december, if you’re calling us traitors, then FUCK YOU.
Fuck you, fuck you and finally UNFUCK YOU!!!
“Those who will give up essential liberties for temporary security…” well, you know the rest.
:mad:
I’d venture to guess (again without evidence) that I’ve donated more money to the ACLU than you have, Necros.
You should be aware that 73.5% of statistics are made up [sub]including this one.[/sub]
Seriously, I have little doubt that an overwhelming majority of Americans will have no problem with Ashcroft’s treatment of Al Muhajir. His chosen name alone convicts him, in people’s minds. (Had he selected the name Al Bundy, it would be a different story.
)
I, for one, think the US should use all legal. Constitutional means at its disposal in dealing with this person, who apparently was working to commit mass murder.
Guin I suspect our friend is suggesting that ‘most’ Americans would consider our concerns ‘traitorous’ or ‘illadvised’, not that he personally thinks we are. (especially given his most recent post).
Amok, a couple of sites that I read made references to a couple of relevant cases:
Ex parte Quirin. Eugene Volokh states that: “Under Ex parte Quirin (1942), enemy saboteurs and spies can be tried by military tribunals, whether or not they are citizens, for violation of the laws of war. Quirin makes a persuasive case that this has long been seen as an exception to various Bill of Rights protections, and that the Framers would not have understood the Bill of Rights as applying to such military crimes.”
I also found this reference:
“On the points made about the detention of the dirty bomber, I think this case is instructive: In re Territo, 156 F 2d 142 (9th Cir 1946), [which holds] that a citizen who is an enemy belligerent [there, a prisoner of war] can be held without trial for the duration of the war. The only question is whether the Executive’s determination of belligerent status is subject to habeas [corpus] review. I believe that it is, and should be, and I predict that the dirty bomber will seek habeas, and that the Executive will present its evidence, and that the federal courts will determine that he is in fact an enemy belligerent subject to detention without trial.”
<bolding mine>
We do–Ashcroft and Bush.
Seems to me that the statement about enemy spies and saboteurs neatly catches the catch-22 of this debacle. People are innocent until proven guilty, and can’t be eligible for trial by tribunal unless proven guilty. Conversely, trying someone by tribunal because they are assumed to be the enemy violates their rights, as elucidated above. Question for any law emforcement officers/ government employees: How do those on the other side of the 1-way mirror feel about these policies?
I am going to dismiss the Bush-Ashcroft bashing that is going on within this thread and try to focus on facts.
Fact, Abdullah Al Muhajir, a US citizen chose to change his name from Jose Padilla to the name above and embraced Islam. (Note, I am not, in anyway, saying that everyone who believes in Islam is a terrorist)
Fact, Abdullah Al Muhajir went to Pakistan and other countries known to have Islamic terrorists.
Possible fact: “U.S. officials said the primary information about Padilla came from Abu Zubaydah, the most senior al Qaeda figure captured by U.S. authorities.”
Reported as fact: http://www.cnn.com/2002/US/06/11/dirty.bomb.zubaydah/index.html
Now that we have some facts and possible facts in the equation it does not seem to me that Bush or Ashcroft is way out of line. I will assume, and I generally do not assume things, that Ashcroft knows more than we do about the situation. There are national security issues involved and exposing national security issues can end up with Americans and others dying.
By the way, the little links that are labeled ‘full story’ can be clicked on and they provide more information.
Anyway, those who claim that Ashcroft is on a path that will erode all of Americans rights need to do more research.
Slee
Thanks for the information, pldennison. It seems my guess was off by quite a bit, and, while I want to look through the cases a bit more (and, of course, IANAL), there is some precedent for what Ashcroft wants to do.
I guess the relevant questions would be: Are we in a state of (de facto) war? Is Abdullah Al Muhajir an “enemy belligerent”? And do his actions constitute “violation[s] of the laws of war”? If the answer to the first two questions is “yes”, then it appears that Abdullah Al Muhajir can be held without trial for the duration of the conflict, under the legal precedents. If the answer to all three is “yes”, then Al Muhajir can be tried in a military court. But I agree with your second quote that this isn’t (and shouldn’t be) outside of judicial review. Ultimately it will be the federal court system, and not Bush or Rumsfield, who will determine if Al Muhajir’s status does subject him to detention without trial.
sleestak, I don’t think there’s anyone in this thread who didn’t already know every single one of those facts you listed. Nevertheless, it is disturbing in the extreme that an American citizen would be detained by the military and held without even a pretense of due process. Even if you want to keep this guy safely locked away, it’s an absolutely crazy strategy, for the administration is now taking a substantial risk that the federal courts will order his release because of the deprivation of due process.
And how exactly is it that ordinary due process, with the same sort of safeguards that are already in place for other arrested and imprisoned terrorists, would pose a threat to the nation? Really, if you’re going to wipe your ass with the Constitution, hadn’t you better demonstrate toilet paper was incapable of doing the job?
Actually, I should rephrase my third question, which read:
Obviously we can’t know if his actions constitute that prior to a trial. However, what I think Ex parte Quirin says is that trials for violations of the laws of war (whatever they are, exactly) fall under the jurisdiction of the military court system, not the civilian one, for enemy belligerents, regardless of whether they are American citizens. Therefore, if there is sufficient evidence to conduct a trial of Al Muhajir for such violations, it would have to be before a military tribunal. So my original question should read: “And is there sufficient evidence to procede with a trial of Abdullah Al Muhajir for violations of the laws of war?”
Incidently, Minty Green, since I see you’ve posted to this thread, and I know you’re a lawyer, what do you think of the precedents pldennison cited? Is Volokh’s interpretation (which seems to be correct to me, without getting into the issue of whether I want it to be) reasonable?
