<html>
<body>
<font size=3>From John Ashcroft's lips to God's ear<br>
Kiss Your Rights Goodbye<br>
<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0434/indiana.php" eudora="autourl">http://www.villagevoice.com/print/issues/0434/indiana.php<br>
</a>by <b>Gary Indiana<br>
</b>August 23rd, 2004 4:45 PM <br><br>
It will never be said of George W. Bush that he left office with any less
intelligence, grace, and dignity than he came in with. Intimidation of
black voters in Florida has already begun, with surprise visits to the
newly registered by Jeb Bush's state police, "investigating voter
fraud"an ingeniously ironic whopper, of the stripe that's endeared
the Bush family to generations of Saudi princes, defense contractors, and
homicidal dictators. <br><br>
Iraq is a catastrophe, bloodier by the hour. Our Afghan proxy controls a
full 10 yards of sovereign territory around his office in Kabul. The only
successful war Bush has waged from the comfort of his ranch thus far has
been an unremitting attack on the U.S. Constitution. The First, Fourth,
Sixth, and Eighth Amendments in the Bill of Rights have already sustained
serious injury. <br><br>
The usual method of redressing constitutional grievances is through the
court system. But well in advance of the fait accompli, Bush's fans in
Congress derailed most of President Clinton's judicial nominations, a
practice the media overlooked in its frenzy to document a cum stain
artfully preserved by Monica Lewinsky and Linda Tripp. No member of the
Senate was more fanatical in excluding qualified people from the federal
bench than our current attorney general, John Ashcroft. The vacancies
imposed by Ashcroft and other Senate evangelicals have now been filled by
right-wing ideologues, who dominate seven of 13 federal appellate
districts. <br><br>
It's a small, telling measure of G.W. Bush's contempt for the electorate
that after Missouri voters chose to elect a deceased candidate rather
than give Ashcroft another term, Bush promptly installed him as the
country's chief law enforcement officer. When sworn in, Ashcroft was,
appropriately, anointed with oil by Justice Clarence Thomas. <br><br>
Ashcroft is, not to mince words, a lunatic. This would have been
universally recognized at almost any other moment in American history. In
the looking-glass world of "the war on terror," however,
Ashcroft's religious manias haven't excited even mild censure from anyone
in government. By all reports, Ashcroft runs the Department of Justice
like a Pentecostal revival meeting, enjoining his staff to raise their
voices in righteous hymns of his own composition. <br><br>
After 9-11 and the anthrax scare, Ashcroft's Patriot Act, and the
subsequent Homeland Security Act sailed through a terrified Congress like
shit through a canebrake. Although Ashcroft has disavowed a leaked draft
of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act, which bears a twinship to the
Nazi Party's 1933 platform, Patriot Act II, as it's affectionately known,
is definitely on the menu for a second Bush administration, should
Diebold Corporation and Brother Jeb come through for our current
appointee. <br><br>
A curious feature of the Patriot Act is that it authorizes virtually
nothing that would effectively prevent terrorists from hitting American
targets. Like other "emergency" measures since 9-11, it attacks
Americans. Racial profiling, arbitrary searches and seizures, roving
wiretaps and judge-less warrants, harassment of nonviolent activists,
indefinite detention without probable or even improbable cause, and guilt
by association are only a few of the "appropriate tools required to
intercept and obstruct terrorism." Not all of them are stipulated in
the Patriot Act, but such has been its use-value. <br><br>
Naturally, putting these and similar "tools" in the hands of
intelligence agencies and police officers guarantees their rampant
misuse, just as deregulating industry has freed corporations to break
every labor and environmental law they haven't managed to rescind.
<br><br>
Unfortunately, a large terrorist event in New York City is just as likely
to happen with or without the Patriot Act and the Department of Homeland
Security, no matter how many random Muslims and political dissidents the
FBI harasses or locks up. <br><br>
Inflating ordinary misdemeanor crimes into "terrorist acts"
does nothing to enhance security; it's a standard practice of police
states, and will only benefit the corporatized prison racket. Since
operations like 9-11 and the earlier embassy bombings in Africa took at
least five years to plan, the fact that nothing's happened here since
9-11 has nothing to do with Ashcroft's theatrics or Bush's
"toughness." <br><br>
When it comes to cases, every legal tool law enforcement needed to hunt
terrorists was already on the books before the Patriot Act. If "the
war on terror" were serious and not a bait-and-switch operation to
squash dissent and push an agenda long preceding 9-11, legions of
"intelligence" personnel and presidential advisers would have
been out of work on 9-12. <br><br>
Nobody in this administration has lost a job for failing to uphold the
Constitution, ignoring the public interest, or exhibiting limitless
incompetence. No honor among thieves, as the saying goes. Even the
pornographic horror of Abu Ghraib wasn't enough to make Donald Rumsfeld
resign. As Dick Cheney asserted in a different context, everyone in the
Bush administration has "other priorities," all of them
antithetical to the public interest. What is the public, compared to
Jesus Christ and Halliburton? <br><br>
I mention Jesus Christ only because John Ashcroft frequently likens
himself to the simple carpenter from Nazareth who died for our sins. In
his autobiography, Ashcroft reveals a messianic complex seldom found
outside a locked ward, characterizing each of his career disappointments
