Due Process Vanishes in Thin Air

wired news ^ | 4.8.03 | Ryan Singel

[freepatriot32]

Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management consultant, must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he flies to and from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get off a government watch list because he shares the same name as a suspected terrorist.

But Asif Iqbal, the suspected terrorist, is eight years younger than his Rochester namesake.

What's more, the suspected terrorist Iqbal has been in U.S. custody at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, since January 2002 when he was captured in Afghanistan. In a letter to his congressional representative, Iqbal of New York said he was first denied the ability to board a plane on Feb. 18, 2002, almost a full month after the British Foreign Office informed the suspected terrorist Iqbal's family that he was being held as an "enemy combatant."

[ArrogantBustard]

Save the condescension, sonny. You picked a really moronic way of making your point.

The issue is simply the way dumb-a$$ bureauracies work etc.

That's hardly an excuse for this problem, and a really poor explanation. The "Land of the Free" should be better than this. Freedom is being nibbled to death by ducks in this country. Here's another duck bite.

[ArrogantBustard]

Because of Arabs, we are all inconvenienced a bit at the airport. It's somehow fitting that some Arabs, although innocent, should be inconvenienced a little bit more.

Hey, we've a believer in collective guilt here. Why don't you substitute "Negroes" or "Juden" for "Arabs" in your sense of poetic justice, and see how it sounds.

[Asclepius]

... The "Land of the Free" should be better than this ...

Better than what, little one? What's your basis for comparison?

[Homer1]

Why is he flying???
It's an hour's drive!

[Dimensio]

This is precisely my point.

So why the implication that this problem was the fault of an innocent man who just happens to share a name with a terrorist?

[ArrogantBustard]

The basis of my comparison is the America I knew decades ago, boy. Maybe you don't remember it? Maybe you have the attention span of the six o'clock news?

I, OTOH, have a memory.

And don't just mindlessly chant Nine-Eleven at me.

America is a lot older than that. So am I.

It'll be a sad situation indeed if this time next year, Iraq is freer than the USA. Not sad for the Iraqis; they deserve a good turn after almost thirty years of bloodthirsty dictatorship. Sad for us.

If you're content, sonny, to be nibbled to death by ducks, Fine. I'm not. I've had my fill of bureaucratic BS. I don't accept it as an excuse for anything.

[Asclepius]

So why the implication that this problem was the fault of an innocent man who just happens to share a name with a terrorist?

To demonstrate how risible to the point of absurdity it is to assign blame to anyone in this case. This is simply not a due process issue. To imply otherwise is to conflate political rights and freedoms with administrative efficiency--contrary to the ridiculous "duckbite" theory of politics that someone else articulated.

Please note. Whether the buses run late may inconvenience you, but it would not make you less free or less of a citizen.

[Asclepius]

... The basis of my comparison is the America I knew decades ago, boy ...

Oh, OK. Then wake up! Shake off your sleep, Rip Van Winkle. The world has matured a little, grown more sophisticated etc. We no longer conflate (if we ever did) political rights and freedoms with simple issues of administrative efficiency. If the department of motor vehicles clerk accidently deletes our vehicle registration information, it does not make us less free--to imply otherwise is simply ludicrous, but you've already come to realize this as you are still young enough to learn, grow, and adapt when exposed to the healing balm of human reason.

No need to thank me for the civics lesson.

[MineralMan]

Because of Arabs, we are all inconvenienced a bit at the airport. It's somehow fitting that some Arabs, although innocent, should be inconvenienced a little bit more. Yes, indeed. That's the ticket. Let's inconvenience US Citizens because they have the same name as someone who is already in jail...but it's OK, because they are what you call "Arabs." What's your ethnic background? Maybe you're next, eh?

[ArrogantBustard]

We no longer conflate (if we ever did) political rights and freedoms with simple issues of administrative efficiency.

Who's "we", Kemosabe? When "administrative (in)efficiency", as you so disarmingly put it, consistently characterises innocent folk as terrorists whe have a loss of political freedom. That is a situation where the "public servant" has become the "public master". The bureaucracy exists to serve the public. Or it does in a free country.

Son, if you want to kiss the ass of Bureaucratus Maximus for the rest of your life, that's your problem. And at your age, that'll be a long time. As for me, I'll spend my declining years trying to turn Bureacratus Maximus into Bureaucratus Minimus.

Quack! Quack! Quack!

