out goodies. He hopes that the bill (and pain) will not come due until after he is reelected in 2012. He would like to blame all problems on Bush from the past, and hopefully his successor in the future. He has a huge ego, and Dr. Krauthammer believes he is a narcissist.
8. Republicans are in the wilderness for a while, but will emerge strong. Republicans are pining for another Reagan, but there will never be another like him. Krauthammer believes Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty & Bobby Jindahl (except for his terrible speech in February) are the future of the party. Newt Gingrich is brilliant, but has baggage. Sarah Palin is sincere and intelligent, but needs to really be seriously boning up on facts and info if she is to be a serious candidate in the future... We need to return to the party of lower taxes, smaller government, personal responsibility, strong national defense, and state's rights.
9. The current level of spending is irresponsible and outrageous. We are spending trillions that we don't have.. This could lead to hyperinflation, depression or worse. No country has ever spent themselves into prosperity. The media is giving Obama, Reid and Pelosi a pass because they love their agenda. But eventually the bill will come due and people will realize the huge bailouts didn't work, nor will the stimulus package. These were trillion-dollar payoffs to Obama's allies, unions and the Congress to placate the left, so he can get support for #4 above.
10. The election was over in mid-September when Lehman brothers failed, fear and panic swept in, we had an unpopular President, and the war was grinding on indefinitely without a clear outcome. The people are in pain, and the mantra of change caused people to act emotionally. Any Dem would have won this election; it was surprising it was as close as it was.
11. In 2012, if the unemployment rate is over 10%, Republicans will be swept back into power. If it's under 8%, the Dems continue to roll. If it's between 8-10%, it will be a dogfight. It will all be about the economy. I hope this gets you really thinking about what's happening in Washington and Congress. There is a left-wing revolution going on, according to Krauthammer, and he encourages us to keep the faith and join the loyal resistance. The work will be hard, but we're right on most issues and can reclaim our country, before it's far too late.
Scottish foreign policy
Jimmy MacDonald, a City Councillor from Glasgow, was asked on a local live radio talk show, just what he thought about the allegations of torture of suspected terrorists.
His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.
HIS STATEMENT :
'If hooking up one raghead terrorist's testicles to a car battery gets the truth out of the lying little camelshagger - to save just one Scottish soldier's life, then I have only three things to say, Red is positive, Black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet.'
His reply prompted his ejection from the studio, but to thunderous applause from the audience.
HIS STATEMENT :
'If hooking up one raghead terrorist's testicles to a car battery gets the truth out of the lying little camelshagger - to save just one Scottish soldier's life, then I have only three things to say, Red is positive, Black is negative, and make sure his nuts are wet.'
Saturday, July 31, 2010
A new, updated, Dr. Seuss book.
I do not like this Uncle Sam,
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this speaker, Nan ,
I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.'
I do not like this spending spree,
I'm smart, I know that nothing's free.
I do not like your smug replies,
when I complain about your lies.
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it, nope, nope, nope!
I do not like his health care scam.
I do not like these dirty crooks,
or how they lie and cook the books.
I do not like when Congress steals,
I do not like their secret deals.
I do not like this speaker, Nan ,
I do not like this 'YES WE CAN.'
I do not like this spending spree,
I'm smart, I know that nothing's free.
I do not like your smug replies,
when I complain about your lies.
I do not like this kind of hope.
I do not like it, nope, nope, nope!
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 28, 2010
The Runaway General
by Michael Hastings
Jun 22, 2010 10:00 AM EDT
This article appears in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25.
'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the H̫tel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies Рto keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.
"The dinner comes with the position, sir," says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.
McChrystal turns sharply in his chair.
"Hey, Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the position?"
McChrystal gives him the middle finger.
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The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications. Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the "most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine." The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops.
"What's the update on the Kandahar bombing?" McChrystal asks Flynn. The city has been rocked by two massive car bombs in the past day alone, calling into question the general's assurances that he can wrest it from the Taliban.
"We have two KIAs, but that hasn't been confirmed," Flynn says.
McChrystal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate-blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you've fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice.
"I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner," McChrystal says.
He pauses a beat.
"Unfortunately," he adds, "no one in this room could do it."
With that, he's out the door.
"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides.
"Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay."
The next morning, McChrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, a French military academy. The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as "shortsighted," saying it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan." The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile
Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. "I never know what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's the problem," he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.
"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal says with a laugh. "Who's that?"
"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did you say: Bite Me?"
When Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he immediately set out to deliver on his most important campaign promise on foreign policy: to refocus the war in Afghanistan on what led us to invade in the first place. "I want the American people to understand," he announced in March 2009. "We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." He ordered another 21,000 troops to Kabul, the largest increase since the war began in 2001. Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David McKiernan – then the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan – and replaced him with a man he didn't know and had met only briefly: Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was the first time a top general had been relieved from duty during wartime in more than 50 years, since Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.
Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."
From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military's preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested the theory during his "surge" in Iraq, it quickly gained a hardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, military officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed "COINdinistas" for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it.
As McChrystal leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, he did it with the same fearlessness he used to track down terrorists in Iraq: Figure out how your enemy operates, be faster and more ruthless than everybody else, then take the fuckers out. After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn't send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of "mission failure." The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president's ass.
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Last fall, with his top general calling for more troops, Obama launched a three-month review to re-evaluate the strategy in Afghanistan. "I found that time painful," McChrystal tells me in one of several lengthy interviews. "I was selling an unsellable position." For the general, it was a crash course in Beltway politics – a battle that pitted him against experienced Washington insiders like Vice President Biden, who argued that a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan would plunge America into a military quagmire without weakening international terrorist networks. "The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people," says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. "The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.
In the end, however, McChrystal got almost exactly what he wanted. On December 1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words "victory" or "win," Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested. The president had thrown his weight, however hesitantly, behind the counterinsurgency crowd.
Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a "bleeding ulcer." In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it's precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn't want.
Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win," says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. "This is going to end in an argument."
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The night after his speech in Paris, McChrystal and his staff head to Kitty O'Shea's, an Irish pub catering to tourists, around the corner from the hotel. His wife, Annie, has joined him for a rare visit: Since the Iraq War began in 2003, she has seen her husband less than 30 days a year. Though it is his and Annie's 33rd wedding anniversary, McChrystal has invited his inner circle along for dinner and drinks at the "least Gucci" place his staff could find. His wife isn't surprised. "He once took me to a Jack in the Box when I was dressed in formalwear," she says with a laugh.
The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There's a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority. After arriving in Kabul last summer, Team America set about changing the culture of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO-led mission is known. (U.S. soldiers had taken to deriding ISAF as short for "I Suck at Fighting" or "In Sandals and Flip-Flops.") McChrystal banned alcohol on base, kicked out Burger King and other symbols of American excess, expanded the morning briefing to include thousands of officers and refashioned the command center into a Situational Awareness Room, a free-flowing information hub modeled after Mayor Mike Bloomberg's offices in New York. He also set a manic pace for his staff, becoming legendary for sleeping four hours a night, running seven miles each morning, and eating one meal a day. (In the month I spend around the general, I witness him eating only once.) It's a kind of superhuman narrative that has built up around him, a staple in almost every media profile, as if the ability to go without sleep and food translates into the possibility of a man single-handedly winning the war.
By midnight at Kitty O'Shea's, much of Team America is completely shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while McChrystal's top advisers lock arms and sing a slurred song of their own invention. "Afghanistan!" they bellow. "Afghanistan!" They call it their Afghanistan song.
McChrystal steps away from the circle, observing his team. "All these men," he tells me. "I'd die for them. And they'd die for me."
The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-knit group represents the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan. While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed McChrystal's team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. "It jeopardizes the mission," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. "The military cannot by itself create governance reform."
Part of the problem is structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama's top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a "clown" who remains "stuck in 1985." Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, "turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it's not very helpful." Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal's inner circle. "Hillary had Stan's back during the strategic review," says an adviser. "She said, 'If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.' "
McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal," says a member of the general's team. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He's a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can't just have someone yanking on shit."
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At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke," he groans. "I don't even want to open it." He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.
"Make sure you don't get any of that on your leg," an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.
By far the most crucial – and strained – relationship is between McChrystal and Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador. According to those close to the two men, Eikenberry – a retired three-star general who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 – can't stand that his former subordinate is now calling the shots. He's also furious that McChrystal, backed by NATO's allies, refused to put Eikenberry in the pivotal role of viceroy in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill – a move that effectively increased McChrystal's influence over diplomacy by shutting out a powerful rival. "In reality, that position needs to be filled by an American for it to have weight," says a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations.
The relationship was further strained in January, when a classified cable that Eikenberry wrote was leaked to The New York Times. The cable was as scathing as it was prescient. The ambassador offered a brutal critique of McChrystal's strategy, dismissed President Hamid Karzai as "not an adequate strategic partner," and cast doubt on whether the counterinsurgency plan would be "sufficient" to deal with Al Qaeda. "We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves," Eikenberry warned, "short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos."
McChrystal and his team were blindsided by the cable. "I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before," says McChrystal, who adds that he felt "betrayed" by the leak. "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.' "
The most striking example of McChrystal's usurpation of diplomatic policy is his handling of Karzai. It is McChrystal, not diplomats like Eikenberry or Holbrooke, who enjoys the best relationship with the man America is relying on to lead Afghanistan. The doctrine of counterinsurgency requires a credible government, and since Karzai is not considered credible by his own people, McChrystal has worked hard to make him so. Over the past few months, he has accompanied the president on more than 10 trips around the country, standing beside him at political meetings, or shuras, in Kandahar. In February, the day before the doomed offensive in Marja, McChrystal even drove over to the president's palace to get him to sign off on what would be the largest military operation of the year. Karzai's staff, however, insisted that the president was sleeping off a cold and could not be disturbed. After several hours of haggling, McChrystal finally enlisted the aid of Afghanistan's defense minister, who persuaded Karzai's people to wake the president from his nap.
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This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we've backed – a danger that Eikenberry explicitly warned about in his cable. Even Team McChrystal privately acknowledges that Karzai is a less-than-ideal partner. "He's been locked up in his palace the past year," laments one of the general's top advisers. At times, Karzai himself has actively undermined McChrystal's desire to put him in charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Karzai met three U.S. soldiers who had been wounded in Uruzgan province. "General," he called out to McChrystal, "I didn't even know we were fighting in Uruzgan!"
Growing up as a military brat, McChrystal exhibited the mixture of brilliance and cockiness that would follow him throughout his career. His father fought in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a two-star general, and his four brothers all joined the armed services. Moving around to different bases, McChrystal took solace in baseball, a sport in which he made no pretense of hiding his superiority: In Little League, he would call out strikes to the crowd before whipping a fastball down the middle.
McChrystal entered West Point in 1972, when the U.S. military was close to its all-time low in popularity. His class was the last to graduate before the academy started to admit women. The "Prison on the Hudson," as it was known then, was a potent mix of testosterone, hooliganism and reactionary patriotism. Cadets repeatedly trashed the mess hall in food fights, and birthdays were celebrated with a tradition called "rat fucking," which often left the birthday boy outside in the snow or mud, covered in shaving cream. "It was pretty out of control," says Lt. Gen. David Barno, a classmate who went on to serve as the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. The class, filled with what Barno calls "huge talent" and "wild-eyed teenagers with a strong sense of idealism," also produced Gen. Ray Odierno, the current commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The son of a general, McChrystal was also a ringleader of the campus dissidents – a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment while thumbing his nose at authority every chance he got. He accumulated more than 100 hours of demerits for drinking, partying and insubordination – a record that his classmates boasted made him a "century man." One classmate, who asked not to be named, recalls finding McChrystal passed out in the shower after downing a case of beer he had hidden under the sink. The troublemaking almost got him kicked out, and he spent hours subjected to forced marches in the Area, a paved courtyard where unruly cadets were disciplined. "I'd come visit, and I'd end up spending most of my time in the library, while Stan was in the Area," recalls Annie, who began dating McChrystal in 1973.
McChrystal wound up ranking 298 out of a class of 855, a serious underachievement for a man widely regarded as brilliant. His most compelling work was extracurricular: As managing editor of The Pointer, the West Point literary magazine, McChrystal wrote seven short stories that eerily foreshadow many of the issues he would confront in his career. In one tale, a fictional officer complains about the difficulty of training foreign troops to fight; in another, a 19-year-old soldier kills a boy he mistakes for a terrorist. In "Brinkman's Note," a piece of suspense fiction, the unnamed narrator appears to be trying to stop a plot to assassinate the president. It turns out, however, that the narrator himself is the assassin, and he's able to infiltrate the White House: "The President strode in smiling. From the right coat pocket of the raincoat I carried, I slowly drew forth my 32-caliber pistol. In Brinkman's failure, I had succeeded."
After graduation, 2nd Lt. Stanley McChrystal entered an Army that was all but broken in the wake of Vietnam. "We really felt we were a peacetime generation," he recalls. "There was the Gulf War, but even that didn't feel like that big of a deal." So McChrystal spent his career where the action was: He enrolled in Special Forces school and became a regimental commander of the 3rd Ranger Battalion in 1986. It was a dangerous position, even in peacetime – nearly two dozen Rangers were killed in training accidents during the Eighties. It was also an unorthodox career path: Most soldiers who want to climb the ranks to general don't go into the Rangers. Displaying a penchant for transforming systems he considers outdated, McChrystal set out to revolutionize the training regime for the Rangers. He introduced mixed martial arts, required every soldier to qualify with night-vision goggles on the rifle range and forced troops to build up their endurance with weekly marches involving heavy backpacks.
In the late 1990s, McChrystal shrewdly improved his inside game, spending a year at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and then at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he co-authored a treatise on the merits and drawbacks of humanitarian interventionism. But as he moved up through the ranks, McChrystal relied on the skills he had learned as a troublemaking kid at West Point: knowing precisely how far he could go in a rigid military hierarchy without getting tossed out. Being a highly intelligent badass, he discovered, could take you far – especially in the political chaos that followed September 11th. "He was very focused," says Annie. "Even as a young officer he seemed to know what he wanted to do. I don't think his personality has changed in all these years."
By some accounts, McChrystal's career should have been over at least two times by now. As Pentagon spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more like a White House mouthpiece than an up-and-coming commander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous "stuff happens" remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChrystal backed him up. A few days later, he echoed the president's Mission Accomplished gaffe by insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over. But it was during his next stint – overseeing the military's most elite units, including the Rangers, Navy Seals and Delta Force – that McChrystal took part in a cover-up that would have destroyed the career of a lesser man.
After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.
"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.
Two years later, in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud. McChrystal was not disciplined in the scandal, even though an interrogator at the camp reported seeing him inspect the prison multiple times. But the experience was so unsettling to McChrystal that he tried to prevent detainee operations from being placed under his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a "political swamp," according to a U.S. official. In May 2009, as McChrystal prepared for his confirmation hearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions about Camp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But the scandals barely made a ripple in Congress, and McChrystal was soon on his way back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan.
The media, to a large extent, have also given McChrystal a pass on both controversies. Where Gen. Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher's pet with a Ranger's tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a "Jedi" commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn't care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. ("There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.") He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. "The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal," says a British officer who serves in Kabul. "You'd be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like 'Who the fuck is that?' And it's fucking Stan McChrystal."
It doesn't hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the government's darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "JSOC was a killing machine," says Maj. Gen. Mayville, his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents and hunting them down – often with the help of cyberfreaks traditionally shunned by the military. "The Boss would find the 24-year-old kid with a nose ring, with some fucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming," says a Special Forces commando who worked with McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. "He'd say, 'Hey – you fucking muscleheads couldn't find lunch without help. You got to work together with these guys.' "
Even in his new role as America's leading evangelist for counterinsurgency, McChrystal retains the deep-seated instincts of a terrorist hunter. To put pressure on the Taliban, he has upped the number of Special Forces units in Afghanistan from four to 19. "You better be out there hitting four or five targets tonight," McChrystal will tell a Navy Seal he sees in the hallway at headquarters. Then he'll add, "I'm going to have to scold you in the morning for it, though." In fact, the general frequently finds himself apologizing for the disastrous consequences of counterinsurgency. In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over. In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S. forces accidentally shot up a bus, killing five Afghans. "We've shot an amazing number of people," McChrystal recently conceded.
Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. military has ever encountered in a war zone. It's "insurgent math," as he calls it – for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids. He regularly apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths. "For a while," says one U.S. official, "the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of McChrystal after a 'civ cas' incident." The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There's talk of creating a new medal for "courageous restraint," a buzzword that's unlikely to gain much traction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. military.
But however strategic they may be, McChrystal's new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?" says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers' lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing."
In March, McChrystal traveled to Combat Outpost JFM – a small encampment on the outskirts of Kandahar – to confront such accusations from the troops directly. It was a typically bold move by the general. Only two days earlier, he had received an e-mail from Israel Arroyo, a 25-year-old staff sergeant who asked McChrystal to go on a mission with his unit. "I am writing because it was said you don't care about the troops and have made it harder to defend ourselves," Arroyo wrote.
Within hours, McChrystal responded personally: "I'm saddened by the accusation that I don't care about soldiers, as it is something I suspect any soldier takes both personally and professionally – at least I do. But I know perceptions depend upon your perspective at the time, and I respect that every soldier's view is his own." Then he showed up at Arroyo's outpost and went on a foot patrol with the troops – not some bullshit photo-op stroll through a market, but a real live operation in a dangerous war zone.
Six weeks later, just before McChrystal returned from Paris, the general received another e-mail from Arroyo. A 23-year-old corporal named Michael Ingram – one of the soldiers McChrystal had gone on patrol with – had been killed by an IED a day earlier. It was the third man the 25-member platoon had lost in a year, and Arroyo was writing to see if the general would attend Ingram's memorial service. "He started to look up to you," Arroyo wrote. McChrystal said he would try to make it down to pay his respects as soon as possible.
The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt. Arroyo's platoon for the memorial, I arrive at Combat Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have been on repeated combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered by Ingram's death. His commanders had repeatedly requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal's new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the request had been denied. "These were abandoned houses," fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. "Nobody was coming back to live in them."
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force," the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that's like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won't have to make arrests. "Does that make any fucking sense?" asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. "We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?"
The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they've been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. "Fuck, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our fucking gun on," says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. "I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they're all fucked up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don't understand it themselves. But we're fucking losing this thing."
McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. "I ask you what's going on in your world, and I think it's important for you all to understand the big picture as well," McChrystal begins. "How's the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you're losing?" McChrystal says.
"Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we're losing, sir," says Hicks.
McChrystal nods. "Strength is leading when you just don't want to lead," he tells the men. "You're leading by example. That's what we do. Particularly when it's really, really hard, and it hurts inside." Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counterinsurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He makes COIN seem like common sense, but he's careful not to bullshit the men. "We are knee-deep in the decisive year," he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has the initiative – "but I don't think we do, either." It's similar to the talk he gave in Paris, but it's not winning any hearts and minds among the soldiers. "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks," McChrystal tries to joke. "But it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."
During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. "We aren't putting fear into the Taliban," one soldier says.
"Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing," McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can't kill your way out of Afghanistan. "The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn't work."
"I'm not saying go out and kill everybody, sir," the soldier persists. "You say we've stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don't believe that's true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it's getting."
"I agree with you," McChrystal says. "In this area, we've not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I'm telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?"
A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn't have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. "That's the way this game is," McChrystal says. "It's complex. I can't just decide: It's shirts and skins, and we'll kill all the shirts."
As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn't succeeded at easing the men's anger. He makes one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. "There's no way I can make that easier," he tells them. "No way I can pretend it won't hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you're doing a great job. Don't let the frustration get to you." The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren't buying it.
When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose. "Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan," he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."
In mid-May, two weeks after visiting the troops in Kandahar, McChrystal travels to the White House for a high-level visit by Hamid Karzai. It is a triumphant moment for the general, one that demonstrates he is very much in command – both in Kabul and in Washington. In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai. The two leaders talk about how great their relationship is, about the pain they feel over civilian casualties. They mention the word "progress" 16 times in under an hour. But there is no mention of victory. Still, the session represents the most forceful commitment that Obama has made to McChrystal's strategy in months. "There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic development," the president says. "As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier."
It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make. During the worst years in Iraq, when the Bush administration had no real progress to point to, officials used to offer up the exact same evidence of success. "It was one of our first impressions," one GOP official said in 2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence. "So many lights shining brightly." So it is to the language of the Iraq War that the Obama administration has turned – talk of progress, of city lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoric that just a few years ago they would have mocked. "They are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable," says Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006. "That's the game we're in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn't get run off. The facts on the ground are not great, and are not going to become great in the near future."
But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.
Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the White House meeting with Karzai and all the talk of "progress," McChrystal is hit by the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgency. Since last year, the Pentagon had been planning to launch a major military operation this summer in Kandahar, the country's second-largest city and the Taliban's original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point in the war – the primary reason for the troop surge that McChrystal wrested from Obama late last year. But on June 10th, acknowledging that the military still needs to lay more groundwork, the general announced that he is postponing the offensive until the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah or Ramadi, U.S. troops will implement what McChrystal calls a "rising tide of security." The Afghan police and army will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of neighborhoods, while the U.S. pours $90 million of aid into the city to win over the civilian population.
Even proponents of counterinsurgency are hard-pressed to explain the new plan. "This isn't a classic operation," says a U.S. military official. "It's not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren't going to be doors kicked in." Other U.S. officials insist that doors are going to be kicked in, but that it's going to be a kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja. "The Taliban have a jackboot on the city," says a military official. "We have to remove them, but we have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate the population." When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated last fall. "This looks like CT-plus!" he said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.
Jun 22, 2010 10:00 AM EDT
This article appears in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25.
'How'd I get screwed into going to this dinner?" demands Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It's a Thursday night in mid-April, and the commander of all U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan is sitting in a four-star suite at the H̫tel Westminster in Paris. He's in France to sell his new war strategy to our NATO allies Рto keep up the fiction, in essence, that we actually have allies. Since McChrystal took over a year ago, the Afghan war has become the exclusive property of the United States. Opposition to the war has already toppled the Dutch government, forced the resignation of Germany's president and sparked both Canada and the Netherlands to announce the withdrawal of their 4,500 troops. McChrystal is in Paris to keep the French, who have lost more than 40 soldiers in Afghanistan, from going all wobbly on him.
"The dinner comes with the position, sir," says his chief of staff, Col. Charlie Flynn.
McChrystal turns sharply in his chair.
"Hey, Charlie," he asks, "does this come with the position?"
McChrystal gives him the middle finger.
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The general stands and looks around the suite that his traveling staff of 10 has converted into a full-scale operations center. The tables are crowded with silver Panasonic Toughbooks, and blue cables crisscross the hotel's thick carpet, hooked up to satellite dishes to provide encrypted phone and e-mail communications. Dressed in off-the-rack civilian casual – blue tie, button-down shirt, dress slacks – McChrystal is way out of his comfort zone. Paris, as one of his advisers says, is the "most anti-McChrystal city you can imagine." The general hates fancy restaurants, rejecting any place with candles on the tables as too "Gucci." He prefers Bud Light Lime (his favorite beer) to Bordeaux, Talladega Nights (his favorite movie) to Jean-Luc Godard. Besides, the public eye has never been a place where McChrystal felt comfortable: Before President Obama put him in charge of the war in Afghanistan, he spent five years running the Pentagon's most secretive black ops.
"What's the update on the Kandahar bombing?" McChrystal asks Flynn. The city has been rocked by two massive car bombs in the past day alone, calling into question the general's assurances that he can wrest it from the Taliban.
"We have two KIAs, but that hasn't been confirmed," Flynn says.
McChrystal takes a final look around the suite. At 55, he is gaunt and lean, not unlike an older version of Christian Bale in Rescue Dawn. His slate-blue eyes have the unsettling ability to drill down when they lock on you. If you've fucked up or disappointed him, they can destroy your soul without the need for him to raise his voice.
"I'd rather have my ass kicked by a roomful of people than go out to this dinner," McChrystal says.
He pauses a beat.
"Unfortunately," he adds, "no one in this room could do it."
With that, he's out the door.
"Who's he going to dinner with?" I ask one of his aides.
"Some French minister," the aide tells me. "It's fucking gay."
The next morning, McChrystal and his team gather to prepare for a speech he is giving at the École Militaire, a French military academy. The general prides himself on being sharper and ballsier than anyone else, but his brashness comes with a price: Although McChrystal has been in charge of the war for only a year, in that short time he has managed to piss off almost everyone with a stake in the conflict. Last fall, during the question-and-answer session following a speech he gave in London, McChrystal dismissed the counterterrorism strategy being advocated by Vice President Joe Biden as "shortsighted," saying it would lead to a state of "Chaos-istan." The remarks earned him a smackdown from the president himself, who summoned the general to a terse private meeting aboard Air Force One. The message to McChrystal seemed clear: Shut the fuck up, and keep a lower profile
Now, flipping through printout cards of his speech in Paris, McChrystal wonders aloud what Biden question he might get today, and how he should respond. "I never know what's going to pop out until I'm up there, that's the problem," he says. Then, unable to help themselves, he and his staff imagine the general dismissing the vice president with a good one-liner.
"Are you asking about Vice President Biden?" McChrystal says with a laugh. "Who's that?"
"Biden?" suggests a top adviser. "Did you say: Bite Me?"
When Barack Obama entered the Oval Office, he immediately set out to deliver on his most important campaign promise on foreign policy: to refocus the war in Afghanistan on what led us to invade in the first place. "I want the American people to understand," he announced in March 2009. "We have a clear and focused goal: to disrupt, dismantle and defeat Al Qaeda in Pakistan and Afghanistan." He ordered another 21,000 troops to Kabul, the largest increase since the war began in 2001. Taking the advice of both the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he also fired Gen. David McKiernan – then the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan – and replaced him with a man he didn't know and had met only briefly: Gen. Stanley McChrystal. It was the first time a top general had been relieved from duty during wartime in more than 50 years, since Harry Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur at the height of the Korean War.
Even though he had voted for Obama, McChrystal and his new commander in chief failed from the outset to connect. The general first encountered Obama a week after he took office, when the president met with a dozen senior military officials in a room at the Pentagon known as the Tank. According to sources familiar with the meeting, McChrystal thought Obama looked "uncomfortable and intimidated" by the roomful of military brass. Their first one-on-one meeting took place in the Oval Office four months later, after McChrystal got the Afghanistan job, and it didn't go much better. "It was a 10-minute photo op," says an adviser to McChrystal. "Obama clearly didn't know anything about him, who he was. Here's the guy who's going to run his fucking war, but he didn't seem very engaged. The Boss was pretty disappointed."
From the start, McChrystal was determined to place his personal stamp on Afghanistan, to use it as a laboratory for a controversial military strategy known as counterinsurgency. COIN, as the theory is known, is the new gospel of the Pentagon brass, a doctrine that attempts to square the military's preference for high-tech violence with the demands of fighting protracted wars in failed states. COIN calls for sending huge numbers of ground troops to not only destroy the enemy, but to live among the civilian population and slowly rebuild, or build from scratch, another nation's government – a process that even its staunchest advocates admit requires years, if not decades, to achieve. The theory essentially rebrands the military, expanding its authority (and its funding) to encompass the diplomatic and political sides of warfare: Think the Green Berets as an armed Peace Corps. In 2006, after Gen. David Petraeus beta-tested the theory during his "surge" in Iraq, it quickly gained a hardcore following of think-tankers, journalists, military officers and civilian officials. Nicknamed "COINdinistas" for their cultish zeal, this influential cadre believed the doctrine would be the perfect solution for Afghanistan. All they needed was a general with enough charisma and political savvy to implement it.
As McChrystal leaned on Obama to ramp up the war, he did it with the same fearlessness he used to track down terrorists in Iraq: Figure out how your enemy operates, be faster and more ruthless than everybody else, then take the fuckers out. After arriving in Afghanistan last June, the general conducted his own policy review, ordered up by Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The now-infamous report was leaked to the press, and its conclusion was dire: If we didn't send another 40,000 troops – swelling the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan by nearly half – we were in danger of "mission failure." The White House was furious. McChrystal, they felt, was trying to bully Obama, opening him up to charges of being weak on national security unless he did what the general wanted. It was Obama versus the Pentagon, and the Pentagon was determined to kick the president's ass.
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Last fall, with his top general calling for more troops, Obama launched a three-month review to re-evaluate the strategy in Afghanistan. "I found that time painful," McChrystal tells me in one of several lengthy interviews. "I was selling an unsellable position." For the general, it was a crash course in Beltway politics – a battle that pitted him against experienced Washington insiders like Vice President Biden, who argued that a prolonged counterinsurgency campaign in Afghanistan would plunge America into a military quagmire without weakening international terrorist networks. "The entire COIN strategy is a fraud perpetuated on the American people," says Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel and leading critic of counterinsurgency who attended West Point with McChrystal. "The idea that we are going to spend a trillion dollars to reshape the culture of the Islamic world is utter nonsense.
In the end, however, McChrystal got almost exactly what he wanted. On December 1st, in a speech at West Point, the president laid out all the reasons why fighting the war in Afghanistan is a bad idea: It's expensive; we're in an economic crisis; a decade-long commitment would sap American power; Al Qaeda has shifted its base of operations to Pakistan. Then, without ever using the words "victory" or "win," Obama announced that he would send an additional 30,000 troops to Afghanistan, almost as many as McChrystal had requested. The president had thrown his weight, however hesitantly, behind the counterinsurgency crowd.
Today, as McChrystal gears up for an offensive in southern Afghanistan, the prospects for any kind of success look bleak. In June, the death toll for U.S. troops passed 1,000, and the number of IEDs has doubled. Spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the fifth-poorest country on earth has failed to win over the civilian population, whose attitude toward U.S. troops ranges from intensely wary to openly hostile. The biggest military operation of the year – a ferocious offensive that began in February to retake the southern town of Marja – continues to drag on, prompting McChrystal himself to refer to it as a "bleeding ulcer." In June, Afghanistan officially outpaced Vietnam as the longest war in American history – and Obama has quietly begun to back away from the deadline he set for withdrawing U.S. troops in July of next year. The president finds himself stuck in something even more insane than a quagmire: a quagmire he knowingly walked into, even though it's precisely the kind of gigantic, mind-numbing, multigenerational nation-building project he explicitly said he didn't want.
Even those who support McChrystal and his strategy of counterinsurgency know that whatever the general manages to accomplish in Afghanistan, it's going to look more like Vietnam than Desert Storm. "It's not going to look like a win, smell like a win or taste like a win," says Maj. Gen. Bill Mayville, who serves as chief of operations for McChrystal. "This is going to end in an argument."
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The night after his speech in Paris, McChrystal and his staff head to Kitty O'Shea's, an Irish pub catering to tourists, around the corner from the hotel. His wife, Annie, has joined him for a rare visit: Since the Iraq War began in 2003, she has seen her husband less than 30 days a year. Though it is his and Annie's 33rd wedding anniversary, McChrystal has invited his inner circle along for dinner and drinks at the "least Gucci" place his staff could find. His wife isn't surprised. "He once took me to a Jack in the Box when I was dressed in formalwear," she says with a laugh.
The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There's a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority. After arriving in Kabul last summer, Team America set about changing the culture of the International Security Assistance Force, as the NATO-led mission is known. (U.S. soldiers had taken to deriding ISAF as short for "I Suck at Fighting" or "In Sandals and Flip-Flops.") McChrystal banned alcohol on base, kicked out Burger King and other symbols of American excess, expanded the morning briefing to include thousands of officers and refashioned the command center into a Situational Awareness Room, a free-flowing information hub modeled after Mayor Mike Bloomberg's offices in New York. He also set a manic pace for his staff, becoming legendary for sleeping four hours a night, running seven miles each morning, and eating one meal a day. (In the month I spend around the general, I witness him eating only once.) It's a kind of superhuman narrative that has built up around him, a staple in almost every media profile, as if the ability to go without sleep and food translates into the possibility of a man single-handedly winning the war.
By midnight at Kitty O'Shea's, much of Team America is completely shitfaced. Two officers do an Irish jig mixed with steps from a traditional Afghan wedding dance, while McChrystal's top advisers lock arms and sing a slurred song of their own invention. "Afghanistan!" they bellow. "Afghanistan!" They call it their Afghanistan song.