as "crucifixions." On rare occasions when things go well, his
father, an Assembly of God cultist, or someone equally demented is always
on hand to smear a little Crisco on his forehead, as was done for the
prophets in biblical times. <br><br>
Ashcroft inhabits the same mental universe as Osama bin Laden, which
isn't as useful to a "war on terror" as it sounds. Like bin
Laden, Ashcroft considers his job to be smiting the infidel, prosecuting
Muslims and Arabs on an ethnic-religious basis. Many Homelanders conflate
Muslims with terrorists, so Ashcroft has been able to do the same,
forearmed by Jesus for the clash of civilizations. Alas, unlike bin
Laden, Ashcroft really doesn't know much about our civilization, much
less anyone else's. <br><br>
The Justice Department would have it that numerous "sleeper
cells" have been ambushed since 9-11. Fat chance. Plea bargaining, a
judicial travesty designed to relieve our court system of its onerous
duty to give defendants jury trials, and mandatory sentencing, which
voids the discretion of judges to tailor sentences appropriate for
individual defendants, have placed the fate of anyone charged with a
crime in the total control of prosecutors. <br><br>
In the terrorism cases to date, people from targeted ethnic groups have
been fingered, for whatever reasons, by informants; locked up without
benefit of counsel; and threatened with life imprisonment or execution
(typical mandatory sentences for "terror" crimes). Predictably,
these casualties of the Patriot Act tend to confess to lesser crimes the
prosecutor offers from a standard menu of transgressions. The so-called
Lackawanna Six, U.S. citizens of Yemeni origin, pleaded out on
"providing material support to terrorists" when menaced with
capital charges. <br><br>
Eleven alleged terrorists in Alexandria, Virginia, charged with what
amounts to "association" with Al Qaeda, pleaded out on
violations of the Neutrality Act. <br><br>
Seven members of a "terrorist cell" in Portland, Oregon,
likewise charged with multiple crimes, pleaded out on lesser, tossed-in
charges of gun possession. <br><br>
A hearing on probable cause in most of the above cases might have
concluded that the defendants' rights had been violated. It's more likely
that these people are innocent than guilty, considering how many episodes
of mass hysteria have translated into show trialsor, in these cases, no
trialsthroughout American history. <br><br>
In every case "linked" to 9-11, Muslims, mostly American
citizens, have been confronted with the same dilemma anyone
"overcharged" with felony counts faces: Take your chances with
an overworked, underpaid public defender or plead out for lesser jail
time, even if you're innocent. In the rare cases in which a defendant's
lawyer has managed to compel production of the state's "secret
evidence," it proved so flimsy that charges were drastically lowered
by the courts or simply thrown out. <br><br>
The Moussaoui case illustrates how the terror war has played out in the
U.S. Initially indicted on six conspiracy counts, any one of which could
lead to life imprisonment or execution, Moussaoui insisted on questioning
three "enemy combatants" in detention who he said would testify
to his non-involvement in 9-11. <br><br>
The judge ordered Moussaoui's access to the detainees; rather than
produce them, the Justice Department claimed that they could reveal
"classified information." The prosecutors moved for a
dismissal, in hopes that an appellate court would void the judge's order
and call for a new trial. <br><br>
Under the weird procedures Ashcroft has devised from a breathtakingly
cynical reading of international law and U.S. statutes, the government
can switch Moussaoui's status to that of "enemy alien" and try
him before a military tribunal. This isn't just overcharging, it's
railroading. <br><br>
Only between 3 and 5 percent of felony defendants in the U.S. ever
receive a jury trial. For "terror" suspects, just being called
a terrorist by the Justice Department is enough to get you shipped to a
dog pound on Diego Garcia without being charged. This is likely to entail
being sleep-deprived, tortured, and raped by some smirking hillbilly like
Lynndie England, courtesy of Donald Rumsfeld. <br><br>
Three years after the fact, there has been no satisfactory explanation
for what happened on 9-11, although it's clear from many credible
accounts that the House of Saud was paying protection money to bin Laden,
and several Sauds who died under fishy circumstances afterward knew in
advance that an American target was going to be hit. The Bush family's
complex business dealings with the Saudis, including some of bin Laden's
siblings, have clouded every inquiry into the 9-11 plot. <br><br>
What should have been a disaster for G.W. Bush's presidency, then, has
instead served as a pretext for conducting it like a dictatorship, with
John Ashcroft's Justice Department as its secret police. Strange to say,
the branch of the government that got the country into this mess is the
only one that can get us out. The Supreme Court's rulings in <i>Hamdi
</i>v. <i>Rumsfeld</i>, <i>Rasul</i> v. <i>Bush</i>, and <i>Rumsfeld</i>
v. <i>Padilla</i>, affirming habeas corpus rights for detainees as well
as criminal defendants, while not unequivocal triumphs for Hamdi, Rasul,
or Padilla per se, at least indicate a dawning recognition within the
Supreme Court that its own prerogatives are liable to be usurped by an
executive branch that defines "war" against a phantom enemy as
an eternal state of emergency. If we can't rely on the court for
fairness, the republic may yet be rescued by its resentment. <br><br>
</font><x-sigsep><p></x-sigsep>
<font size=3 color="#FF0000">The Freedom Archives<br>
522 Valencia Street<br>
San Francisco, CA 94110<br>
(415) 863-9977<br>
</font><font size=3><a href="http://www.freedomarchives.org/" eudora="autourl">www.freedomarchives.org</a></font></body>
</html>