In an article on Fox News’ website, former Bush administration officials Michael Mukasey and Tom Ridge and former FBI director Louis Freeh claim that in his apparent rush to pull U.S. troops out of Iraq, President Obama is abandoning the Iranian exile group the Mujahedeen-e Khalq’s (MEK):

[I]n a panicked haste to exit from Iraq, the Obama White House is abandoning the 3,400 members of the MEK – including young men, women and children – who are living in exile in a camp near Baghdad and intends to leave them to the indelicate mercy of Iraq’s new Shia prime minister, the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki.

There’s so much wrong with this brief clip of their piece that it’s difficult to know where to start.

To begin with, Obama is hardly in a “panicked haste to exit from Iraq.” As news reports have indicated over the past months, the Obama administration has been pressuring the Iraqis to strike a deal to allow U.S. troops to stay past the end of 2011, a deadline imposed by a Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) struck by George W. Bush in 2008 despite warnings that the deal could constrict the next president’s policies.

Indeed, Freeh, Mukasey and Ridge acknowledged this fact five paragraph’s later in the same article:

The Obama administration is, of course, eager to complete a formal agreement with Prime Minister Maliki concerning the status of American troops remaining in Iraq after 2011.

Attacking Obama for wanting to rush out of Iraq seems just as disingenuous as the authors’ charge that the administration “intends to leave [the MEK adherents in Ashraf] to the indelicate mercy of…the Mullahs’ good friend Nouri al-Maliki.” The notion that Iraqis — who have officially wanted the MEK off their soil since 2008 — need to be pressured by the Iranians into harsh actions against Ashraf is absurd. As CAP analyst Matt Duss recently noted, the MEK, which is designated as a terror group by the U.S., is “despised…by many Iraqis for having aided Saddam [Hussein] in his crackdowns on Iraqi Shiites and Kurds.” Earlier this year, Duss explained:

The MEK also fought alongside Hussein’s forces after the 1991 Gulf War to put down the Shia uprising in Iraq’s south and the Kurdish uprising in the north. They were driven by MEK leader Maryam Rajavi’s infamous command to “Take the Kurds under your tanks, and save your bullets for the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.”

The New York Times also recently noted that the Obama administration — far from abandoning the MEK members in Iraq — has been engaged in active diplomacy to get them out of harm’s way, eventually hoping to relocate them to a third country outside Iran (where they’re also likely to face persecution) or Iraq. However, the diplomacy, reported the Times, has thus far hit a dead end because “the residents are refusing to leave, and no countries have come forward to welcome them.”

That the three conservative officials-turned-pundits would make disingenuous attacks on Obama is no surprise. Their skewed perspective absolving the MEK of its role in blocking solutions to its predicament might also be easy enough to explain, though: Freeh, Mukasey and Ridge are among a coterie of top former U.S. officials who have been paid by groups that support the MEK, advocate for removing them from the U.S. terror list, and in some cases urge U.S. support and recognition as an Iranian government in exile despite the lack of any meaningful MEK political constituency within Iran.

As ThinkProgress noted yesterday, after alleged Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was arrested late Monday at JFK International Airport, conservatives began following the political playbook they used to criticize the Obama administration’s handling of the attempted Christmas day bombing: complaining that authorities might read him his Miranda rights. “Don’t give this guy his Miranda rights until we find out what it’s all about,” said Sen. John McCain (R-AZ).

McCain’s close ally, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT), even suggested that Congress should create a process to strip “American citizens who choose to become affiliated with foreign terrorists” of their citizenship and, therefore, their Miranda rights. Lieberman explained to reporters that he believes “that any time we arrest somebody we suspect to be a terrorist the first thing that ought to happen with them is they ought to be interviewed without Miranda Rights being given to them”:

LIEBERMAN: My own feeling about this is that any time we arrest somebody we suspect to be a terrorist the first thing that ought to happen with them is they ought to be interviewed without Miranda Rights being given to them by law enforcement officials to extract from them every piece of information that might help us stop an ongoing terrorist threat. My own feeling is that anybody who we decide there is reasonable possibility that they’ve committed a terrorist act ought to be turned over to our military justice system because though it’s an unconventional war, they are prisoners of a war. A war that Islamic extremists declared against the United States, certainly, on 9/11/01. So, bottom line, I don’t believe somebody like Faisal Shahzad should receive Miranda rights. I don’t believe he’s entitled to them.

Shahzad, a naturalized U.S. citizen, did eventually have his rights read to him, but not until after he was questioned extensively under a “public safety exception” to the Miranda rule. Fox News’ Jamie Colby reported today that “a source on the Homeland Security Committee” told her that Shahzad was read his rights “nine and a half hours after questioning.” Watch it:

Colby added that she was told that once Shahzad was Mirandized, “he waved his right to counsel, he waved his right to an appearance.” Indeed, Deputy FBI director John Pistole said yesterday that Shahzad continued to cooperate after hearing his rights:

Shahzad was not immediately Mirandized after authorities yanked him off a Dubai-bound flight from New York Monday night. John Pistole, deputy FBI director, said Tuesday that agents interviewed him under the “public safety exception” to determine whether there was an imminent threat.

He was later read his rights and waived them, according to the White House. Officials have described the suspect as cooperative and talkative ever since.

“He was … cooperative and provided valuable intelligence and evidence. He was eventually transported to another location, mirandized and continued talking,” Pistole said.

So, despite conservative complaints, reading a U.S. citizen his Miranda rights has not impeded information-gathering. But this hasn’t stopped conservatives from complaining. Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey told Fox News that despite claims that Shahzad “kept spilling the beans, the question is how many beans he spilled.”

Last week, Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA) came out in strong support of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to prosecute the five 9/11 defendants in U.S. federal court and sharply criticized Republicans who were attacking the decision. “They will seize on any opportunity to [demagogue], and that means they’ll even take a stand that’s un-American. It’s un-American to hold anyone indefinitely without trial. It’s against our principles as a nation.”

Former Bush attorney general Michael Mukasey is one of the Republicans who has been speaking out against Holder. Last week at a Federalist Society conference, Mukasey said that holding the trial in Manhattan increased the risk of a terrorist attack on the city.

In an interview with Washington Times radio this morning, the hosts asked Mukasey about Moran’s comments. Mukasey responded by suggesting that the congressman “get professional help” from Maj. Nidal Hasan:

Q: Congressman Jim Moran of Virginia says anybody that questions KSM coming to New York City for a civilian trial — that they’re un-American. What is your reaction to that?

MUKASEY: I think he’s lost touch with reality. He ought to get professional help, perhaps from Maj. Nidal.

The segment then ends with the hosts laughing over Mukasey’s “joke.” Listen here:

Nidal, of course, is the Army psychiatrist suspected of going on a brutal rampage at Fort Hood and killing 13 people.

Asked for a response to Mukasey’s comments, Moran’s spokesperson Emily Blout said, “Leading conservative activists and scholars agree with Mr. Moran’s position, which is based on this nation’s long history of upholding its most fundamental values- even in the face of horrific crimes.”