McChrystal steps away from the circle, observing his team. "All these men," he tells me. "I'd die for them. And they'd die for me."
The assembled men may look and sound like a bunch of combat veterans letting off steam, but in fact this tight-knit group represents the most powerful force shaping U.S. policy in Afghanistan. While McChrystal and his men are in indisputable command of all military aspects of the war, there is no equivalent position on the diplomatic or political side. Instead, an assortment of administration players compete over the Afghan portfolio: U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry, Special Representative to Afghanistan Richard Holbrooke, National Security Advisor Jim Jones and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, not to mention 40 or so other coalition ambassadors and a host of talking heads who try to insert themselves into the mess, from John Kerry to John McCain. This diplomatic incoherence has effectively allowed McChrystal's team to call the shots and hampered efforts to build a stable and credible government in Afghanistan. "It jeopardizes the mission," says Stephen Biddle, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who supports McChrystal. "The military cannot by itself create governance reform."
Part of the problem is structural: The Defense Department budget exceeds $600 billion a year, while the State Department receives only $50 billion. But part of the problem is personal: In private, Team McChrystal likes to talk shit about many of Obama's top people on the diplomatic side. One aide calls Jim Jones, a retired four-star general and veteran of the Cold War, a "clown" who remains "stuck in 1985." Politicians like McCain and Kerry, says another aide, "turn up, have a meeting with Karzai, criticize him at the airport press conference, then get back for the Sunday talk shows. Frankly, it's not very helpful." Only Hillary Clinton receives good reviews from McChrystal's inner circle. "Hillary had Stan's back during the strategic review," says an adviser. "She said, 'If Stan wants it, give him what he needs.' "
McChrystal reserves special skepticism for Holbrooke, the official in charge of reintegrating the Taliban. "The Boss says he's like a wounded animal," says a member of the general's team. "Holbrooke keeps hearing rumors that he's going to get fired, so that makes him dangerous. He's a brilliant guy, but he just comes in, pulls on a lever, whatever he can grasp onto. But this is COIN, and you can't just have someone yanking on shit."
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At one point on his trip to Paris, McChrystal checks his BlackBerry. "Oh, not another e-mail from Holbrooke," he groans. "I don't even want to open it." He clicks on the message and reads the salutation out loud, then stuffs the BlackBerry back in his pocket, not bothering to conceal his annoyance.
"Make sure you don't get any of that on your leg," an aide jokes, referring to the e-mail.
By far the most crucial – and strained – relationship is between McChrystal and Eikenberry, the U.S. ambassador. According to those close to the two men, Eikenberry – a retired three-star general who served in Afghanistan in 2002 and 2005 – can't stand that his former subordinate is now calling the shots. He's also furious that McChrystal, backed by NATO's allies, refused to put Eikenberry in the pivotal role of viceroy in Afghanistan, which would have made him the diplomatic equivalent of the general. The job instead went to British Ambassador Mark Sedwill – a move that effectively increased McChrystal's influence over diplomacy by shutting out a powerful rival. "In reality, that position needs to be filled by an American for it to have weight," says a U.S. official familiar with the negotiations.
The relationship was further strained in January, when a classified cable that Eikenberry wrote was leaked to The New York Times. The cable was as scathing as it was prescient. The ambassador offered a brutal critique of McChrystal's strategy, dismissed President Hamid Karzai as "not an adequate strategic partner," and cast doubt on whether the counterinsurgency plan would be "sufficient" to deal with Al Qaeda. "We will become more deeply engaged here with no way to extricate ourselves," Eikenberry warned, "short of allowing the country to descend again into lawlessness and chaos."
McChrystal and his team were blindsided by the cable. "I like Karl, I've known him for years, but they'd never said anything like that to us before," says McChrystal, who adds that he felt "betrayed" by the leak. "Here's one that covers his flank for the history books. Now if we fail, they can say, 'I told you so.' "
The most striking example of McChrystal's usurpation of diplomatic policy is his handling of Karzai. It is McChrystal, not diplomats like Eikenberry or Holbrooke, who enjoys the best relationship with the man America is relying on to lead Afghanistan. The doctrine of counterinsurgency requires a credible government, and since Karzai is not considered credible by his own people, McChrystal has worked hard to make him so. Over the past few months, he has accompanied the president on more than 10 trips around the country, standing beside him at political meetings, or shuras, in Kandahar. In February, the day before the doomed offensive in Marja, McChrystal even drove over to the president's palace to get him to sign off on what would be the largest military operation of the year. Karzai's staff, however, insisted that the president was sleeping off a cold and could not be disturbed. After several hours of haggling, McChrystal finally enlisted the aid of Afghanistan's defense minister, who persuaded Karzai's people to wake the president from his nap.
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This is one of the central flaws with McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy: The need to build a credible government puts us at the mercy of whatever tin-pot leader we've backed – a danger that Eikenberry explicitly warned about in his cable. Even Team McChrystal privately acknowledges that Karzai is a less-than-ideal partner. "He's been locked up in his palace the past year," laments one of the general's top advisers. At times, Karzai himself has actively undermined McChrystal's desire to put him in charge. During a recent visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Karzai met three U.S. soldiers who had been wounded in Uruzgan province. "General," he called out to McChrystal, "I didn't even know we were fighting in Uruzgan!"
Growing up as a military brat, McChrystal exhibited the mixture of brilliance and cockiness that would follow him throughout his career. His father fought in Korea and Vietnam, retiring as a two-star general, and his four brothers all joined the armed services. Moving around to different bases, McChrystal took solace in baseball, a sport in which he made no pretense of hiding his superiority: In Little League, he would call out strikes to the crowd before whipping a fastball down the middle.
McChrystal entered West Point in 1972, when the U.S. military was close to its all-time low in popularity. His class was the last to graduate before the academy started to admit women. The "Prison on the Hudson," as it was known then, was a potent mix of testosterone, hooliganism and reactionary patriotism. Cadets repeatedly trashed the mess hall in food fights, and birthdays were celebrated with a tradition called "rat fucking," which often left the birthday boy outside in the snow or mud, covered in shaving cream. "It was pretty out of control," says Lt. Gen. David Barno, a classmate who went on to serve as the top commander in Afghanistan from 2003 to 2005. The class, filled with what Barno calls "huge talent" and "wild-eyed teenagers with a strong sense of idealism," also produced Gen. Ray Odierno, the current commander of U.S. forces in Iraq.
The son of a general, McChrystal was also a ringleader of the campus dissidents – a dual role that taught him how to thrive in a rigid, top-down environment while thumbing his nose at authority every chance he got. He accumulated more than 100 hours of demerits for drinking, partying and insubordination – a record that his classmates boasted made him a "century man." One classmate, who asked not to be named, recalls finding McChrystal passed out in the shower after downing a case of beer he had hidden under the sink. The troublemaking almost got him kicked out, and he spent hours subjected to forced marches in the Area, a paved courtyard where unruly cadets were disciplined. "I'd come visit, and I'd end up spending most of my time in the library, while Stan was in the Area," recalls Annie, who began dating McChrystal in 1973.
McChrystal wound up ranking 298 out of a class of 855, a serious underachievement for a man widely regarded as brilliant. His most compelling work was extracurricular: As managing editor of The Pointer, the West Point literary magazine, McChrystal wrote seven short stories that eerily foreshadow many of the issues he would confront in his career. In one tale, a fictional officer complains about the difficulty of training foreign troops to fight; in another, a 19-year-old soldier kills a boy he mistakes for a terrorist. In "Brinkman's Note," a piece of suspense fiction, the unnamed narrator appears to be trying to stop a plot to assassinate the president. It turns out, however, that the narrator himself is the assassin, and he's able to infiltrate the White House: "The President strode in smiling. From the right coat pocket of the raincoat I carried, I slowly drew forth my 32-caliber pistol. In Brinkman's failure, I had succeeded."
After graduation, 2nd Lt. Stanley McChrystal entered an Army that was all but broken in the wake of Vietnam. "We really felt we were a peacetime generation," he recalls. "There was the Gulf War, but even that didn't feel like that big of a deal." So McChrystal spent his career where the action was: He enrolled in Special Forces school and became a regimental commander of the 3rd Ranger Battalion in 1986. It was a dangerous position, even in peacetime – nearly two dozen Rangers were killed in training accidents during the Eighties. It was also an unorthodox career path: Most soldiers who want to climb the ranks to general don't go into the Rangers. Displaying a penchant for transforming systems he considers outdated, McChrystal set out to revolutionize the training regime for the Rangers. He introduced mixed martial arts, required every soldier to qualify with night-vision goggles on the rifle range and forced troops to build up their endurance with weekly marches involving heavy backpacks.
In the late 1990s, McChrystal shrewdly improved his inside game, spending a year at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and then at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he co-authored a treatise on the merits and drawbacks of humanitarian interventionism. But as he moved up through the ranks, McChrystal relied on the skills he had learned as a troublemaking kid at West Point: knowing precisely how far he could go in a rigid military hierarchy without getting tossed out. Being a highly intelligent badass, he discovered, could take you far – especially in the political chaos that followed September 11th. "He was very focused," says Annie. "Even as a young officer he seemed to know what he wanted to do. I don't think his personality has changed in all these years."
By some accounts, McChrystal's career should have been over at least two times by now. As Pentagon spokesman during the invasion of Iraq, the general seemed more like a White House mouthpiece than an up-and-coming commander with a reputation for speaking his mind. When Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld made his infamous "stuff happens" remark during the looting of Baghdad, McChrystal backed him up. A few days later, he echoed the president's Mission Accomplished gaffe by insisting that major combat operations in Iraq were over. But it was during his next stint – overseeing the military's most elite units, including the Rangers, Navy Seals and Delta Force – that McChrystal took part in a cover-up that would have destroyed the career of a lesser man.
After Cpl. Pat Tillman, the former-NFL-star-turned-Ranger, was accidentally killed by his own troops in Afghanistan in April 2004, McChrystal took an active role in creating the impression that Tillman had died at the hands of Taliban fighters. He signed off on a falsified recommendation for a Silver Star that suggested Tillman had been killed by enemy fire. (McChrystal would later claim he didn't read the recommendation closely enough – a strange excuse for a commander known for his laserlike attention to minute details.) A week later, McChrystal sent a memo up the chain of command, specifically warning that President Bush should avoid mentioning the cause of Tillman's death. "If the circumstances of Corporal Tillman's death become public," he wrote, it could cause "public embarrassment" for the president.
"The false narrative, which McChrystal clearly helped construct, diminished Pat's true actions," wrote Tillman's mother, Mary, in her book Boots on the Ground by Dusk. McChrystal got away with it, she added, because he was the "golden boy" of Rumsfeld and Bush, who loved his willingness to get things done, even if it included bending the rules or skipping the chain of command. Nine days after Tillman's death, McChrystal was promoted to major general.
Two years later, in 2006, McChrystal was tainted by a scandal involving detainee abuse and torture at Camp Nama in Iraq. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, prisoners at the camp were subjected to a now-familiar litany of abuse: stress positions, being dragged naked through the mud. McChrystal was not disciplined in the scandal, even though an interrogator at the camp reported seeing him inspect the prison multiple times. But the experience was so unsettling to McChrystal that he tried to prevent detainee operations from being placed under his command in Afghanistan, viewing them as a "political swamp," according to a U.S. official. In May 2009, as McChrystal prepared for his confirmation hearings, his staff prepared him for hard questions about Camp Nama and the Tillman cover-up. But the scandals barely made a ripple in Congress, and McChrystal was soon on his way back to Kabul to run the war in Afghanistan.
The media, to a large extent, have also given McChrystal a pass on both controversies. Where Gen. Petraeus is kind of a dweeb, a teacher's pet with a Ranger's tab, McChrystal is a snake-eating rebel, a "Jedi" commander, as Newsweek called him. He didn't care when his teenage son came home with blue hair and a mohawk. He speaks his mind with a candor rare for a high-ranking official. He asks for opinions, and seems genuinely interested in the response. He gets briefings on his iPod and listens to books on tape. He carries a custom-made set of nunchucks in his convoy engraved with his name and four stars, and his itinerary often bears a fresh quote from Bruce Lee. ("There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them.") He went out on dozens of nighttime raids during his time in Iraq, unprecedented for a top commander, and turned up on missions unannounced, with almost no entourage. "The fucking lads love Stan McChrystal," says a British officer who serves in Kabul. "You'd be out in Somewhere, Iraq, and someone would take a knee beside you, and a corporal would be like 'Who the fuck is that?' And it's fucking Stan McChrystal."
It doesn't hurt that McChrystal was also extremely successful as head of the Joint Special Operations Command, the elite forces that carry out the government's darkest ops. During the Iraq surge, his team killed and captured thousands of insurgents, including Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq. "JSOC was a killing machine," says Maj. Gen. Mayville, his chief of operations. McChrystal was also open to new ways of killing. He systematically mapped out terrorist networks, targeting specific insurgents and hunting them down – often with the help of cyberfreaks traditionally shunned by the military. "The Boss would find the 24-year-old kid with a nose ring, with some fucking brilliant degree from MIT, sitting in the corner with 16 computer monitors humming," says a Special Forces commando who worked with McChrystal in Iraq and now serves on his staff in Kabul. "He'd say, 'Hey – you fucking muscleheads couldn't find lunch without help. You got to work together with these guys.' "
Even in his new role as America's leading evangelist for counterinsurgency, McChrystal retains the deep-seated instincts of a terrorist hunter. To put pressure on the Taliban, he has upped the number of Special Forces units in Afghanistan from four to 19. "You better be out there hitting four or five targets tonight," McChrystal will tell a Navy Seal he sees in the hallway at headquarters. Then he'll add, "I'm going to have to scold you in the morning for it, though." In fact, the general frequently finds himself apologizing for the disastrous consequences of counterinsurgency. In the first four months of this year, NATO forces killed some 90 civilians, up 76 percent from the same period in 2009 – a record that has created tremendous resentment among the very population that COIN theory is intent on winning over. In February, a Special Forces night raid ended in the deaths of two pregnant Afghan women and allegations of a cover-up, and in April, protests erupted in Kandahar after U.S. forces accidentally shot up a bus, killing five Afghans. "We've shot an amazing number of people," McChrystal recently conceded.
Despite the tragedies and miscues, McChrystal has issued some of the strictest directives to avoid civilian casualties that the U.S. military has ever encountered in a war zone. It's "insurgent math," as he calls it – for every innocent person you kill, you create 10 new enemies. He has ordered convoys to curtail their reckless driving, put restrictions on the use of air power and severely limited night raids. He regularly apologizes to Hamid Karzai when civilians are killed, and berates commanders responsible for civilian deaths. "For a while," says one U.S. official, "the most dangerous place to be in Afghanistan was in front of McChrystal after a 'civ cas' incident." The ISAF command has even discussed ways to make not killing into something you can win an award for: There's talk of creating a new medal for "courageous restraint," a buzzword that's unlikely to gain much traction in the gung-ho culture of the U.S. military.
But however strategic they may be, McChrystal's new marching orders have caused an intense backlash among his own troops. Being told to hold their fire, soldiers complain, puts them in greater danger. "Bottom line?" says a former Special Forces operator who has spent years in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I would love to kick McChrystal in the nuts. His rules of engagement put soldiers' lives in even greater danger. Every real soldier will tell you the same thing."
In March, McChrystal traveled to Combat Outpost JFM – a small encampment on the outskirts of Kandahar – to confront such accusations from the troops directly. It was a typically bold move by the general. Only two days earlier, he had received an e-mail from Israel Arroyo, a 25-year-old staff sergeant who asked McChrystal to go on a mission with his unit. "I am writing because it was said you don't care about the troops and have made it harder to defend ourselves," Arroyo wrote.
Within hours, McChrystal responded personally: "I'm saddened by the accusation that I don't care about soldiers, as it is something I suspect any soldier takes both personally and professionally – at least I do. But I know perceptions depend upon your perspective at the time, and I respect that every soldier's view is his own." Then he showed up at Arroyo's outpost and went on a foot patrol with the troops – not some bullshit photo-op stroll through a market, but a real live operation in a dangerous war zone.
