General Ashcroft's Detention Camps: Time to Call for His Resignation

Village Voice ^ | September 4 - September 10, 2002 | Nat Hentoff

[mhking]

One was thing was good, one was bad.

And which was which? (and if I'm being obtuse, I apologize in advance of your answer)

[dead]

I get it and I am furious that it takes someone from the left to point it out.

Ahh! I hope you weren’t saying that I’m “from the left”!!!

Leftists (today’s flavor anyway) have no use for the Constitution.

[efnwriter]

Left Screeching at Ashcroft Again:
Detaining Enemy Combatants

Jonathan Rhodes
efreedomnews.com
September 4, 2002

General Ashcroft's Detention Camps: Time to Call for His Resignation
"The new Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise movie, Minority Report, shows the government, some years hence, imprisoning "pre-criminals" before they engage in, or even think of, terrorism. That may not be just fiction, folks." Nat Hentoff  September 4 - September 10, 2002 Village Voice

"The Bush administration seems to believe, on no good legal authority, that if it calls citizens combatants in the war on terrorism, it can imprison them indefinitely and deprive them of lawyers. This defiance of the courts repudiates two centuries of constitutional law and undermines the very freedoms that President Bush says he is defending in the struggle against terrorism."  August 8, 2002 New York Times editorial

This is garbage - a one dimensional liberal attack on the Bush Administration. Hyperbole - attack - that is the liberal playbook. It is destructive and unnecessary. Casting the US Justice Department in these screeching terms only weakens the argument for protecting Civil Liberties in these dangerous times. I wish they would grow up.

Let's look at the facts:

This is an old - and necessary - argument about the balance between the rights of one to justice and the rights of many to security.

"No civilized nation confronting serious danger has ever relied exclusively on criminal convictions for past offenses. Every country has introduced, by one means or another, a system of preventive or administrative detention for persons who are thought to be dangerous but who might not be convictable under the conventional criminal law." So writes Alan Dershowitz of Harvard Law School.

Mr. Ashcroft said there was legal authority "under the laws of war and clear Supreme Court precedent, which establishes that the military may detain a United States citizen who has joined the enemy and has entered our country to carry out hostile acts".

The Supreme Court precedent he refers to dates from the Quirin case in 1942. Quirin (an American Citizen) and seven other German saboteurs were landed on beaches on Long Island and in Florida by submarine. All were arrested and handed over to the military. The court held that they were "unlawful combatants" who had entered the country secretly like spies.

The Supreme court stated: "All citizens of nations at war with the United States or who give obedience to or act under the direction of any such nation shall be subject to the law of war and to the jurisdiction of military tribunals."

In 1946, the federal appeals court in San Francisco arrived at a similar conclusion in the case of an Italian-American captured while fighting with Mussolini's troops in Sicily. He was transferred to the United States and held indefinitely until the war ended.

So Ashcroft's Justice Department has good legal precedence for his position arguing for more security. There are good and necessary arguments and actions that civil rights attorneys are taking to balance the administrations proposition. This is normal American jurisprudence. The courts are speaking and reviewing this issue.

Two American citizen prisoners, Yaser Hamdi (captured as an armed combatant in Afghanistan) and Jose Padilla (seized after disembarking from an airplane in Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport after arriving on orders from al-Qaida who trained him to work on a "dirty" nuclear bomb), are the only ones being held in these "camps" - to denigrate the use of that term is obvious.

US District Judge Robert G. Doumar granted a legal petition by Hamdi’s father compelling the government to allow Hamdi to consult with a court-appointed lawyer.

The Bush administration appealed this finding to the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals which vacated the US district court’s ruling and sent the case back for reconsideration “because the district court appointed counsel and ordered access to the detainee without adequately considering the implications of its actions”. (regarding precedence of military rules in wartime)

The cases of Yasser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla, two U.S. citizens whose detentions are being challenged in court, will likely determine whether the Justice Department can indefinitely detain terrorist suspects without trials and without lawyers.