[tpaine]

Self-touted:

Academic.
Rhetorician.
Aesthetician.
Guerilla dialectician. Neo-grrr-nostic. Student of the corpus Hermeticum, the Latin Asclepius, and the Italian esoteric tradition (Bruno, Vico, Evola et al). Relentless pursuer of the Great Work, the ars regia.
Teacher of composition, professional writing, argument, text analysis, qualitative modes of inquiry.
Studier and researcher of the written word, text and conditions of textuality, visible language, symbols, symbol systems, symbolic processes, the glyph, the trace, the sign.
Sometimes anarchist. Sometimes crypto-monarchist. Stubborn reactionary. Radical traditionalist. Believer in human finitude and the limits of human consciousness: we are not the rational creatures we believe that we are. Believer in our dependence on culture, nation, and institution. Believer in the irreducible complexities of social reality, the mess and muddle of the human condition. Conservative in the sense that Spengler, Wittgenstein, Toynbee, Burke, D'Annunzio, Feyerabend, Evola et al are conservatives

"No need to thank me for the civics lesson."
-Asclepius-

No need to think you'll get any, as you gave no 'lessons', -- just laughs.

[inquest]

This is simply not a due process issue. To imply otherwise is to conflate political rights and freedoms with administrative efficiency--contrary to the ridiculous "duckbite" theory of politics that someone else articulated.

It's the government that's conflated the two by its actions. If our rights and freedoms are subject to the whims of "adminstrative efficency", then they are being compromised, without question.

And the duckbite "theory" was precisely the impetus behind the American Revolution. Never forget that.

[zeugma]

WooHoo! Thanks. Well said!

The damned ducks are everywhere. We need more birdshot.

[Steve_Seattle]

The media always play this both ways: if the government begins to take security issues seriously, they wail about a "massive curtailment of civil liberties"; but if the government fails to follow up on even an obscure lead, they are damned for "not connecting the dots."

[tpaine]

I favor #4 buck for domestic fowl-ers of our constitution. -- $64 a case at Cabelas.

[TC Rider]

Not that it's relevant in the least, but I'm a white guy.

I'm sick of seeing grannies, black women with babies, and old white veterans shaken down at the airport becuase of the actions of 19 arabs.

I believe the TSA should be profiling big time and lay off the non-arab, non-male, non-Saudi, non 24-39 year olds.

If one arab in NY is being rousted, good, it helps to make up for the 16 times I've had to take my shoes off since 9/11.

[inquest]

The media always play this both ways: if the government begins to take security issues seriously, they wail about a "massive curtailment of civil liberties"; but if the government fails to follow up on even an obscure lead, they are damned for "not connecting the dots."

I think there can be legitimate criticism on both those heads. It wasn't an "obscure lead" when Moussaoui's flight school kept sending warning after warning to the FBI about him. No "PATRIOT" Act would have been able to make them get up off their behinds and do their job. Only they could make themselves do it.

[Asclepius]

It's the government that's conflated the two by its actions. If our rights and freedoms are subject to the whims of "adminstrative efficency", then they are being compromised, without question.

Not without question, because I have questions, in fact, I simply disagree that any rights and freedoms have been compromised.

We have a goal: more security. If in the pursuit of that goal by those we task to administer or administrate our public offices we do err, does that mean that our rights are diminished? No. It simply means that someone made a mistake, blundered, came up with a plan that didn't work etc. But what if the error seems to undermine someone's political rights?--that is not the case in this particular case, but I will entertain the question even so. I would still say no. At least not as long as we have courts and ballot boxes and other means of redress or relief.

And the duckbite "theory" was precisely the impetus behind the American Revolution. Never forget that.

Apparently I already forgot it. Please explain it to me. (I thought we fought a revolution over political issues--e.g. the preamble to the declaration of indendence enumerates them.)

[Asclepius]

When "administrative (in)efficiency", as you so disarmingly put it, consistently characterises innocent folk as terrorists whe have a loss of political freedom.

If consistency is your evaluative criterion, then your argument fails on its face and your problem is one of basic reasoning skills. Someone having the same exact name as an Arab terrorist is a special case, hardly evidence of consistently characterizing anyone of anything. And, in this case, the no one was "characterized"; rather, he was simply misidentified, and therefore inconvenienced (allowed to go on his way once the mistake is verified etc).

So where's the political issue, old person?

[ArrogantBustard]

Asif Iqbal, a Rochester, New York, management consultant, must get FBI clearance every Monday and Thursday when he flies to and from Syracuse for business. Iqbal can't get off a government watch list because he shares the same name as a suspected terrorist.

Here's your consistency, sonny-boy. Must be too many big words in that sentence for you. When Bureacratus Maximus can't figure out once and for all that "Asif Iqbal, of Rochester, New York", who is not a terrorist, isn't the same person as "Asif Iqbal, of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba" who is an incarcerated terrorist, that is more than mere "inconvenience". That's constraining his right to travel in order not to inconvenience BM.

Papieren, Bitte?

Quack! Quack! Quack!