John Ashcroft -- menace or threat?

The BBQ Pit
1

Here’s a link to the relevant story:

http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/06/11/dirty.bomb.suspect/index.html

Here’s the gist: an American citizen named Abdullah Al Muhajir has been arrested for allegedly conspiring to set off a “dirty bomb”. Okay so far. Please keep in mind that this guy is just as much a citizen as the President, and that there’s nothing wrong with being named Abdullah.

So, will he be charged, arraigned, sent to a grand jury to try and get an indictment, before being tried with full due process? No. Instead, the Executive Branch has taken upon itself the power to declare U.S. citizens to be “enemy combatants”, with fewer rights than ordinary citizens.

I’d like to make clear: the guy hasn’t been convicted of a goddamned thing. This is from the CNN article:

"We have acted under the laws of war and under the clear Supreme Court precedent which established that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts," Ashcroft said.

Okay, Ashcroft, but how do know this guy is guilty of those acts? Isn’t that why we have trials? He seems to be saying that the government can simply declare somebody guilty. Ashcroft’s world is positively Kafkaesque: “You have to prove this man’s guilt in a trial, with due process.” “No, he doesn’t deserve due process; we already know he’s guilty.” “How?” “Well, we just do.”

Obviously, what Al Muhajir is accused of is a terrible crime, and he should be held without bail while the Justice Department prepares a case, then, if they get an indictment, he should be tried in a Federal court, with full recognition of his Constitutional rights. But apparently John Ashcroft gets to take away those rights if he feels like it.

I heard a spokesman for either the Justice or Defense Dept. say “the law allows us to detain people without trial for the duration of the conflict.” Well, what the fuck conflict is that?

I’m getting goddamned tired of hearing the phrase “in a time of war” used as an excuse. Exactly what country are we at war with? There’s no such country as Terrorististan. Terrorism isn’t a place or a people, but a tactic; it can be used by anybody, can crop up at any time, and can never be eliminated as long as there are at least two people on the planet.

So, are we planning on an eternal “War on Terrorism?”, during which (that is, forever), the Justice Department can do whatever it wants to people? If you’ll forgive the obvious comparison, this reminds me of the book 1984, in which a perpetual state of war was used as an excuse for a gradual complete loss of rights, and finally the destruction of even the concept of individual rights. That’s an extreme scenario, obviously, but why take any steps at all in that direction?

I usually only say this about Barbara Streisand, but, “Damn your black heart, John Ashcroft!”

2

You could take heart in the fact that some of the early challenges in court are generally going against the administration. It will be interesting to see how the appeals by the Justice Department turn out. It will take years for all this to play out.

I agree that this concept of “war” seems overly broad. I guess using this logic we could lock up a bunch of people indefinitely as “enemy combatants” in the war on drugs.

3

I used to think that Ashcroft’s resemblance to the Cigarette Smoking Man was just a conicidence. Now I’m not too sure.

4

Didn’t we cover this whole ‘we are not at war with a country’ thing when people were reminded that Congress has at least once in the history of the US declared war on an entity other than a country (the Barbary Pirates)?

5

Hey, y’all, Ashcroft is only doing what President Bush tellllahahahahahahahaha-heeheeheehee-gbblltllblblbllt.

Sorry, I thought I could get through that without cracking up.

6

Nah, Just until the 2004 elections are over. The “war” and everything else this administration does are all about keeping the popularity rating high and getting votes.

From a NY Times Op-Ed piece today

Hopefully, this secretive, manipulative, joke of an administration will be gone in 2004. I shudder to think about about the additional damage they could do with another 4 years.

7

The thing about those Barbary Pirates is they were easily identified, both by their flags and standards and by their areas of operation. Note that the US never declared “war on piracy”, but on a specific, identifiable and self declared contingent of state-operated brigands and, later, against Algiers. (See this informative link.)

Getting back to the OP, here’s a link to a Republican policy brief (it’s a pdf file) regarding powers of the government during declared hostilities. I’ll let the lawyers discuss the accuracy and implications of this brief as it pertains to this current suspension of an American civilian’s civil rights.

8

This is all so typical of the partisan sniping one can expect from the fuzzy-thinking one-worlders that inhabit these boards.

Case in point: Ashcroft has firmly moved against dope-smoking cancer ridden hot tubbers. As each of these die, the total incidence of cancer decreases.

Go ahead, you left wing homo-agendaed traitorous creep! Defend cancer!

Ha! So there!

9

Worst. Bandname. Ever.

10

This whole situation concerns me as well. Salon has a good piece on it today for those of you who are subscribers (and why the hell wouldn’t you be?)

http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2002/06/11/tribunals/index.html

It worries me that the government can bend the rules to conform to their whims in cases like this. Al Muhajir, like it or not, is an American, and is therefore entitled to all of the rights and protections that we all share as citizens. Going with this military tribunal nonsense ostensibly means that the feds can hang on to him indefinitely without worrying about the civil rights that the constitution affords him.