Six weeks later, just before McChrystal returned from Paris, the general received another e-mail from Arroyo. A 23-year-old corporal named Michael Ingram – one of the soldiers McChrystal had gone on patrol with – had been killed by an IED a day earlier. It was the third man the 25-member platoon had lost in a year, and Arroyo was writing to see if the general would attend Ingram's memorial service. "He started to look up to you," Arroyo wrote. McChrystal said he would try to make it down to pay his respects as soon as possible.
The night before the general is scheduled to visit Sgt. Arroyo's platoon for the memorial, I arrive at Combat Outpost JFM to speak with the soldiers he had gone on patrol with. JFM is a small encampment, ringed by high blast walls and guard towers. Almost all of the soldiers here have been on repeated combat tours in both Iraq and Afghanistan, and have seen some of the worst fighting of both wars. But they are especially angered by Ingram's death. His commanders had repeatedly requested permission to tear down the house where Ingram was killed, noting that it was often used as a combat position by the Taliban. But due to McChrystal's new restrictions to avoid upsetting civilians, the request had been denied. "These were abandoned houses," fumes Staff Sgt. Kennith Hicks. "Nobody was coming back to live in them."
One soldier shows me the list of new regulations the platoon was given. "Patrol only in areas that you are reasonably certain that you will not have to defend yourselves with lethal force," the laminated card reads. For a soldier who has traveled halfway around the world to fight, that's like telling a cop he should only patrol in areas where he knows he won't have to make arrests. "Does that make any fucking sense?" asks Pfc. Jared Pautsch. "We should just drop a fucking bomb on this place. You sit and ask yourself: What are we doing here?"
The rules handed out here are not what McChrystal intended – they've been distorted as they passed through the chain of command – but knowing that does nothing to lessen the anger of troops on the ground. "Fuck, when I came over here and heard that McChrystal was in charge, I thought we would get our fucking gun on," says Hicks, who has served three tours of combat. "I get COIN. I get all that. McChrystal comes here, explains it, it makes sense. But then he goes away on his bird, and by the time his directives get passed down to us through Big Army, they're all fucked up – either because somebody is trying to cover their ass, or because they just don't understand it themselves. But we're fucking losing this thing."
McChrystal and his team show up the next day. Underneath a tent, the general has a 45-minute discussion with some two dozen soldiers. The atmosphere is tense. "I ask you what's going on in your world, and I think it's important for you all to understand the big picture as well," McChrystal begins. "How's the company doing? You guys feeling sorry for yourselves? Anybody? Anybody feel like you're losing?" McChrystal says.
"Sir, some of the guys here, sir, think we're losing, sir," says Hicks.
McChrystal nods. "Strength is leading when you just don't want to lead," he tells the men. "You're leading by example. That's what we do. Particularly when it's really, really hard, and it hurts inside." Then he spends 20 minutes talking about counterinsurgency, diagramming his concepts and principles on a whiteboard. He makes COIN seem like common sense, but he's careful not to bullshit the men. "We are knee-deep in the decisive year," he tells them. The Taliban, he insists, no longer has the initiative – "but I don't think we do, either." It's similar to the talk he gave in Paris, but it's not winning any hearts and minds among the soldiers. "This is the philosophical part that works with think tanks," McChrystal tries to joke. "But it doesn't get the same reception from infantry companies."
During the question-and-answer period, the frustration boils over. The soldiers complain about not being allowed to use lethal force, about watching insurgents they detain be freed for lack of evidence. They want to be able to fight – like they did in Iraq, like they had in Afghanistan before McChrystal. "We aren't putting fear into the Taliban," one soldier says.
"Winning hearts and minds in COIN is a coldblooded thing," McChrystal says, citing an oft-repeated maxim that you can't kill your way out of Afghanistan. "The Russians killed 1 million Afghans, and that didn't work."
"I'm not saying go out and kill everybody, sir," the soldier persists. "You say we've stopped the momentum of the insurgency. I don't believe that's true in this area. The more we pull back, the more we restrain ourselves, the stronger it's getting."
"I agree with you," McChrystal says. "In this area, we've not made progress, probably. You have to show strength here, you have to use fire. What I'm telling you is, fire costs you. What do you want to do? You want to wipe the population out here and resettle it?"
A soldier complains that under the rules, any insurgent who doesn't have a weapon is immediately assumed to be a civilian. "That's the way this game is," McChrystal says. "It's complex. I can't just decide: It's shirts and skins, and we'll kill all the shirts."
As the discussion ends, McChrystal seems to sense that he hasn't succeeded at easing the men's anger. He makes one last-ditch effort to reach them, acknowledging the death of Cpl. Ingram. "There's no way I can make that easier," he tells them. "No way I can pretend it won't hurt. No way I can tell you not to feel that. . . . I will tell you, you're doing a great job. Don't let the frustration get to you." The session ends with no clapping, and no real resolution. McChrystal may have sold President Obama on counterinsurgency, but many of his own men aren't buying it.
When it comes to Afghanistan, history is not on McChrystal's side. The only foreign invader to have any success here was Genghis Khan – and he wasn't hampered by things like human rights, economic development and press scrutiny. The COIN doctrine, bizarrely, draws inspiration from some of the biggest Western military embarrassments in recent memory: France's nasty war in Algeria (lost in 1962) and the American misadventure in Vietnam (lost in 1975). McChrystal, like other advocates of COIN, readily acknowledges that counterinsurgency campaigns are inherently messy, expensive and easy to lose. "Even Afghans are confused by Afghanistan," he says. But even if he somehow manages to succeed, after years of bloody fighting with Afghan kids who pose no threat to the U.S. homeland, the war will do little to shut down Al Qaeda, which has shifted its operations to Pakistan. Dispatching 150,000 troops to build new schools, roads, mosques and water-treatment facilities around Kandahar is like trying to stop the drug war in Mexico by occupying Arkansas and building Baptist churches in Little Rock. "It's all very cynical, politically," says Marc Sageman, a former CIA case officer who has extensive experience in the region. "Afghanistan is not in our vital interest – there's nothing for us there."
In mid-May, two weeks after visiting the troops in Kandahar, McChrystal travels to the White House for a high-level visit by Hamid Karzai. It is a triumphant moment for the general, one that demonstrates he is very much in command – both in Kabul and in Washington. In the East Room, which is packed with journalists and dignitaries, President Obama sings the praises of Karzai. The two leaders talk about how great their relationship is, about the pain they feel over civilian casualties. They mention the word "progress" 16 times in under an hour. But there is no mention of victory. Still, the session represents the most forceful commitment that Obama has made to McChrystal's strategy in months. "There is no denying the progress that the Afghan people have made in recent years – in education, in health care and economic development," the president says. "As I saw in the lights across Kabul when I landed – lights that would not have been visible just a few years earlier."
It is a disconcerting observation for Obama to make. During the worst years in Iraq, when the Bush administration had no real progress to point to, officials used to offer up the exact same evidence of success. "It was one of our first impressions," one GOP official said in 2006, after landing in Baghdad at the height of the sectarian violence. "So many lights shining brightly." So it is to the language of the Iraq War that the Obama administration has turned – talk of progress, of city lights, of metrics like health care and education. Rhetoric that just a few years ago they would have mocked. "They are trying to manipulate perceptions because there is no definition of victory – because victory is not even defined or recognizable," says Celeste Ward, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation who served as a political adviser to U.S. commanders in Iraq in 2006. "That's the game we're in right now. What we need, for strategic purposes, is to create the perception that we didn't get run off. The facts on the ground are not great, and are not going to become great in the near future."
But facts on the ground, as history has proven, offer little deterrent to a military determined to stay the course. Even those closest to McChrystal know that the rising anti-war sentiment at home doesn't begin to reflect how deeply fucked up things are in Afghanistan. "If Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular," a senior adviser to McChrystal says. Such realism, however, doesn't prevent advocates of counterinsurgency from dreaming big: Instead of beginning to withdraw troops next year, as Obama promised, the military hopes to ramp up its counterinsurgency campaign even further. "There's a possibility we could ask for another surge of U.S. forces next summer if we see success here," a senior military official in Kabul tells me.
Back in Afghanistan, less than a month after the White House meeting with Karzai and all the talk of "progress," McChrystal is hit by the biggest blow to his vision of counterinsurgency. Since last year, the Pentagon had been planning to launch a major military operation this summer in Kandahar, the country's second-largest city and the Taliban's original home base. It was supposed to be a decisive turning point in the war – the primary reason for the troop surge that McChrystal wrested from Obama late last year. But on June 10th, acknowledging that the military still needs to lay more groundwork, the general announced that he is postponing the offensive until the fall. Rather than one big battle, like Fallujah or Ramadi, U.S. troops will implement what McChrystal calls a "rising tide of security." The Afghan police and army will enter Kandahar to attempt to seize control of neighborhoods, while the U.S. pours $90 million of aid into the city to win over the civilian population.
Even proponents of counterinsurgency are hard-pressed to explain the new plan. "This isn't a classic operation," says a U.S. military official. "It's not going to be Black Hawk Down. There aren't going to be doors kicked in." Other U.S. officials insist that doors are going to be kicked in, but that it's going to be a kinder, gentler offensive than the disaster in Marja. "The Taliban have a jackboot on the city," says a military official. "We have to remove them, but we have to do it in a way that doesn't alienate the population." When Vice President Biden was briefed on the new plan in the Oval Office, insiders say he was shocked to see how much it mirrored the more gradual plan of counterterrorism that he advocated last fall. "This looks like CT-plus!" he said, according to U.S. officials familiar with the meeting.
Whatever the nature of the new plan, the delay underscores the fundamental flaws of counterinsurgency. After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Quote of America from the Czech Republic
“The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the Presidency. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate willing to have such a man for their president."
"The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
"The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails America . Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince.
The Republic can survive a Barack Obama, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president.”
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
We con the world (with lyrics)
Sing along with the lyrics.
There comes a time
When we need to make a show
For the world, the Web and CNN
There's no people dying,
so the best that we can do
Is create the greatest bluff of all
We must go on pretending day by day
That in Gaza, there's crisis, hunger and plague
Coz the billion bucks in aid won't buy their basic needs
Like some cheese and missiles for the kids
We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
With guns and our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
Ooooh, we'll stab them at heart
They are soldiers, no one cares
We are small, and we took some pictures with doves
As Allah showed us, for facts there's no demand
So we will always gain the upper hand
We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
we're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
If Islam and terror brighten up your mood
But you worry that it may not look so good
Well well well well don't you realize
You just gotta call yourself
An activist for peace and human aid
We'll make the world
Abandon reason
We'll make them all believe that the Hamas
Is Momma Theresa
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world
We con the people
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
We con the world (Bruce: we con the world...)
We con the people (Bruce: we con the people...)
We'll make them all believe the IDF is Jack the Ripper
We are peaceful travelers
We're waving our own knives
The truth will never find its way to your TV
The truth will never find its way to your TV
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
The Arizona immigration law
State of Arizona
Senate
Forty-ninth Legislature
Second Regular Session
2010
SENATE BILL 1070
AS AMENDED BY HOUSE BILL 2162
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Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
Section 1. Intent
The legislature finds that there is a compelling interest in the cooperative enforcement of federal immigration laws throughout all of Arizona. The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona. The provisions of this act are intended to work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States.
Sec. 2. Title 11, chapter 7, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding article 8, to read:
ARTICLE 8. ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS
11-1051. Cooperation and assistance in enforcement of immigration laws; indemnification
A. NO OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY LIMIT OR RESTRICT THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW.
B. FOR ANY LAWFUL STOP, DETENTION OR ARREST MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF ANY OTHER LAW OR ORDINANCE OF A COUNTY, CITY OR TOWN OR THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN AND IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON, EXCEPT IF THE DETERMINATION MAY HINDER OR OBSTRUCT AN INVESTIGATION. ANY PERSON WHO IS ARRESTED SHALL HAVE THE PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS DETERMINED BEFORE THE PERSON IS RELEASED. THE PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS SHALL BE VERIFIED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c). A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SUBSECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION. A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
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4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
C. IF AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IS CONVICTED OF A VIOLATION OF STATE OR LOCAL LAW, ON DISCHARGE FROM IMPRISONMENT OR ON THE ASSESSMENT OF ANY MONETARY OBLIGATION THAT IS IMPOSED, THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION SHALL BE IMMEDIATELY NOTIFIED.
D. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY MAY SECURELY TRANSPORT AN ALIEN WHO THE AGENCY HAS RECEIVED VERIFICATION IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND WHO IS IN THE AGENCY'S CUSTODY TO A FEDERAL FACILITY IN THIS STATE OR TO ANY OTHER POINT OF TRANSFER INTO FEDERAL CUSTODY THAT IS OUTSIDE THE JURISDICTION OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY. A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY SHALL OBTAIN JUDICIAL AUTHORIZATION BEFORE SECURELY TRANSPORTING AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES TO A POINT OF TRANSFER THAT IS OUTSIDE OF THIS STATE.
E. IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
F. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN FEDERAL LAW, OFFICIALS OR AGENCIES OF THIS STATE AND COUNTIES, CITIES, TOWNS AND OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS OF THIS STATE MAY NOT BE PROHIBITED OR IN ANY WAY BE RESTRICTED FROM SENDING, RECEIVING OR MAINTAINING INFORMATION RELATING TO THE IMMIGRATION STATUS, LAWFUL OR UNLAWFUL, OF ANY INDIVIDUAL OR EXCHANGING THAT INFORMATION WITH ANY OTHER FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY FOR THE FOLLOWING OFFICIAL PURPOSES:
1. DETERMINING ELIGIBILITY FOR ANY PUBLIC BENEFIT, SERVICE OR LICENSE PROVIDED BY ANY FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE.
2. VERIFYING ANY CLAIM OF RESIDENCE OR DOMICILE IF DETERMINATION OF RESIDENCE OR DOMICILE IS REQUIRED UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS STATE OR A JUDICIAL ORDER ISSUED PURSUANT TO A CIVIL OR CRIMINAL PROCEEDING IN THIS STATE.
3. IF THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN, DETERMINING WHETHER THE PERSON IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE FEDERAL REGISTRATION LAWS PRESCRIBED BY TITLE II, CHAPTER 7 OF THE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT.
4. PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373 AND 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1644.
G THIS SECTION DOES NOT IMPLEMENT, AUTHORIZE OR ESTABLISH AND SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO IMPLEMENT, AUTHORIZE OR ESTABLISH THE REAL ID ACT OF 2005 (P.L. 109-13, DIVISION B; 119 STAT. 302), INCLUDING THE USE OF A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION CHIP.
H. A PERSON WHO IS A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THIS STATE MAY BRING AN ACTION IN SUPERIOR COURT TO CHALLENGE ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT ADOPTS OR IMPLEMENTS A POLICY THAT LIMITS OR RESTRICTS THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS, INCLUDING 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTIONS 1373 AND 1644, TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW. IF THERE IS A JUDICIAL FINDING THAT AN ENTITY HAS VIOLATED THIS SECTION, THE COURT SHALL ORDER THAT THE ENTITY PAY A CIVIL PENALTY
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OF NOT LESS THAN FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND NOT MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH DAY THAT THE POLICY HAS REMAINED IN EFFECT AFTER THE FILING OF AN ACTION PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION.
I. A COURT SHALL COLLECT THE CIVIL PENALTY PRESCRIBED IN SUBSECTION H OF THIS SECTION AND REMIT THE CIVIL PENALTY TO THE STATE TREASURER FOR DEPOSIT IN THE GANG AND IMMIGRATION INTELLIGENCE TEAM ENFORCEMENT MISSION FUND ESTABLISHED BY SECTION 41-1724.
J. THE COURT MAY AWARD COURT COSTS AND REASONABLE ATTORNEY FEES TO ANY PERSON OR ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT PREVAILS BY AN ADJUDICATION ON THE MERITS IN A PROCEEDING BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION.
K. EXCEPT IN RELATION TO MATTERS IN WHICH THE OFFICER IS ADJUDGED TO HAVE ACTED IN BAD FAITH, A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER IS INDEMNIFIED BY THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER'S AGENCY AGAINST REASONABLE COSTS AND EXPENSES, INCLUDING ATTORNEY FEES, INCURRED BY THE OFFICER IN CONNECTION WITH ANY ACTION, SUIT OR PROCEEDING BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION IN WHICH THE OFFICER MAY BE A DEFENDANT BY REASON OF THE OFFICER BEING OR HAVING BEEN A MEMBER OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY.