I think it is interesting that the government has chosen to respect this man’s reported choice of name given that it was never legally changed.
What I think, Amok, is that, rhetorical flourishes aside, we are not at war. To my mind, Quirin depends entirely on the formal state of war that existed between the U.S. and Germany. It is unclear whether the courts would follow Quirin without that rather crucial fact.
I’m actually quite interested in how the courts will deal with the cases that will inevitably result from the last nine months worth of anti-due process policies and procedures from Bush, Ashcroft, & Gonzales (remember that last name when the next Supreme Court justice retires). The WWII-era cases they are using to justify the military tribunals, etc., occurred in a state of declared war. Congress obviously has not declared war today, even though the administration would like to behave as if it had. There’s a very interesting balance of powers issue there, which I think the courts may ultimately be called upon to decide.
Dear minty,
To quote the OP
Nothing in the rest of the post mentions the issues I brought up. I brought up actual facts and reported facts. The OP and the rants about how Bush and Ashcroft are ‘evil scum who want to erode all civil rights’ are based on nothing more than a political view.
At the same time your “assumption” that the facts of the case are well known is not evident in the posts. The OP and the rest of the posts supporting the OP assume that this guy was put in prison due to the “War on Terror” without any factual evidenice. I proved that wrong.
I gave actual facts. If you can dispute the facts in this case please let me know.
At the same time if a person sides with an American enemy but is an American citizen what should the government do? Should an American who sides with the Al Quida (SP?) and tries to kill Americans still be considered an American?
I’d like to hear your justification.
Slee
Get the fuck over yourself, already. I didn’t see even one person in here who “assumed[d] that this guy was put in prison . . . without any factual evidence.” Rather, I see a number of people who are concerned that the guy–an American citizen, after all–has had his constitutional guarantees entirely stripped away from him despite the evidence we are told exists against him. I don’t give a damn whether Ashcroft has a signed and notarized confession and the blueprints of the bomb itself–he is still entitled to the same due process as every other citizen of this country.
And your assumption that the people criticizing Bush and Ashcroft are simply uninformed as to the facts is completely asinine. Like you, the OP linked to a CNN story–a story that made all the same points you deigned to “inform” us of, and that linked to exactly the same story you cited. I have seen no post decribing the facts of this case that says anything other than what the press in general is reporting. There is no evidence whatsoever that the posters here have failed to consider the widely-known facts that you so snottily reported as a revelation to the poor deluded dissenters.
In short, you are an ass. Save your sense of superiority for the other kindergartners, okay?
Amok, baldly stating that another poster is a lawyer…well, that is quite beneath the standards of propriety we seek to maintain here in the Pit.
If that’s true – that 80%-90% of Americans will believe the worst about a fellow citizen just because of his name – then the terrorists have won. 
(Not that I believe this, because I think your notion of what “most Americans” believe is as far off-base as most of your other opinions. Thank heavens.)
sleestak: this story broke on Mnday, and the details were in yesterday morning’s papers. I certainly wasn’t ignorant of those facts, and I share minty’s doubts that anyone else was.
pld: I’d read about the claimed precedents. IANAL, so I don’t have the background to say whether the distinction between declared and undeclared wars is key to these precedents - and ultimately, that’s likely to be decided by the Rule of Five, anyway. (Which has been a bit more worrisome in the wake of December 2000, IMHO.)
But the absence of well-definedness to this war should worry anyone with a shred of cicil-libertarian in their soul, if these precedents are accepted as valid. In WWII, we were in a state of war from the attack on Pearl Harbor until the sovereign nations that had made war on us surrendered in 1945: there was a clear distinction between war and peace.
As others have pointed out, there is no such clear distinction here, and the war is open to being ever-widened and extended. If we invade Iraq, is that part of the same war or another one? Are we still at war until every last al-Queda cell in Indonesia is exterminated?
And as minty has pointed out, “if you’re going to wipe your ass with the Constitution, hadn’t you better demonstrate toilet paper was incapable of doing the job?” I’m willing to buy Ashcroft’s argument that alleged terrorists shouldn’t have access to lawyers who might well be part of their network, but as I’ve already pointed out, it would be a cinch to get this guy high-quality pro bono representation from lawyers that demonstrably had no connection to al-Queda.
Ditto this guy, who was held in solitary for eight months without so much as seeing a judge. Yes, he may be dangerous. No, I don’t want him freed if he represents the threat the Justice Department believes he does.
But they’ve still got to follow the rules that ensure that law-abiding people have the opportunity to seek release if they’re swept up in a dragnet intended to catch the genuine bad guys. If you hold someone as a ‘material witness’, they’re supposed to be under court supervision. Which means you can’t go hiding them from the court system, or depriving them of counsel. Otherwise, we are indeed protecting our lives by giving up our freedoms. Because without access to courts and counsel, being innocent doesn’t do you a lick of good.
You misspelled “Cecil-libertarian.” 
This is the point that people like december seem to be absolutely blind to. Now there’s a thread in IMHO where people are people are calling the lawyers scum for defending these accused. Why don’t they see that these people have not been proven guilty yet, and may, in fact be innocent? Why do they see a newspaper headline about someone being “accused”, and read “found guilty”?
Remember the Tom Lehrer lyrics:
When the rockets go up, who cares where they come down?
“That’s not my department,” says Werner von Braun.
A lot of you posters are focusing entirely on civil liberties and criminal procedures. Today’s NY Times is with you. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/06/12/opinion/12WED1.html
But, when it comes to winning the war on terror and protecting people’s lives and health, some of these people respond like a lazy waiter, “Not my table.”
And, then, adding insult to injury, some of them say, “But, if after our meddling, more deaths occur, it will be entirely the fault of Bush and Ashcroft.” Such self-righteousness…