Am I upset because this is happening to Al Muhajir? Not necessarily, although I’m sure he’s a heck of a guy. I’m concerned that it’s happening to an American. If this works and the public doesn’t care, who’s next? Political opponents of the administration?

11

And, it’s not like he wanted to build a BIG bomb. Why, the kind of dirty bomb Al Muhajir was seeking would have only killed few thousand Americans and made a few square blocks uninhabitable. BFD!

You don’t suppose he might have built more than one, do you? Nah!

It’s absolutely inappropriate to use emergency powers, when there’s no emergency. Please don’t wake me up until some terrorist has a stash of hydrogen bombs dispersed throughout the United States. Until then, I’m too busy watching soccer on TV.

ZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz

12

Anyone else think the timing of this announcement is more than a little fishy?

And I would very much like to see just what exactly they have against this guy. It would appear that they don’t have jack shit that would hold up in a civilian court and they know that full well, which is why they are trotting out this “enemy combatant” bullshit.

13

Um, december-what part of Innocent Until Proven Guilty do you not fucking understand?

First we were told this was just for those suspected terrorists-then any non-citizen they found suspicious.

Now it’s against US CITIZENS!!! Fuck that shit.

Hello, internment camps, McCarthyism?

Fuck Ashcroft. Fucking Bush.
Hello, J. Edgar Ashcroft.
:mad:

14

Yeah, december is right, we better give the gov’t all the power it wants, because bad people might do bad things, which is a situation that has never existed before. I’m sure they will someday declare the war on terrorism over, and they will give up all those emergency powers right then. Senator PalpaBush and Darth Ashcroft would never abuse their powers! Their Republicans after all, and they believe in a SMALLER, LESS POWERFUL government.

15

december: Why, the kind of dirty bomb Al Muhajir was seeking…

Um, december, the point of this thread is that we don’t know that he had anything to do with any bombing attempt.

If Timothy McVeigh could be arrested, tried and convicted with full consideration of his rights as a citizen, why should those rights be denied to Jose Padilla, aka Abdullah Al Muhajir?

In any case, I find it absolutely surreal that you’re trying to insinuate that active concern about the rights of suspects who are American citizens is somehow equivalent to apathetic ignorance. With your constant refrain of “if Bush and Rumsfeld want it, it must be okay”, you’re the one who seems to be advocating apathetic ignorance.

16

Of course december, he might have built a dozen of them. Then again, so might have Luke Perry or Gary Sheffield. Why not leave it up to the courts to figure out. That’s what they’re for after all. Is our justice system so fragile we can’t trust it to deal with important matters? If so, we may have bigger problems than terrorists.

17

From the linked article in the OP:

Sounds like they have enough on Padilla to put him away – any charges they bring wouldn’t necessarily have to be trumped up. I’m not sure why Ashcroft et al are avoiding putting Padilla on trial for treason.

However, I am glad that Padilla is out of commission. I am puzzled by Ashcroft’s stance, but not outraged … yet. Padilla’s internment, for me, is light years away from picking up random, completely innocent people off the street and messing with them for fun. The way the rules are working now, an American citizen still has to do something specific and suspicious to get whisked away by the Feds.

I really can’t work up much righteous indignation for Padilla’s plight. I know the story of the Catholic priest in Nazi Germany, and how he thought they’d never come for him. Still, from where I sit, provided the facts released about him are true, Padilla deserves his lot.

18

If the SDMB ever puts on a production of Animal Farm, I nominate December to play Boxer, the horse, because he already has his line down: “Comrade Napoleon is always right.”

Now, I’m definitely in favor of kicking the crap out of Al Qaeda members, but we can’t allow the government to start disappearing citizens. America is built on the rights of citizens, and the principle of the assumption of innocence. Ashcroft is turning Homeland Security into more of a People’s State Police, or in the original, Die Geheime Staats Polizei.

19

It’s the “whisked away by the Feds” part that’s the problem, bordelond - if it were merely “imprisoned by the Feds,” that would be pretty reasonable.

But it’s the way they’ve been disappearing people completely off the map, without even charging them with crimes, shuttling them from one prison to another, shuffling them from custody of one Federal agency to another, so that not even the courts can find them, let alone their own lawyers. And that ain’t even Padilla - I’m talking about the people they’ve been holding as “material witnesses” since last September, since they might have a piece of the “mosaic” of information they hoped to assemble.

It has been nine months since September 11. It’s well past time to put up or shut up on these guys, but has Ashcroft even let us know who they are? Hah.

But now they can disappear a U.S. citizen. I don’t care what he’s done - they can incarcerate him, if appropriate, but they should have no fucking right to disappear him. That doesn’t make you or me the least bit safer - all it does is make it a lot harder to question what the Bushies do, because the citizenry apparently no longer has the right to know what King George III does.

20

Best literary allusion of the month.

If I weren’t so shameless about calling attention to my movie site, I’d appropriate it as a sig.