L. THIS SECTION SHALL BE IMPLEMENTED IN A MANNER CONSISTENT WITH FEDERAL LAWS REGULATING IMMIGRATION, PROTECTING THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF ALL PERSONS AND RESPECTING THE PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS.
Sec. 3. Title 13, chapter 15, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 13-1509, to read:
13-1509. Willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document; assessment; exception; authenticated records; classification
A. IN ADDITION TO ANY VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW, A PERSON IS GUILTY OF WILLFUL FAILURE TO COMPLETE OR CARRY AN ALIEN REGISTRATION DOCUMENT IF THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1304(e) OR 1306(a).
B. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
C. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
D. A PERSON WHO IS SENTENCED PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION IS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SUSPENSION OF SENTENCE, PROBATION, PARDON, COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE, OR RELEASE FROM CONFINEMENT ON ANY BASIS EXCEPT AS AUTHORIZED BY SECTION 31-233, SUBSECTION A OR B UNTIL THE SENTENCE IMPOSED BY THE COURT HAS BEEN SERVED OR THE PERSON IS ELIGIBLE FOR RELEASE PURSUANT TO SECTION 41-1604.07.
E. IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER PENALTY PRESCRIBED BY LAW, THE COURT SHALL ORDER THE PERSON TO PAY JAIL COSTS.
F. THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO A PERSON WHO MAINTAINS AUTHORIZATION FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO REMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
G. ANY RECORD THAT RELATES TO THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF A PERSON IS ADMISSIBLE IN ANY COURT WITHOUT FURTHER FOUNDATION OR TESTIMONY
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FROM A CUSTODIAN OF RECORDS IF THE RECORD IS CERTIFIED AS AUTHENTIC BY THE GOVERNMENT AGENCY THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING THE RECORD.
H. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR, EXCEPT THAT THE MAXIMUM FINE IS ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND FOR A FIRST VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION: THE COURT SHALL NOT SENTENCE THE PERSON TO MORE THAN TWENTY DAYS IN JAIL AND FOR A SECOND OR SUBSEQUENT VIOLATION THE COURT SHALL NOT SENTENCE THE PERSON TO MORE THAN THIRTY DAYS IN JAIL.
Sec. 4. Section 13-2319, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
13-2319. Smuggling; classification; definitions
A. It is unlawful for a person to intentionally engage in the smuggling of human beings for profit or commercial purpose.
B. A violation of this section is a class 4 felony.
C. Notwithstanding subsection B of this section, a violation of this section:
1. Is a class 2 felony if the human being who is smuggled is under eighteen years of age and is not accompanied by a family member over eighteen years of age or the offense involved the use of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument.
2. Is a class 3 felony if the offense involves the use or threatened use of deadly physical force and the person is not eligible for suspension of sentence, probation, pardon or release from confinement on any other basis except pursuant to section 31-233, subsection A or B until the sentence imposed by the court is served, the person is eligible for release pursuant to section 41-1604.07 or the sentence is commuted.
D. Chapter 10 of this title does not apply to a violation of subsection C, paragraph 1 of this section.
E. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION A PEACE OFFICER MAY LAWFULLY STOP ANY PERSON WHO IS OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE IF THE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE SUSPICION TO BELIEVE THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF ANY CIVIL TRAFFIC LAW.
F. For the purposes of this section:
1. "Family member" means the person's parent, grandparent, sibling or any other person who is related to the person by consanguinity or affinity to the second degree.
2. "Procurement of transportation" means any participation in or facilitation of transportation and includes:
(a) Providing services that facilitate transportation including travel arrangement services or money transmission services.
(b) Providing property that facilitates transportation, including a weapon, a vehicle or other means of transportation or false identification, or selling, leasing, renting or otherwise making available a drop house as defined in section 13-2322.
3. "Smuggling of human beings" means the transportation, procurement of transportation or use of property or real property by a person or an entity that knows or has reason to know that the person or persons transported or to be transported are not United States citizens, permanent resident aliens or persons otherwise lawfully in this state or have attempted to enter, entered or remained in the United States in violation of law.
Sec. 5. Title 13, chapter 29, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding sections 13-2928 and 13-2929, to read:
13-2928. Unlawful stopping to hire and pick up passengers for work; unlawful application, solicitation or employment; classification; definitions
A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR AN OCCUPANT OF A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY TO ATTEMPT TO HIRE OR HIRE AND PICK UP PASSENGERS FOR WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.
B. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO ENTER A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY IN ORDER TO BE HIRED BY AN OCCUPANT OF THE MOTOR VEHICLE AND TO BE TRANSPORTED TO WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.
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C. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND WHO IS AN UNAUTHORIZED ALIEN TO KNOWINGLY APPLY FOR WORK, SOLICIT WORK IN A PUBLIC PLACE OR PERFORM WORK AS AN EMPLOYEE OR INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR IN THIS STATE.
D. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
E. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
F. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR.
G. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION:
1. "SOLICIT" MEANS VERBAL OR NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION BY A GESTURE OR A NOD THAT WOULD INDICATE TO A REASONABLE PERSON THAT A PERSON IS WILLING TO BE EMPLOYED.
2. "UNAUTHORIZED ALIEN" MEANS AN ALIEN WHO DOES NOT HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT OR AUTHORIZATION UNDER FEDERAL LAW TO WORK IN THE UNITED STATES AS DESCRIBED IN 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1324a(h)(3).
13-2929. Unlawful transporting, moving, concealing, harboring or shielding of unlawful aliens; vehicle impoundment; exception; classification
A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON WHO IS IN VIOLATION OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO:
1. TRANSPORT OR MOVE OR ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT OR MOVE AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE, IN FURTHERANCE OF THE ILLEGAL PRESENCE OF THE ALIEN IN THE UNITED STATES, IN A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
2. CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD OR ATTEMPT TO CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD AN ALIEN FROM DETECTION IN ANY PLACE IN THIS STATE, INCLUDING ANY BUILDING OR ANY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION, IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
3. ENCOURAGE OR INDUCE AN ALIEN TO COME TO OR RESIDE IN THIS STATE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT SUCH COMING TO, ENTERING OR RESIDING IN THIS STATE IS OR WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
B. A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION THAT IS USED IN THE COMMISSION OF A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS SUBJECT TO MANDATORY VEHICLE IMMOBILIZATION OR IMPOUNDMENT PURSUANT TO SECTION 28-3511.
C. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
D. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
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2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
E. THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO A CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES WORKER ACTING IN THE WORKER'S OFFICIAL CAPACITY OR A PERSON WHO IS ACTING IN THE CAPACITY OF A FIRST RESPONDER, AN AMBULANCE ATTENDANT OR AN EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN AND WHO IS TRANSPORTING OR MOVING AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE PURSUANT TO TITLE 36, CHAPTER 21.1.
F. A PERSON WHO VIOLATES THIS SECTION IS GUILTY OF A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR AND IS SUBJECT TO A FINE OF AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS, EXCEPT THAT A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION THAT INVOLVES TEN OR MORE ILLEGAL ALIENS IS A CLASS 6 FELONY AND THE PERSON IS SUBJECT TO A FINE OF AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH ALIEN WHO IS INVOLVED.
Sec. 6. Section 13-3883, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
13-3883. Arrest by officer without warrant
A. A peace officer, without a warrant, MAY arrest a person if THE OFFICER has probable cause to believe:
1. A felony has been committed and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the felony.
2. A misdemeanor has been committed in THE OFFICER'S presence and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the offense.
3. The person to be arrested has been involved in a traffic accident and violated any criminal section of title 28, and that such violation occurred prior to or immediately following such traffic accident.
4. A misdemeanor or a petty offense has been committed and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the offense. A person arrested under this paragraph is eligible for release under section 13-3903.
5. THE PERSON TO BE ARRESTED HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.
B. A peace officer may stop and detain a person as is reasonably necessary to investigate an actual or suspected violation of any traffic law committed in the officer's presence and may serve a copy of the traffic complaint for any alleged civil or criminal traffic violation. A peace officer who serves a copy of the traffic complaint shall do so within a reasonable time of the alleged criminal or civil traffic violation.
Sec. 7. Section 23-212, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-212. Knowingly employing unauthorized aliens; prohibition; false and frivolous complaints; violation; classification; license suspension and revocation; affirmative defense
A. An employer shall not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien. If, in the case when an employer uses a contract, subcontract or other independent contractor agreement to obtain the labor of an alien in this state, the employer knowingly contracts with an unauthorized alien or with a person who employs or contracts with an unauthorized alien to perform the labor, the employer violates this subsection.
B. The attorney general shall prescribe a complaint form for a person to allege a violation of subsection A of this section. The complainant shall not be required to list the complainant's social security number on the complaint form or to have the complaint form notarized. On receipt of a complaint on a prescribed complaint form that an employer allegedly knowingly employs an unauthorized alien, the attorney general or county attorney shall investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. If a complaint is received but is not submitted on a prescribed complaint form, the attorney general or county attorney may investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. This subsection shall not be construed to prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints that are not submitted on a prescribed complaint form. The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin. A complaint that is submitted to a county attorney shall be submitted to the county attorney in the county in which the alleged unauthorized alien is or was employed by the employer. The county sheriff or any other local law enforcement agency may assist in investigating a
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complaint. When investigating a complaint, the attorney general or county attorney shall verify the work authorization of the alleged unauthorized alien with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A state, county or local official shall not attempt to independently make a final determination on whether an alien is authorized to work in the United States. An alien's immigration status or work authorization status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A person who knowingly files a false and frivolous complaint under this subsection is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.
C. If, after an investigation, the attorney general or county attorney determines that the complaint is not false and frivolous:
1. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the United States immigration and customs enforcement of the unauthorized alien.
2. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the local law enforcement agency of the unauthorized alien.
3. The attorney general shall notify the appropriate county attorney to bring an action pursuant to subsection D of this section if the complaint was originally filed with the attorney general.
D. An action for a violation of subsection A of this section shall be brought against the employer by the county attorney in the county where the unauthorized alien employee is or was employed by the employer. The county attorney shall not bring an action against any employer for any violation of subsection A of this section that occurs before January 1, 2008. A second violation of this section shall be based only on an unauthorized alien who is or was employed by the employer after an action has been brought for a violation of subsection A of this section or section 23-212.01, subsection A.
E. For any action in superior court under this section, the court shall expedite the action, including assigning the hearing at the earliest practicable date.
F. On a finding of a violation of subsection A of this section:
1. For a first violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court:
(a) Shall order the employer to terminate the employment of all unauthorized aliens.
(b) Shall order the employer to be subject to a three year probationary period for the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. During the probationary period the employer shall file quarterly reports in the form provided in section 23-722.01 with the county attorney of each new employee who is hired by the employer at the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work.
(c) Shall order the employer to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. The affidavit shall state that the employer has terminated the employment of all unauthorized aliens in this state and that the employer will not intentionally or knowingly employ an unauthorized alien in this state. The court shall order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses subject to this subdivision that are held by the employer if the employer fails to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. All licenses that are suspended under this subdivision shall remain suspended until the employer files a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. Notwithstanding any other law, on filing of the affidavit the suspended licenses shall be reinstated immediately by the appropriate agencies. For the purposes of this subdivision, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the court's order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall suspend the licenses according to the court's order. The court shall send a copy of the court's order to the attorney general and the attorney general shall maintain the copy pursuant to subsection G of this section.
(d) May order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses described in subdivision (c) of this paragraph that are held by the employer for not to exceed ten business days. The court shall base its decision to suspend under this subdivision on any evidence or information submitted to it
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during the action for a violation of this subsection and shall consider the following factors, if relevant:
(i) The number of unauthorized aliens employed by the employer.
(ii) Any prior misconduct by the employer.
(iii) The degree of harm resulting from the violation.
(iv) Whether the employer made good faith efforts to comply with any applicable requirements.
(v) The duration of the violation.
(vi) The role of the directors, officers or principals of the employer in the violation.
(vii) Any other factors the court deems appropriate.
2. For a second violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall immediately revoke the licenses.
3. The violation shall be considered:
(a) A first violation by an employer at a business location if the violation did not occur during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212.01, subsection F for that employer's business location.
(b) A second violation by an employer at a business location if the violation occurred during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212.01, subsection F for that employer's business location.
G. The attorney general shall maintain copies of court orders that are received pursuant to subsection F of this section and shall maintain a database of the employers and business locations that have a first violation of subsection A of this section and make the court orders available on the attorney general's website.
H. On determining whether an employee is an unauthorized alien, the court shall consider only the federal government's determination pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). The federal government's determination creates a rebuttable presumption of the employee's lawful status. The court may take judicial notice of the federal government's determination and may request the federal government to provide automated or testimonial verification pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c).
I. For the purposes of this section, proof of verifying the employment authorization of an employee through the e-verify program creates a rebuttable presumption that an employer did not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien.
J. For the purposes of this section, an employer that establishes that it has complied in good faith with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b) establishes an affirmative defense that the employer did not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien. An employer is considered to have complied with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b), notwithstanding an isolated, sporadic or accidental technical or procedural failure to meet the requirements, if there is a good faith attempt to comply with the requirements.
K. IT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE TO A VIOLATION OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION THAT THE EMPLOYER WAS ENTRAPPED. TO CLAIM ENTRAPMENT, THE EMPLOYER MUST ADMIT BY THE EMPLOYER'S TESTIMONY OR OTHER EVIDENCE THE SUBSTANTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE VIOLATION. AN EMPLOYER WHO ASSERTS AN ENTRAPMENT DEFENSE HAS THE BURDEN OF PROVING THE FOLLOWING BY A PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE:
1. THE IDEA OF COMMITTING THE VIOLATION STARTED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS RATHER THAN WITH THE EMPLOYER.
2. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
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3. THE EMPLOYER WAS NOT PREDISPOSED TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION BEFORE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
L. AN EMPLOYER DOES NOT ESTABLISH ENTRAPMENT IF THE EMPLOYER WAS PREDISPOSED TO VIOLATE SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY PROVIDED THE EMPLOYER WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION. IT IS NOT ENTRAPMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY TO USE A RUSE OR TO CONCEAL THEIR IDENTITY. THE CONDUCT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS AND THEIR AGENTS MAY BE CONSIDERED IN DETERMINING IF AN EMPLOYER HAS PROVEN ENTRAPMENT.
Sec. 8. Section 23-212.01, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-212.01. Intentionally employing unauthorized aliens; prohibition; false and frivolous complaints; violation; classification; license suspension and revocation; affirmative defense
A. An employer shall not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien. If, in the case when an employer uses a contract, subcontract or other independent contractor agreement to obtain the labor of an alien in this state, the employer intentionally contracts with an unauthorized alien or with a person who employs or contracts with an unauthorized alien to perform the labor, the employer violates this subsection.
B. The attorney general shall prescribe a complaint form for a person to allege a violation of subsection A of this section. The complainant shall not be required to list the complainant's social security number on the complaint form or to have the complaint form notarized. On receipt of a complaint on a prescribed complaint form that an employer allegedly intentionally employs an unauthorized alien, the attorney general or county attorney shall investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. If a complaint is received but is not submitted on a prescribed complaint form, the attorney general or county attorney may investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. This subsection shall not be construed to prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints that are not submitted on a prescribed complaint form. The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin. A complaint that is submitted to a county attorney shall be submitted to the county attorney in the county in which the alleged unauthorized alien is or was employed by the employer. The county sheriff or any other local law enforcement agency may assist in investigating a complaint. When investigating a complaint, the attorney general or county attorney shall verify the work authorization of the alleged unauthorized alien with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A state, county or local official shall not attempt to independently make a final determination on whether an alien is authorized to work in the United States. An alien's immigration status or work authorization status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A person who knowingly files a false and frivolous complaint under this subsection is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.
C. If, after an investigation, the attorney general or county attorney determines that the complaint is not false and frivolous:
1. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the United States immigration and customs enforcement of the unauthorized alien.
2. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the local law enforcement agency of the unauthorized alien.