"I am not ashamed to say we have used every legal weapon available in order to prevent and disrupt future terrorism acts," Larry Thompson, the deputy U.S. attorney general, told a recent meeting of the National Association of Black Prosecutors in Los Angeles. "We have been especially aggressive with respect to detention and surveillance."


Michael Chertoff, head of the Justice Department's criminal division, also offered a strong defense.

U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft "is very, very conscious of civil liberties issues," Chertoff told the American Bar Association's annual meeting last month in Washington. "In our discussions, he told us he wanted people to think outside the box, but never outside the Constitution. . . . You shouldn't think you are dealing with a bunch of barbarians."

Chertoff added, "The basic issue is this: We are in a time of war. The consequences of missing another effort of conducting mass killing in the United States are horrendous."
 

Why does the left have to make this issue a screaming, name calling match? To quote former litigator with the Center For Individual Rights in Washington, DC, Ann Coulter:

This is how six-year olds argue: They call everything "stupid." The left's primary argument is the angry reaction of a helpless child deprived of the ability to mount logical counterarguments. Someday we will turn to the New York Times editorial page and find the Newspaper of Record denouncing President Bush for being a "penis-head." The "you’re stupid" riposte is part of the larger liberal tactic of refusing to engage ideas. Sometimes they evaporate in the middle of an argument and your left standing alone, arguing with yourself. More often, liberals withdraw figuratively by responding with ludicrous and irrelevant personal attacks. Especially popular are non-sequiturs that are savagely cruel. A vicious personal smear, they believe, constitutes a clever counterargument. Your refusal to submit to name-calling means you are overwhelmed by the force of their argument that you are a penis-head."

 "Liberals conceive of news reporting as political propaganda and assume, therefore, that everyone else does too."

 "The law imposes rules precisely so that liberals cannot endlessly jawbone hypothetical possibilities until they have their way."
 

Slander : Liberal Lies About the American Right

 

 

 

[marron]

honest democrats (classic libertals)

Hey, I'm with rdb3.

A "classic liberal" is someone who believes in limited government, private property, and individual liberty. In the US, those people are called "conservatives". Some US conservatives are also "classic conservatives", in the sense of having respect for tradition, but even this is different from "classic conservative" in the European mold, as US traditions are rooted in classic liberalism.

It is very annoying that the socialists have stolen our name, but oh well.

[rdb3]

Leftists (today’s flavor anyway) have no use for the Constitution.

Bingo!

[TheRedSoxWinThePennant]

where is the barf alert the village voice was mighty silent when women and children were burned in a waco compound a few years back

[Howlin]

You are making a fool out of yourself.

Yet again.

[marron]

< I>Your sarcasm is excused

Thanks. Its easy to sound snotty when you're pounding away at the keyboard. But its meant in good humor, mostly.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

I'm against loss of liberty for anyone. Base your inferences on that. I am not against any part of the bill of rights. I am against actions on the part of the government which tend to violate it. I do have trouble with some later amendments. I particularly have trouble with policies which require an amendment where the amendment has yet to take place. For example: The constitution was properly amended to allow for prohibition whether I agree with the amendment or not. It has yet to be amended to allow for the war on drugs. The government is our servant, not our master. How can a free man's rights flow from the servant? It can't unless the servant is really the master. How can a servant be allowed to be armed when the master isn't? It can't. Unless it is really the master....etc. Rights that flow from an amendment are merely privileges granted by the master that can be rescinded at any time.

[steve-b]

Better educate yourself before popping off. Hentoff called for Clinton's impeachment and removal for crimes against the Constitution, including but not limited to the ones you've cited (the Weaver case started under George Bush the Elder; however, the coverup continued under the 'Toon).

[steve-b]

Is anyone else troubled by the fact that some of the same people who think Castro ain't such a bad fellow are the same ones accusing Ashcroft of civil rights violations?

Is anyone else troubled by the fact that Impeach the Boy believes that the Sun rises in the east -- in complete agreement with Osama and Saddam!

[desertcry]

Could it be that the Atty General's detaintion camp is the reason why we have not yet been hit with another 9.11? How else could our law enforcement agengcies prevent the terrorists from hitting us again, if we don't detain suspects, and give Ashcroft a chance to verify, if these suspects are dangerous or not?