3. The attorney general shall notify the appropriate county attorney to bring an action pursuant to subsection D of this section if the complaint was originally filed with the attorney general.
D. An action for a violation of subsection A of this section shall be brought against the employer by the county attorney in the county where the unauthorized alien employee is or was employed by the employer. The county attorney shall not bring an action against any employer for any violation of subsection A of this section that occurs before January 1, 2008. A second violation of this section shall be based only on an unauthorized alien who is or was employed by the employer after an action has been brought for a violation of subsection A of this section or section 23-212, subsection A.
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E. For any action in superior court under this section, the court shall expedite the action, including assigning the hearing at the earliest practicable date.
F. On a finding of a violation of subsection A of this section:
1. For a first violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall:
(a) Order the employer to terminate the employment of all unauthorized aliens.
(b) Order the employer to be subject to a five year probationary period for the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. During the probationary period the employer shall file quarterly reports in the form provided in section 23-722.01 with the county attorney of each new employee who is hired by the employer at the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work.
(c) Order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses described in subdivision (d) of this paragraph that are held by the employer for a minimum of ten days. The court shall base its decision on the length of the suspension under this subdivision on any evidence or information submitted to it during the action for a violation of this subsection and shall consider the following factors, if relevant:
(i) The number of unauthorized aliens employed by the employer.
(ii) Any prior misconduct by the employer.
(iii) The degree of harm resulting from the violation.
(iv) Whether the employer made good faith efforts to comply with any applicable requirements.
(v) The duration of the violation.
(vi) The role of the directors, officers or principals of the employer in the violation.
(vii) Any other factors the court deems appropriate.
(d) Order the employer to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. The affidavit shall state that the employer has terminated the employment of all unauthorized aliens in this state and that the employer will not intentionally or knowingly employ an unauthorized alien in this state. The court shall order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses subject to this subdivision that are held by the employer if the employer fails to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. All licenses that are suspended under this subdivision for failing to file a signed sworn affidavit shall remain suspended until the employer files a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. For the purposes of this subdivision, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the court's order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall suspend the licenses according to the court's order. The court shall send a copy of the court's order to the attorney general and the attorney general shall maintain the copy pursuant to subsection G of this section.
2. For a second violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall immediately revoke the licenses.
3. The violation shall be considered:
(a) A first violation by an employer at a business location if the violation did not occur during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212, subsection F for that employer's business location.
(b) A second violation by an employer at a business location if the violation occurred during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212, subsection F for that employer's business location.
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G. The attorney general shall maintain copies of court orders that are received pursuant to subsection F of this section and shall maintain a database of the employers and business locations that have a first violation of subsection A of this section and make the court orders available on the attorney general's website.
H. On determining whether an employee is an unauthorized alien, the court shall consider only the federal government's determination pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). The federal government's determination creates a rebuttable presumption of the employee's lawful status. The court may take judicial notice of the federal government's determination and may request the federal government to provide automated or testimonial verification pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c).
I. For the purposes of this section, proof of verifying the employment authorization of an employee through the e-verify program creates a rebuttable presumption that an employer did not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien.
J. For the purposes of this section, an employer that establishes that it has complied in good faith with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b) establishes an affirmative defense that the employer did not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien. An employer is considered to have complied with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b), notwithstanding an isolated, sporadic or accidental technical or procedural failure to meet the requirements, if there is a good faith attempt to comply with the requirements.
K. IT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE TO A VIOLATION OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION THAT THE EMPLOYER WAS ENTRAPPED. TO CLAIM ENTRAPMENT, THE EMPLOYER MUST ADMIT BY THE EMPLOYER'S TESTIMONY OR OTHER EVIDENCE THE SUBSTANTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE VIOLATION. AN EMPLOYER WHO ASSERTS AN ENTRAPMENT DEFENSE HAS THE BURDEN OF PROVING THE FOLLOWING BY A PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE:
1. THE IDEA OF COMMITTING THE VIOLATION STARTED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS RATHER THAN WITH THE EMPLOYER.
2. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
3. THE EMPLOYER WAS NOT PREDISPOSED TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION BEFORE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
L. AN EMPLOYER DOES NOT ESTABLISH ENTRAPMENT IF THE EMPLOYER WAS PREDISPOSED TO VIOLATE SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY PROVIDED THE EMPLOYER WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION. IT IS NOT ENTRAPMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY TO USE A RUSE OR TO CONCEAL THEIR IDENTITY. THE CONDUCT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS AND THEIR AGENTS MAY BE CONSIDERED IN DETERMINING IF AN EMPLOYER HAS PROVEN ENTRAPMENT.
Sec. 9. Section 23-214, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-214. Verification of employment eligibility; e-verify program; economic development incentives; list of registered employers
A. After December 31, 2007, every employer, after hiring an employee, shall verify the employment eligibility of the employee through the e-verify program AND SHALL KEEP A RECORD OF THE VERIFICATION FOR THE DURATION OF THE EMPLOYEE'S EMPLOYMENT OR AT LEAST THREE YEARS, WHICHEVER IS LONGER.
B. In addition to any other requirement for an employer to receive an economic development incentive from a government entity, the employer shall register with and participate in the e-verify program. Before receiving the economic development incentive, the employer shall provide proof to the government entity that the employer is registered with and is participating in the e-verify program. If the government entity determines that the employer is not complying with this subsection, the government entity shall notify the employer by certified mail of the government entity's determination of noncompliance and the employer's right to appeal the determination. On a final determination of noncompliance, the employer shall repay all monies received as an economic
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development incentive to the government entity within thirty days of the final determination. For the purposes of this subsection:
1. "Economic development incentive" means any grant, loan or performance-based incentive from any government entity that is awarded after September 30, 2008. Economic development incentive does not include any tax provision under title 42 or 43.
2. "Government entity" means this state and any political subdivision of this state that receives and uses tax revenues.
C. Every three months the attorney general shall request from the United States department of homeland security a list of employers from this state that are registered with the e-verify program. On receipt of the list of employers, the attorney general shall make the list available on the attorney general's website.
Sec. 10. Section 28-3511, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
28-3511. Removal and immobilization or impoundment of vehicle
A. A peace officer shall cause the removal and either immobilization or impoundment of a vehicle if the peace officer determines that a person is driving the vehicle while any of the following applies:
1. The person's driving privilege is suspended or revoked for any reason.
2. The person has not ever been issued a valid driver license or permit by this state and the person does not produce evidence of ever having a valid driver license or permit issued by another jurisdiction. This paragraph does not apply to the operation of an implement of husbandry.
3. The person is subject to an ignition interlock device requirement pursuant to chapter 4 of this title and the person is operating a vehicle without a functioning certified ignition interlock device. This paragraph does not apply to a person operating an employer's vehicle or the operation of a vehicle due to a substantial emergency as defined in section 28-1464.
4. IN FURTHERANCE OF THE ILLEGAL PRESENCE OF AN ALIEN IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN VIOLATION OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE, THE PERSON IS TRANSPORTING OR MOVING OR ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT OR MOVE AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE IN A VEHICLE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
5. THE PERSON IS CONCEALING, HARBORING OR SHIELDING OR ATTEMPTING TO CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD FROM DETECTION AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE IN A VEHICLE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
B. A peace officer shall cause the removal and impoundment of a vehicle if the peace officer determines that a person is driving the vehicle and if all of the following apply:
1. The person's driving privilege is canceled, suspended or revoked for any reason or the person has not ever been issued a driver license or permit by this state and the person does not produce evidence of ever having a driver license or permit issued by another jurisdiction.
2. The person is not in compliance with the financial responsibility requirements of chapter 9, article 4 of this title.
3. The person is driving a vehicle that is involved in an accident that results in either property damage or injury to or death of another person.
C. Except as provided in subsection D of this section, while a peace officer has control of the vehicle the peace officer shall cause the removal and either immobilization or impoundment of the vehicle if the peace officer has probable cause to arrest the driver of the vehicle for a violation of section 4-244, paragraph 34 or section 28-1382 or 28-1383.
D. A peace officer shall not cause the removal and either the immobilization or impoundment of a vehicle pursuant to subsection C of this section if all of the following apply:
1. The peace officer determines that the vehicle is currently registered and that the driver or the vehicle is in compliance with the financial responsibility requirements of chapter 9, article 4 of this title.
2. The spouse of the driver is with the driver at the time of the arrest.
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3. The peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the spouse of the driver:
(a) Has a valid driver license.
(b) Is not impaired by intoxicating liquor, any drug, a vapor releasing substance containing a toxic substance or any combination of liquor, drugs or vapor releasing substances.
(c) Does not have any spirituous liquor in the spouse's body if the spouse is under twenty-one years of age.
4. The spouse notifies the peace officer that the spouse will drive the vehicle from the place of arrest to the driver's home or other place of safety.
5. The spouse drives the vehicle as prescribed by paragraph 4 of this subsection.
E. Except as otherwise provided in this article, a vehicle that is removed and either immobilized or impounded pursuant to subsection A, B or C of this section shall be immobilized or impounded for thirty days. An insurance company does not have a duty to pay any benefits for charges or fees for immobilization or impoundment.
F. The owner of a vehicle that is removed and either immobilized or impounded pursuant to subsection A, B or C of this section, the spouse of the owner and each person identified on the department's record with an interest in the vehicle shall be provided with an opportunity for an immobilization or poststorage hearing pursuant to section 28-3514.
Sec. 11. Title 41, chapter 12, article 2, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 41-1724, to read:
41-1724. Gang and immigration intelligence team enforcement mission fund
THE GANG AND IMMIGRATION INTELLIGENCE TEAM ENFORCEMENT MISSION FUND IS ESTABLISHED CONSISTING OF MONIES DEPOSITED PURSUANT TO SECTION 11-1051 AND MONIES APPROPRIATED BY THE LEGISLATURE. THE DEPARTMENT SHALL ADMINISTER THE FUND. MONIES IN THE FUND ARE SUBJECT TO LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATION AND SHALL BE USED FOR GANG AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AND FOR COUNTY JAIL REIMBURSEMENT COSTS RELATING TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.
Sec. 12. Severability, implementation and construction
A. If a provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of the act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are severable.
B. The terms of this act regarding immigration shall be construed to have the meanings given to them under federal immigration law.
C. This act shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.
D. Nothing in this act shall implement or shall be construed or interpreted to implement or establish the REAL ID act of 2005 (P.L. 109-13, division B; 119 Stat. 302) including the use of a radio frequency identification chip.
Sec. 13. Short title
This act may be cited as the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act
Senate
Forty-ninth Legislature
Second Regular Session
2010
SENATE BILL 1070
AS AMENDED BY HOUSE BILL 2162
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Be it enacted by the Legislature of the State of Arizona:
Section 1. Intent
The legislature finds that there is a compelling interest in the cooperative enforcement of federal immigration laws throughout all of Arizona. The legislature declares that the intent of this act is to make attrition through enforcement the public policy of all state and local government agencies in Arizona. The provisions of this act are intended to work together to discourage and deter the unlawful entry and presence of aliens and economic activity by persons unlawfully present in the United States.
Sec. 2. Title 11, chapter 7, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding article 8, to read:
ARTICLE 8. ENFORCEMENT OF IMMIGRATION LAWS
11-1051. Cooperation and assistance in enforcement of immigration laws; indemnification
A. NO OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY LIMIT OR RESTRICT THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW.
B. FOR ANY LAWFUL STOP, DETENTION OR ARREST MADE BY A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY OF A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF ANY OTHER LAW OR ORDINANCE OF A COUNTY, CITY OR TOWN OR THIS STATE WHERE REASONABLE SUSPICION EXISTS THAT THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN AND IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES, A REASONABLE ATTEMPT SHALL BE MADE, WHEN PRACTICABLE, TO DETERMINE THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF THE PERSON, EXCEPT IF THE DETERMINATION MAY HINDER OR OBSTRUCT AN INVESTIGATION. ANY PERSON WHO IS ARRESTED SHALL HAVE THE PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS DETERMINED BEFORE THE PERSON IS RELEASED. THE PERSON'S IMMIGRATION STATUS SHALL BE VERIFIED WITH THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c). A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN IMPLEMENTING THE REQUIREMENTS OF THIS SUBSECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION. A PERSON IS PRESUMED TO NOT BE AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IF THE PERSON PROVIDES TO THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER OR AGENCY ANY OF THE FOLLOWING:
1. A VALID ARIZONA DRIVER LICENSE.
2. A VALID ARIZONA NONOPERATING IDENTIFICATION LICENSE.
3. A VALID TRIBAL ENROLLMENT CARD OR OTHER FORM OF TRIBAL IDENTIFICATION.
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4. IF THE ENTITY REQUIRES PROOF OF LEGAL PRESENCE IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE ISSUANCE, ANY VALID UNITED STATES FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENT ISSUED IDENTIFICATION.
C. IF AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES IS CONVICTED OF A VIOLATION OF STATE OR LOCAL LAW, ON DISCHARGE FROM IMPRISONMENT OR ON THE ASSESSMENT OF ANY MONETARY OBLIGATION THAT IS IMPOSED, THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION SHALL BE IMMEDIATELY NOTIFIED.
D. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY MAY SECURELY TRANSPORT AN ALIEN WHO THE AGENCY HAS RECEIVED VERIFICATION IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND WHO IS IN THE AGENCY'S CUSTODY TO A FEDERAL FACILITY IN THIS STATE OR TO ANY OTHER POINT OF TRANSFER INTO FEDERAL CUSTODY THAT IS OUTSIDE THE JURISDICTION OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY. A LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY SHALL OBTAIN JUDICIAL AUTHORIZATION BEFORE SECURELY TRANSPORTING AN ALIEN WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES TO A POINT OF TRANSFER THAT IS OUTSIDE OF THIS STATE.
E. IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
F. EXCEPT AS PROVIDED IN FEDERAL LAW, OFFICIALS OR AGENCIES OF THIS STATE AND COUNTIES, CITIES, TOWNS AND OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISIONS OF THIS STATE MAY NOT BE PROHIBITED OR IN ANY WAY BE RESTRICTED FROM SENDING, RECEIVING OR MAINTAINING INFORMATION RELATING TO THE IMMIGRATION STATUS, LAWFUL OR UNLAWFUL, OF ANY INDIVIDUAL OR EXCHANGING THAT INFORMATION WITH ANY OTHER FEDERAL, STATE OR LOCAL GOVERNMENTAL ENTITY FOR THE FOLLOWING OFFICIAL PURPOSES:
1. DETERMINING ELIGIBILITY FOR ANY PUBLIC BENEFIT, SERVICE OR LICENSE PROVIDED BY ANY FEDERAL, STATE, LOCAL OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE.
2. VERIFYING ANY CLAIM OF RESIDENCE OR DOMICILE IF DETERMINATION OF RESIDENCE OR DOMICILE IS REQUIRED UNDER THE LAWS OF THIS STATE OR A JUDICIAL ORDER ISSUED PURSUANT TO A CIVIL OR CRIMINAL PROCEEDING IN THIS STATE.
3. IF THE PERSON IS AN ALIEN, DETERMINING WHETHER THE PERSON IS IN COMPLIANCE WITH THE FEDERAL REGISTRATION LAWS PRESCRIBED BY TITLE II, CHAPTER 7 OF THE FEDERAL IMMIGRATION AND NATIONALITY ACT.
4. PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373 AND 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1644.
G THIS SECTION DOES NOT IMPLEMENT, AUTHORIZE OR ESTABLISH AND SHALL NOT BE CONSTRUED TO IMPLEMENT, AUTHORIZE OR ESTABLISH THE REAL ID ACT OF 2005 (P.L. 109-13, DIVISION B; 119 STAT. 302), INCLUDING THE USE OF A RADIO FREQUENCY IDENTIFICATION CHIP.
H. A PERSON WHO IS A LEGAL RESIDENT OF THIS STATE MAY BRING AN ACTION IN SUPERIOR COURT TO CHALLENGE ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT ADOPTS OR IMPLEMENTS A POLICY THAT LIMITS OR RESTRICTS THE ENFORCEMENT OF FEDERAL IMMIGRATION LAWS, INCLUDING 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTIONS 1373 AND 1644, TO LESS THAN THE FULL EXTENT PERMITTED BY FEDERAL LAW. IF THERE IS A JUDICIAL FINDING THAT AN ENTITY HAS VIOLATED THIS SECTION, THE COURT SHALL ORDER THAT THE ENTITY PAY A CIVIL PENALTY
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OF NOT LESS THAN FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND NOT MORE THAN FIVE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH DAY THAT THE POLICY HAS REMAINED IN EFFECT AFTER THE FILING OF AN ACTION PURSUANT TO THIS SUBSECTION.
I. A COURT SHALL COLLECT THE CIVIL PENALTY PRESCRIBED IN SUBSECTION H OF THIS SECTION AND REMIT THE CIVIL PENALTY TO THE STATE TREASURER FOR DEPOSIT IN THE GANG AND IMMIGRATION INTELLIGENCE TEAM ENFORCEMENT MISSION FUND ESTABLISHED BY SECTION 41-1724.
J. THE COURT MAY AWARD COURT COSTS AND REASONABLE ATTORNEY FEES TO ANY PERSON OR ANY OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE THAT PREVAILS BY AN ADJUDICATION ON THE MERITS IN A PROCEEDING BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION.
K. EXCEPT IN RELATION TO MATTERS IN WHICH THE OFFICER IS ADJUDGED TO HAVE ACTED IN BAD FAITH, A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER IS INDEMNIFIED BY THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER'S AGENCY AGAINST REASONABLE COSTS AND EXPENSES, INCLUDING ATTORNEY FEES, INCURRED BY THE OFFICER IN CONNECTION WITH ANY ACTION, SUIT OR PROCEEDING BROUGHT PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION IN WHICH THE OFFICER MAY BE A DEFENDANT BY REASON OF THE OFFICER BEING OR HAVING BEEN A MEMBER OF THE LAW ENFORCEMENT AGENCY.
L. THIS SECTION SHALL BE IMPLEMENTED IN A MANNER CONSISTENT WITH FEDERAL LAWS REGULATING IMMIGRATION, PROTECTING THE CIVIL RIGHTS OF ALL PERSONS AND RESPECTING THE PRIVILEGES AND IMMUNITIES OF UNITED STATES CITIZENS.
Sec. 3. Title 13, chapter 15, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 13-1509, to read:
13-1509. Willful failure to complete or carry an alien registration document; assessment; exception; authenticated records; classification
A. IN ADDITION TO ANY VIOLATION OF FEDERAL LAW, A PERSON IS GUILTY OF WILLFUL FAILURE TO COMPLETE OR CARRY AN ALIEN REGISTRATION DOCUMENT IF THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1304(e) OR 1306(a).
B. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
C. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
D. A PERSON WHO IS SENTENCED PURSUANT TO THIS SECTION IS NOT ELIGIBLE FOR SUSPENSION OF SENTENCE, PROBATION, PARDON, COMMUTATION OF SENTENCE, OR RELEASE FROM CONFINEMENT ON ANY BASIS EXCEPT AS AUTHORIZED BY SECTION 31-233, SUBSECTION A OR B UNTIL THE SENTENCE IMPOSED BY THE COURT HAS BEEN SERVED OR THE PERSON IS ELIGIBLE FOR RELEASE PURSUANT TO SECTION 41-1604.07.
E. IN ADDITION TO ANY OTHER PENALTY PRESCRIBED BY LAW, THE COURT SHALL ORDER THE PERSON TO PAY JAIL COSTS.
F. THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO A PERSON WHO MAINTAINS AUTHORIZATION FROM THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO REMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
G. ANY RECORD THAT RELATES TO THE IMMIGRATION STATUS OF A PERSON IS ADMISSIBLE IN ANY COURT WITHOUT FURTHER FOUNDATION OR TESTIMONY
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FROM A CUSTODIAN OF RECORDS IF THE RECORD IS CERTIFIED AS AUTHENTIC BY THE GOVERNMENT AGENCY THAT IS RESPONSIBLE FOR MAINTAINING THE RECORD.
H. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR, EXCEPT THAT THE MAXIMUM FINE IS ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS AND FOR A FIRST VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION: THE COURT SHALL NOT SENTENCE THE PERSON TO MORE THAN TWENTY DAYS IN JAIL AND FOR A SECOND OR SUBSEQUENT VIOLATION THE COURT SHALL NOT SENTENCE THE PERSON TO MORE THAN THIRTY DAYS IN JAIL.
Sec. 4. Section 13-2319, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
13-2319. Smuggling; classification; definitions
A. It is unlawful for a person to intentionally engage in the smuggling of human beings for profit or commercial purpose.
B. A violation of this section is a class 4 felony.
C. Notwithstanding subsection B of this section, a violation of this section:
1. Is a class 2 felony if the human being who is smuggled is under eighteen years of age and is not accompanied by a family member over eighteen years of age or the offense involved the use of a deadly weapon or dangerous instrument.
2. Is a class 3 felony if the offense involves the use or threatened use of deadly physical force and the person is not eligible for suspension of sentence, probation, pardon or release from confinement on any other basis except pursuant to section 31-233, subsection A or B until the sentence imposed by the court is served, the person is eligible for release pursuant to section 41-1604.07 or the sentence is commuted.
D. Chapter 10 of this title does not apply to a violation of subsection C, paragraph 1 of this section.
E. NOTWITHSTANDING ANY OTHER LAW, IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION A PEACE OFFICER MAY LAWFULLY STOP ANY PERSON WHO IS OPERATING A MOTOR VEHICLE IF THE OFFICER HAS REASONABLE SUSPICION TO BELIEVE THE PERSON IS IN VIOLATION OF ANY CIVIL TRAFFIC LAW.
F. For the purposes of this section:
1. "Family member" means the person's parent, grandparent, sibling or any other person who is related to the person by consanguinity or affinity to the second degree.
2. "Procurement of transportation" means any participation in or facilitation of transportation and includes:
(a) Providing services that facilitate transportation including travel arrangement services or money transmission services.
(b) Providing property that facilitates transportation, including a weapon, a vehicle or other means of transportation or false identification, or selling, leasing, renting or otherwise making available a drop house as defined in section 13-2322.
3. "Smuggling of human beings" means the transportation, procurement of transportation or use of property or real property by a person or an entity that knows or has reason to know that the person or persons transported or to be transported are not United States citizens, permanent resident aliens or persons otherwise lawfully in this state or have attempted to enter, entered or remained in the United States in violation of law.
Sec. 5. Title 13, chapter 29, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding sections 13-2928 and 13-2929, to read:
13-2928. Unlawful stopping to hire and pick up passengers for work; unlawful application, solicitation or employment; classification; definitions
A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR AN OCCUPANT OF A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY TO ATTEMPT TO HIRE OR HIRE AND PICK UP PASSENGERS FOR WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.
B. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON TO ENTER A MOTOR VEHICLE THAT IS STOPPED ON A STREET, ROADWAY OR HIGHWAY IN ORDER TO BE HIRED BY AN OCCUPANT OF THE MOTOR VEHICLE AND TO BE TRANSPORTED TO WORK AT A DIFFERENT LOCATION IF THE MOTOR VEHICLE BLOCKS OR IMPEDES THE NORMAL MOVEMENT OF TRAFFIC.
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C. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON WHO IS UNLAWFULLY PRESENT IN THE UNITED STATES AND WHO IS AN UNAUTHORIZED ALIEN TO KNOWINGLY APPLY FOR WORK, SOLICIT WORK IN A PUBLIC PLACE OR PERFORM WORK AS AN EMPLOYEE OR INDEPENDENT CONTRACTOR IN THIS STATE.
D. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
E. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
F. A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR.
G. FOR THE PURPOSES OF THIS SECTION:
1. "SOLICIT" MEANS VERBAL OR NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION BY A GESTURE OR A NOD THAT WOULD INDICATE TO A REASONABLE PERSON THAT A PERSON IS WILLING TO BE EMPLOYED.
2. "UNAUTHORIZED ALIEN" MEANS AN ALIEN WHO DOES NOT HAVE THE LEGAL RIGHT OR AUTHORIZATION UNDER FEDERAL LAW TO WORK IN THE UNITED STATES AS DESCRIBED IN 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1324a(h)(3).
13-2929. Unlawful transporting, moving, concealing, harboring or shielding of unlawful aliens; vehicle impoundment; exception; classification
A. IT IS UNLAWFUL FOR A PERSON WHO IS IN VIOLATION OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE TO:
1. TRANSPORT OR MOVE OR ATTEMPT TO TRANSPORT OR MOVE AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE, IN FURTHERANCE OF THE ILLEGAL PRESENCE OF THE ALIEN IN THE UNITED STATES, IN A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
2. CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD OR ATTEMPT TO CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD AN ALIEN FROM DETECTION IN ANY PLACE IN THIS STATE, INCLUDING ANY BUILDING OR ANY MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION, IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
3. ENCOURAGE OR INDUCE AN ALIEN TO COME TO OR RESIDE IN THIS STATE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT SUCH COMING TO, ENTERING OR RESIDING IN THIS STATE IS OR WILL BE IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
B. A MEANS OF TRANSPORTATION THAT IS USED IN THE COMMISSION OF A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION IS SUBJECT TO MANDATORY VEHICLE IMMOBILIZATION OR IMPOUNDMENT PURSUANT TO SECTION 28-3511.
C. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIAL OR AGENCY OF THIS STATE OR A COUNTY, CITY, TOWN OR OTHER POLITICAL SUBDIVISION OF THIS STATE MAY NOT CONSIDER RACE, COLOR OR NATIONAL ORIGIN IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION EXCEPT TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY THE UNITED STATES OR ARIZONA CONSTITUTION.
D. IN THE ENFORCEMENT OF THIS SECTION, AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS MAY BE DETERMINED BY:
1. A LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICER WHO IS AUTHORIZED BY THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT TO VERIFY OR ASCERTAIN AN ALIEN'S IMMIGRATION STATUS.
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2. THE UNITED STATES IMMIGRATION AND CUSTOMS ENFORCEMENT OR THE UNITED STATES CUSTOMS AND BORDER PROTECTION PURSUANT TO 8 UNITED STATES CODE SECTION 1373(c).
E. THIS SECTION DOES NOT APPLY TO A CHILD PROTECTIVE SERVICES WORKER ACTING IN THE WORKER'S OFFICIAL CAPACITY OR A PERSON WHO IS ACTING IN THE CAPACITY OF A FIRST RESPONDER, AN AMBULANCE ATTENDANT OR AN EMERGENCY MEDICAL TECHNICIAN AND WHO IS TRANSPORTING OR MOVING AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE PURSUANT TO TITLE 36, CHAPTER 21.1.
F. A PERSON WHO VIOLATES THIS SECTION IS GUILTY OF A CLASS 1 MISDEMEANOR AND IS SUBJECT TO A FINE OF AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS, EXCEPT THAT A VIOLATION OF THIS SECTION THAT INVOLVES TEN OR MORE ILLEGAL ALIENS IS A CLASS 6 FELONY AND THE PERSON IS SUBJECT TO A FINE OF AT LEAST ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS FOR EACH ALIEN WHO IS INVOLVED.
Sec. 6. Section 13-3883, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
13-3883. Arrest by officer without warrant
A. A peace officer, without a warrant, MAY arrest a person if THE OFFICER has probable cause to believe:
1. A felony has been committed and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the felony.
2. A misdemeanor has been committed in THE OFFICER'S presence and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the offense.
3. The person to be arrested has been involved in a traffic accident and violated any criminal section of title 28, and that such violation occurred prior to or immediately following such traffic accident.
4. A misdemeanor or a petty offense has been committed and probable cause to believe the person to be arrested has committed the offense. A person arrested under this paragraph is eligible for release under section 13-3903.
5. THE PERSON TO BE ARRESTED HAS COMMITTED ANY PUBLIC OFFENSE THAT MAKES THE PERSON REMOVABLE FROM THE UNITED STATES.
B. A peace officer may stop and detain a person as is reasonably necessary to investigate an actual or suspected violation of any traffic law committed in the officer's presence and may serve a copy of the traffic complaint for any alleged civil or criminal traffic violation. A peace officer who serves a copy of the traffic complaint shall do so within a reasonable time of the alleged criminal or civil traffic violation.
Sec. 7. Section 23-212, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-212. Knowingly employing unauthorized aliens; prohibition; false and frivolous complaints; violation; classification; license suspension and revocation; affirmative defense
A. An employer shall not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien. If, in the case when an employer uses a contract, subcontract or other independent contractor agreement to obtain the labor of an alien in this state, the employer knowingly contracts with an unauthorized alien or with a person who employs or contracts with an unauthorized alien to perform the labor, the employer violates this subsection.
B. The attorney general shall prescribe a complaint form for a person to allege a violation of subsection A of this section. The complainant shall not be required to list the complainant's social security number on the complaint form or to have the complaint form notarized. On receipt of a complaint on a prescribed complaint form that an employer allegedly knowingly employs an unauthorized alien, the attorney general or county attorney shall investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. If a complaint is received but is not submitted on a prescribed complaint form, the attorney general or county attorney may investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. This subsection shall not be construed to prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints that are not submitted on a prescribed complaint form. The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin. A complaint that is submitted to a county attorney shall be submitted to the county attorney in the county in which the alleged unauthorized alien is or was employed by the employer. The county sheriff or any other local law enforcement agency may assist in investigating a
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complaint. When investigating a complaint, the attorney general or county attorney shall verify the work authorization of the alleged unauthorized alien with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A state, county or local official shall not attempt to independently make a final determination on whether an alien is authorized to work in the United States. An alien's immigration status or work authorization status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A person who knowingly files a false and frivolous complaint under this subsection is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.
C. If, after an investigation, the attorney general or county attorney determines that the complaint is not false and frivolous:
1. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the United States immigration and customs enforcement of the unauthorized alien.
2. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the local law enforcement agency of the unauthorized alien.
3. The attorney general shall notify the appropriate county attorney to bring an action pursuant to subsection D of this section if the complaint was originally filed with the attorney general.
D. An action for a violation of subsection A of this section shall be brought against the employer by the county attorney in the county where the unauthorized alien employee is or was employed by the employer. The county attorney shall not bring an action against any employer for any violation of subsection A of this section that occurs before January 1, 2008. A second violation of this section shall be based only on an unauthorized alien who is or was employed by the employer after an action has been brought for a violation of subsection A of this section or section 23-212.01, subsection A.
E. For any action in superior court under this section, the court shall expedite the action, including assigning the hearing at the earliest practicable date.
F. On a finding of a violation of subsection A of this section:
1. For a first violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court:
(a) Shall order the employer to terminate the employment of all unauthorized aliens.
(b) Shall order the employer to be subject to a three year probationary period for the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. During the probationary period the employer shall file quarterly reports in the form provided in section 23-722.01 with the county attorney of each new employee who is hired by the employer at the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work.
(c) Shall order the employer to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. The affidavit shall state that the employer has terminated the employment of all unauthorized aliens in this state and that the employer will not intentionally or knowingly employ an unauthorized alien in this state. The court shall order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses subject to this subdivision that are held by the employer if the employer fails to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. All licenses that are suspended under this subdivision shall remain suspended until the employer files a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. Notwithstanding any other law, on filing of the affidavit the suspended licenses shall be reinstated immediately by the appropriate agencies. For the purposes of this subdivision, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the court's order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall suspend the licenses according to the court's order. The court shall send a copy of the court's order to the attorney general and the attorney general shall maintain the copy pursuant to subsection G of this section.
(d) May order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses described in subdivision (c) of this paragraph that are held by the employer for not to exceed ten business days. The court shall base its decision to suspend under this subdivision on any evidence or information submitted to it
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during the action for a violation of this subsection and shall consider the following factors, if relevant:
(i) The number of unauthorized aliens employed by the employer.
(ii) Any prior misconduct by the employer.
(iii) The degree of harm resulting from the violation.
(iv) Whether the employer made good faith efforts to comply with any applicable requirements.
(v) The duration of the violation.
(vi) The role of the directors, officers or principals of the employer in the violation.
(vii) Any other factors the court deems appropriate.
2. For a second violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall immediately revoke the licenses.
3. The violation shall be considered:
(a) A first violation by an employer at a business location if the violation did not occur during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212.01, subsection F for that employer's business location.