[Who dat?]

… the fundamental problem is that we don't have a clear definitions of "enemy combatant".

I remember the definition (or explanation of the definition) floating around FreeRepublic once, I think.

The essence of the definition was that an enemy combatant was someone who operated for the benefit of a hostile entity during a time of war or public danger. That’s from memory – not verbatim.

That was further subdivided into “lawful enemy combatant” and “unlawful enemy combatant.” To be lawful you must wear a uniform, display your rank, carry some sort of identification, must not carry weapons concealed, must not target civilians or medical personnel… a whole list of things. If you managed to comply with the conditions and were captured, you would qualify as a POW. If you did not do those things you could not qualify to be a POW.

If you did not do those things you were unlawful. Posing as a non-combatant while investigating ways to target civilians with “dirty nukes” and having ties with terrorists or people and groups sympathetic to them seems to qualify as unlawful (Padilla). So would gathering supplies or information, planning acts of sabotage, acquiring identification/clothing for other members of an operation to pass themselves off as civilians, providing disinformation… etc.

That’s how I remember it, FWIW. I’m sure I probably left something out.

[marron]

Then which is it - are we already in a state of war as granted by the war powers act, or are we not? You speak from both sides of your mouth.

That is the advantage of speaking out of both sides...

The answer is "both". A finding or declaration of war is legally necessary, for the reasons I have stated. Otherwise, civil and criminal law obtains, and you have to get warrants, etc...

And, in my opinion, Congress has already "recognized" that we are at war, in its authorization for military action after 9/11. So, in my opinion, nothing further is needed. But some may want a more explicit declaration before we continue, and I am ok with that.

[mrsmith]

"If Congress declares war, and the military decides that I am an enemy combatant, then I am in a heap of trouble. "

Yes, posters conveniently forget that the administration is using military force against those congress authorized it to use it against.
Public Law 107-40 put no limits on the location or citizenship of those subject to military force.

A balanced look at these detentions would include considering that the President would and should be subject to impeachment and removal if he did not at least detain those he thought participated or aided in the 9/11 attacks.

[Steve_Seattle]

Good post. In the current National Review Online, Kate O'Beirne raises similar points and also identifies the historical precedents for the detention of enemy combatants. And it is odd that many liberals who are shocked by the detention of these two men seemed absolutely delighted when David Koresh's compound went up in flames and when U.S agents waved a gun in Elian's face.

[mhking]

It has yet to be amended to allow for the war on drugs.

(at the risk of diverging for a moment) Although I think the "war on drugs" is not working, I don't think an amendment is necessary to wage it. We've got no business amending the Constitution lightly or at every drop of a hat.

That being said, I understand where you are going in the earlier statement. Unfortunately, earlier laws had determined that blacks - free or otherwise - did not have full citizenship status prior to the enactment of the 14th Amendment. That amendment (at least Section 1) provided remedy for this.

If I'm understanding your point, you take issue with Section 3, where members of the Confederacy are prohibited from holding office. If I also understand correctly, that portion of the amendment is what caused the "under duress" ratification of the amendment. Unfortunately or fortunately, as the case may be, whether or not they ratified under duress is immaterial.

The one key is that Section 3 removed the opportunity for anyone tied to any form of sedition to hold office.

[HaveGunWillTravel]

What do you think I'm saying?

[rdb3]

There are no outs. Say what you're saying. That's what I've been asking you to clarify.

[mhking]

The answer is "both". A finding or declaration of war is legally necessary, for the reasons I have stated. Otherwise, civil and criminal law obtains, and you have to get warrants, etc...

If Congress has already recognized a state of war exists through it's war powers and military action authorization last year, then the remaining point is moot. Also rendered moot is any arguement regarding the Feds picking up anyone on "enemy combatant" status. They get to do it whether you (or Tom Daschle and the rest of the Dems for that matter) like it or not.

And there's not a blasted thing anyone can say about it, because the executive branch has already been granted the power, period. There is no need - based on those grounds - to have a "formal declaration" of war.