(b) A second violation by an employer at a business location if the violation occurred during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212.01, subsection F for that employer's business location.
G. The attorney general shall maintain copies of court orders that are received pursuant to subsection F of this section and shall maintain a database of the employers and business locations that have a first violation of subsection A of this section and make the court orders available on the attorney general's website.
H. On determining whether an employee is an unauthorized alien, the court shall consider only the federal government's determination pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). The federal government's determination creates a rebuttable presumption of the employee's lawful status. The court may take judicial notice of the federal government's determination and may request the federal government to provide automated or testimonial verification pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c).
I. For the purposes of this section, proof of verifying the employment authorization of an employee through the e-verify program creates a rebuttable presumption that an employer did not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien.
J. For the purposes of this section, an employer that establishes that it has complied in good faith with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b) establishes an affirmative defense that the employer did not knowingly employ an unauthorized alien. An employer is considered to have complied with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b), notwithstanding an isolated, sporadic or accidental technical or procedural failure to meet the requirements, if there is a good faith attempt to comply with the requirements.
K. IT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE TO A VIOLATION OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION THAT THE EMPLOYER WAS ENTRAPPED. TO CLAIM ENTRAPMENT, THE EMPLOYER MUST ADMIT BY THE EMPLOYER'S TESTIMONY OR OTHER EVIDENCE THE SUBSTANTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE VIOLATION. AN EMPLOYER WHO ASSERTS AN ENTRAPMENT DEFENSE HAS THE BURDEN OF PROVING THE FOLLOWING BY A PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE:
1. THE IDEA OF COMMITTING THE VIOLATION STARTED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS RATHER THAN WITH THE EMPLOYER.
2. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
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3. THE EMPLOYER WAS NOT PREDISPOSED TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION BEFORE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
L. AN EMPLOYER DOES NOT ESTABLISH ENTRAPMENT IF THE EMPLOYER WAS PREDISPOSED TO VIOLATE SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY PROVIDED THE EMPLOYER WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION. IT IS NOT ENTRAPMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY TO USE A RUSE OR TO CONCEAL THEIR IDENTITY. THE CONDUCT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS AND THEIR AGENTS MAY BE CONSIDERED IN DETERMINING IF AN EMPLOYER HAS PROVEN ENTRAPMENT.
Sec. 8. Section 23-212.01, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-212.01. Intentionally employing unauthorized aliens; prohibition; false and frivolous complaints; violation; classification; license suspension and revocation; affirmative defense
A. An employer shall not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien. If, in the case when an employer uses a contract, subcontract or other independent contractor agreement to obtain the labor of an alien in this state, the employer intentionally contracts with an unauthorized alien or with a person who employs or contracts with an unauthorized alien to perform the labor, the employer violates this subsection.
B. The attorney general shall prescribe a complaint form for a person to allege a violation of subsection A of this section. The complainant shall not be required to list the complainant's social security number on the complaint form or to have the complaint form notarized. On receipt of a complaint on a prescribed complaint form that an employer allegedly intentionally employs an unauthorized alien, the attorney general or county attorney shall investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. If a complaint is received but is not submitted on a prescribed complaint form, the attorney general or county attorney may investigate whether the employer has violated subsection A of this section. This subsection shall not be construed to prohibit the filing of anonymous complaints that are not submitted on a prescribed complaint form. The attorney general or county attorney shall not investigate complaints that are based solely on race, color or national origin. A complaint that is submitted to a county attorney shall be submitted to the county attorney in the county in which the alleged unauthorized alien is or was employed by the employer. The county sheriff or any other local law enforcement agency may assist in investigating a complaint. When investigating a complaint, the attorney general or county attorney shall verify the work authorization of the alleged unauthorized alien with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A state, county or local official shall not attempt to independently make a final determination on whether an alien is authorized to work in the United States. An alien's immigration status or work authorization status shall be verified with the federal government pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). A person who knowingly files a false and frivolous complaint under this subsection is guilty of a class 3 misdemeanor.
C. If, after an investigation, the attorney general or county attorney determines that the complaint is not false and frivolous:
1. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the United States immigration and customs enforcement of the unauthorized alien.
2. The attorney general or county attorney shall notify the local law enforcement agency of the unauthorized alien.
3. The attorney general shall notify the appropriate county attorney to bring an action pursuant to subsection D of this section if the complaint was originally filed with the attorney general.
D. An action for a violation of subsection A of this section shall be brought against the employer by the county attorney in the county where the unauthorized alien employee is or was employed by the employer. The county attorney shall not bring an action against any employer for any violation of subsection A of this section that occurs before January 1, 2008. A second violation of this section shall be based only on an unauthorized alien who is or was employed by the employer after an action has been brought for a violation of subsection A of this section or section 23-212, subsection A.
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E. For any action in superior court under this section, the court shall expedite the action, including assigning the hearing at the earliest practicable date.
F. On a finding of a violation of subsection A of this section:
1. For a first violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall:
(a) Order the employer to terminate the employment of all unauthorized aliens.
(b) Order the employer to be subject to a five year probationary period for the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. During the probationary period the employer shall file quarterly reports in the form provided in section 23-722.01 with the county attorney of each new employee who is hired by the employer at the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work.
(c) Order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses described in subdivision (d) of this paragraph that are held by the employer for a minimum of ten days. The court shall base its decision on the length of the suspension under this subdivision on any evidence or information submitted to it during the action for a violation of this subsection and shall consider the following factors, if relevant:
(i) The number of unauthorized aliens employed by the employer.
(ii) Any prior misconduct by the employer.
(iii) The degree of harm resulting from the violation.
(iv) Whether the employer made good faith efforts to comply with any applicable requirements.
(v) The duration of the violation.
(vi) The role of the directors, officers or principals of the employer in the violation.
(vii) Any other factors the court deems appropriate.
(d) Order the employer to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. The affidavit shall state that the employer has terminated the employment of all unauthorized aliens in this state and that the employer will not intentionally or knowingly employ an unauthorized alien in this state. The court shall order the appropriate agencies to suspend all licenses subject to this subdivision that are held by the employer if the employer fails to file a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney within three business days after the order is issued. All licenses that are suspended under this subdivision for failing to file a signed sworn affidavit shall remain suspended until the employer files a signed sworn affidavit with the county attorney. For the purposes of this subdivision, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the licenses that are subject to suspension under this subdivision are all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the court's order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall suspend the licenses according to the court's order. The court shall send a copy of the court's order to the attorney general and the attorney general shall maintain the copy pursuant to subsection G of this section.
2. For a second violation, as described in paragraph 3 of this subsection, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work. If the employer does not hold a license specific to the business location where the unauthorized alien performed work, but a license is necessary to operate the employer's business in general, the court shall order the appropriate agencies to permanently revoke all licenses that are held by the employer at the employer's primary place of business. On receipt of the order and notwithstanding any other law, the appropriate agencies shall immediately revoke the licenses.
3. The violation shall be considered:
(a) A first violation by an employer at a business location if the violation did not occur during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212, subsection F for that employer's business location.
(b) A second violation by an employer at a business location if the violation occurred during a probationary period ordered by the court under this subsection or section 23-212, subsection F for that employer's business location.
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G. The attorney general shall maintain copies of court orders that are received pursuant to subsection F of this section and shall maintain a database of the employers and business locations that have a first violation of subsection A of this section and make the court orders available on the attorney general's website.
H. On determining whether an employee is an unauthorized alien, the court shall consider only the federal government's determination pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c). The federal government's determination creates a rebuttable presumption of the employee's lawful status. The court may take judicial notice of the federal government's determination and may request the federal government to provide automated or testimonial verification pursuant to 8 United States Code section 1373(c).
I. For the purposes of this section, proof of verifying the employment authorization of an employee through the e-verify program creates a rebuttable presumption that an employer did not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien.
J. For the purposes of this section, an employer that establishes that it has complied in good faith with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b) establishes an affirmative defense that the employer did not intentionally employ an unauthorized alien. An employer is considered to have complied with the requirements of 8 United States Code section 1324a(b), notwithstanding an isolated, sporadic or accidental technical or procedural failure to meet the requirements, if there is a good faith attempt to comply with the requirements.
K. IT IS AN AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE TO A VIOLATION OF SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION THAT THE EMPLOYER WAS ENTRAPPED. TO CLAIM ENTRAPMENT, THE EMPLOYER MUST ADMIT BY THE EMPLOYER'S TESTIMONY OR OTHER EVIDENCE THE SUBSTANTIAL ELEMENTS OF THE VIOLATION. AN EMPLOYER WHO ASSERTS AN ENTRAPMENT DEFENSE HAS THE BURDEN OF PROVING THE FOLLOWING BY A PREPONDERANCE OF THE EVIDENCE:
1. THE IDEA OF COMMITTING THE VIOLATION STARTED WITH LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS RATHER THAN WITH THE EMPLOYER.
2. THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
3. THE EMPLOYER WAS NOT PREDISPOSED TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION BEFORE THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS URGED AND INDUCED THE EMPLOYER TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION.
L. AN EMPLOYER DOES NOT ESTABLISH ENTRAPMENT IF THE EMPLOYER WAS PREDISPOSED TO VIOLATE SUBSECTION A OF THIS SECTION AND THE LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY PROVIDED THE EMPLOYER WITH AN OPPORTUNITY TO COMMIT THE VIOLATION. IT IS NOT ENTRAPMENT FOR LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS OR THEIR AGENTS MERELY TO USE A RUSE OR TO CONCEAL THEIR IDENTITY. THE CONDUCT OF LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICERS AND THEIR AGENTS MAY BE CONSIDERED IN DETERMINING IF AN EMPLOYER HAS PROVEN ENTRAPMENT.
Sec. 9. Section 23-214, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
23-214. Verification of employment eligibility; e-verify program; economic development incentives; list of registered employers
A. After December 31, 2007, every employer, after hiring an employee, shall verify the employment eligibility of the employee through the e-verify program AND SHALL KEEP A RECORD OF THE VERIFICATION FOR THE DURATION OF THE EMPLOYEE'S EMPLOYMENT OR AT LEAST THREE YEARS, WHICHEVER IS LONGER.
B. In addition to any other requirement for an employer to receive an economic development incentive from a government entity, the employer shall register with and participate in the e-verify program. Before receiving the economic development incentive, the employer shall provide proof to the government entity that the employer is registered with and is participating in the e-verify program. If the government entity determines that the employer is not complying with this subsection, the government entity shall notify the employer by certified mail of the government entity's determination of noncompliance and the employer's right to appeal the determination. On a final determination of noncompliance, the employer shall repay all monies received as an economic
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development incentive to the government entity within thirty days of the final determination. For the purposes of this subsection:
1. "Economic development incentive" means any grant, loan or performance-based incentive from any government entity that is awarded after September 30, 2008. Economic development incentive does not include any tax provision under title 42 or 43.
2. "Government entity" means this state and any political subdivision of this state that receives and uses tax revenues.
C. Every three months the attorney general shall request from the United States department of homeland security a list of employers from this state that are registered with the e-verify program. On receipt of the list of employers, the attorney general shall make the list available on the attorney general's website.
Sec. 10. Section 28-3511, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended to read:
28-3511. Removal and immobilization or impoundment of vehicle
A. A peace officer shall cause the removal and either immobilization or impoundment of a vehicle if the peace officer determines that a person is driving the vehicle while any of the following applies:
1. The person's driving privilege is suspended or revoked for any reason.
2. The person has not ever been issued a valid driver license or permit by this state and the person does not produce evidence of ever having a valid driver license or permit issued by another jurisdiction. This paragraph does not apply to the operation of an implement of husbandry.
3. The person is subject to an ignition interlock device requirement pursuant to chapter 4 of this title and the person is operating a vehicle without a functioning certified ignition interlock device. This paragraph does not apply to a person operating an employer's vehicle or the operation of a vehicle due to a substantial emergency as defined in section 28-1464.
4. IN FURTHERANCE OF THE ILLEGAL PRESENCE OF AN ALIEN IN THE UNITED STATES AND IN VIOLATION OF A CRIMINAL OFFENSE, THE PERSON IS TRANSPORTING OR MOVING OR ATTEMPTING TO TRANSPORT OR MOVE AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE IN A VEHICLE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, HAS ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
5. THE PERSON IS CONCEALING, HARBORING OR SHIELDING OR ATTEMPTING TO CONCEAL, HARBOR OR SHIELD FROM DETECTION AN ALIEN IN THIS STATE IN A VEHICLE IF THE PERSON KNOWS OR RECKLESSLY DISREGARDS THE FACT THAT THE ALIEN HAS COME TO, ENTERED OR REMAINS IN THE UNITED STATES IN VIOLATION OF LAW.
B. A peace officer shall cause the removal and impoundment of a vehicle if the peace officer determines that a person is driving the vehicle and if all of the following apply:
1. The person's driving privilege is canceled, suspended or revoked for any reason or the person has not ever been issued a driver license or permit by this state and the person does not produce evidence of ever having a driver license or permit issued by another jurisdiction.
2. The person is not in compliance with the financial responsibility requirements of chapter 9, article 4 of this title.
3. The person is driving a vehicle that is involved in an accident that results in either property damage or injury to or death of another person.
C. Except as provided in subsection D of this section, while a peace officer has control of the vehicle the peace officer shall cause the removal and either immobilization or impoundment of the vehicle if the peace officer has probable cause to arrest the driver of the vehicle for a violation of section 4-244, paragraph 34 or section 28-1382 or 28-1383.
D. A peace officer shall not cause the removal and either the immobilization or impoundment of a vehicle pursuant to subsection C of this section if all of the following apply:
1. The peace officer determines that the vehicle is currently registered and that the driver or the vehicle is in compliance with the financial responsibility requirements of chapter 9, article 4 of this title.
2. The spouse of the driver is with the driver at the time of the arrest.
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3. The peace officer has reasonable grounds to believe that the spouse of the driver:
(a) Has a valid driver license.
(b) Is not impaired by intoxicating liquor, any drug, a vapor releasing substance containing a toxic substance or any combination of liquor, drugs or vapor releasing substances.
(c) Does not have any spirituous liquor in the spouse's body if the spouse is under twenty-one years of age.
4. The spouse notifies the peace officer that the spouse will drive the vehicle from the place of arrest to the driver's home or other place of safety.
5. The spouse drives the vehicle as prescribed by paragraph 4 of this subsection.
E. Except as otherwise provided in this article, a vehicle that is removed and either immobilized or impounded pursuant to subsection A, B or C of this section shall be immobilized or impounded for thirty days. An insurance company does not have a duty to pay any benefits for charges or fees for immobilization or impoundment.
F. The owner of a vehicle that is removed and either immobilized or impounded pursuant to subsection A, B or C of this section, the spouse of the owner and each person identified on the department's record with an interest in the vehicle shall be provided with an opportunity for an immobilization or poststorage hearing pursuant to section 28-3514.
Sec. 11. Title 41, chapter 12, article 2, Arizona Revised Statutes, is amended by adding section 41-1724, to read:
41-1724. Gang and immigration intelligence team enforcement mission fund
THE GANG AND IMMIGRATION INTELLIGENCE TEAM ENFORCEMENT MISSION FUND IS ESTABLISHED CONSISTING OF MONIES DEPOSITED PURSUANT TO SECTION 11-1051 AND MONIES APPROPRIATED BY THE LEGISLATURE. THE DEPARTMENT SHALL ADMINISTER THE FUND. MONIES IN THE FUND ARE SUBJECT TO LEGISLATIVE APPROPRIATION AND SHALL BE USED FOR GANG AND IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT AND FOR COUNTY JAIL REIMBURSEMENT COSTS RELATING TO ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION.
Sec. 12. Severability, implementation and construction
A. If a provision of this act or its application to any person or circumstance is held invalid, the invalidity does not affect other provisions or applications of the act that can be given effect without the invalid provision or application, and to this end the provisions of this act are severable.
B. The terms of this act regarding immigration shall be construed to have the meanings given to them under federal immigration law.
C. This act shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.
D. Nothing in this act shall implement or shall be construed or interpreted to implement or establish the REAL ID act of 2005 (P.L. 109-13, division B; 119 Stat. 302) including the use of a radio frequency identification chip.
Sec. 13. Short title
This act may be cited as the "Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act
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