George W. Bush Hates America

Society Pakistan & World Affairs
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GEORGE W. BUSH HATES AMERICA
Thu Aug 22,12:01 PM ET
By Ted Rall

Political Prisoners and the Post-9/11 Police State

NEW YORK–The United States is a nation of laws. The police arrest suspects they reasonably believe to have broken the law, not citizens who happen to disagree with the government’s politics. Cops don’t go after people preemptively because they might commit a crime someday. In America, people are considered innocent until they’re proven guilty in a court of law. They enjoy the right to a fair trial by a jury of their peers as quickly as possible. And of course they’re entitled to the counsel of an attorney.

These fundamental rights, taught in every civics class, define what it means to be American. When other countries fill their prisons with political dissidents, we wonder aloud what it must be like to live in such lawless places. When we watch films like “Midnight Express,” in which an American drug smuggler rots in a Turkish prison, we shake our heads not at the sentence–after all, he’s guilty–but at the lead character’s railroading through the court system and the abuse he suffers at the hands of his guards.

Before September 11, no patriotic American would have disputed the last two paragraphs. Sadly, legal guarantees that every American considered a sacred birthright have been shredded virtually overnight, and many people don’t seem to care. Just as a World Trade Center built over the course of five years was destroyed in under two hours, a presidential impostor has used a phony “war on terror” to systematically unraveled two centuries of basic jurisprudence in less than a year.

George W. Bush may not have read Gibbon but he possesses the morals and cunning of a gangster; in a country still stunned by last fall’s attacks, that seems to be enough.

The “war on terror,” we’re told, requires new tactics. Law enforcement–which somehow now includes the military, CIA ( news - web sites), FBI ( news - web sites) and NSA–needs stronger tools. Terrorists are sneakier and smarter than your garden-variety mafia don. So now they’re no longer “accused terrorists” but rather “enemy combatants.” Who cares if these “enemy combattants” are American citizens? They can be held forever, or to be more precise, until the federal government “defeats terrorism.” And while they’re awaiting that distant day, Bush’s “detainees”–not prisoners, since his first decisive victory has been in his jihad against the English language–don’t get to see a lawyer. This works out well because Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld–who has anointed himself judge, jury and executioner–won’t offer them a chance to prove their innocence in court.

For the Bushies, see, guilt and innocence aren’t the point. The detainees aren’t in prison for what they’ve done. They’re there because of what they might do, for whom they know–for what they think. They are political prisoners.

Americans have watched with aggressive disinterest as images of 564 captured Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters squatting in their Guantánamo dog pens fill their living room screens. Human rights activists warn that these inmates, who hail from 38 countries, are being abused. At Camp Delta in July and August, three men tried to hang themselves and another slashed his wrist with a plastic razor. According to the Army, Guantánamo internees have staged hunger strikes to protest the conditions of their captivity. Others are being forcibly medicated with antidepressants and anti-psychotic drugs.

Even worse than the day-to-day torture is the interminable legal limbo. U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ruled July 31 that “the military base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, is outside the sovereign territory of the United States.” So Guantánamo isn’t the U.S., which means that the prisoners can’t seek redress in American courts. But it isn’t Cuba either. The POWs can go to the World Court in The Hague ( news - web sites), notes Kollar-Kotelly–but the United States routinely ignores international rulings.

Bush asserts that we’re at “war” whenever he calls for increased government surveillance and tax cuts, and decreased freedom and social programs. But then he turns right around and claims that the Guantánamo captives, soldiers captured while bombs fell and bullets flew, aren’t “prisoners of war” at all. Being declared a POW, after all, would entitle these schlubs to certain rights under the 1949 Geneva Conventions: freedom to refuse to answer questions, release at the end of hostilities, decent treatment, i.e., not being held in six-by-eight-foot dog pens under the blazing tropical sun. This linguistic chicanery is amusingly convenient, but it will look like madness the next time American soldiers captured overseas apply for POW status.

If you think about it–and there’s been very little serious thinking since September 11–what did these guys do to deserve being imprisoned in the first place, much less indefinitely? They fought for the Taliban. In Afghanistan ( news - web sites). Against the Northern Alliance. In Afghanistan.

These prisoners–er, detainees–didn’t attack the United States. They didn’t even know anyone who attacked the United States. They’re being held not because of who they are, but because of what they might do–and because of what they think.

This is not the American way.

The same goes for the 750 people the Justice Department ( news - web sites) picked up on visa and immigration charges since September 11. There are millions of illegal immigrants in the United States, but Bush’s feds only sought out those whose ethnicity (Arab), ancestry (Muslim) and political beliefs (opposed to U.S. foreign policy) made them a target. These people aren’t terrorists, or even accused terrorists–they’re political prisoners, doing time for what they think and what they might do.

Not even Americans are safe from Bush’s anti-constitutional assaults on law and basic decency. Remember Jose Padilla? Attorney General John Ashcroft ( news - web sites) crowed in June that his men had “disrupted an unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Now government officials admit that they’ve got zero evidence and that Padilla is at best a “small fish.” Nevertheless, they plan to detain this American citizen indefinitely, without trial.

Similarly Yaser Esam Hamdi, the “other” American Talib captured in Afghanistan, has been held in the brig of the Norfolk Naval Station since April 5. On August 16 U.S. District Judge Robert Doumar demanded that the government, which hasn’t even bothered to explain why Hamdi should be held as an enemy combatant, must do so. “This case appears to be the first in American jurisprudence where an American citizen has been held incommunicado and subjected to an indefinite detention in the continental United States without charges, without any finding by a military tribunal, and without access to a lawyer,” Doumar wrote.

There are few more sickening sights than George W. Bush wearing a lapel pin bearing an image of the American flag. Bush and his creepy henchmen can wrap themselves in nationalistic symbolism all they want, but these right-wing thugs aren’t patriots. They may pledge allegiance to the flag, but they despise the republic for which it stands.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=127&ncid=742&e=7&u=/020822/7/23ayg.html

How true is this???

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…and there goes a bomb on Bushies :rotfl:

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I particularly like this guy's analysis of the 750 people picked up on Visa and immigration violations. He argues that because there are millions of illegal immigrants in the US, there is something wrong with enforcing the law against illegal Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants.

That's sort of like saying because millions of unsolved crimes occur every year, it is unfair the punish the criminals we do catch.

I see nothing wrong with devoting our resources to snare the illegal immigrants who are most likely to cause us harm rather than the ones who came here just to pick tomatoes.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by myvoice: *
I particularly like this guy's analysis of the 750 people picked up on Visa and immigration violations. He argues that because there are millions of illegal immigrants in the US, there is something wrong with enforcing the law against illegal Arab and Middle Eastern immigrants. *
[/quote]

There are over one million Mexcian living illegal in LA.

Millions illegally living in South East Miami from South America.

What would Bush Administration think about that?;)

Is US Laws going to be different for Muslims? I think so!

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As I said above, I see nothing wrong with devoting our resources to snare the illegal immigrants who are most likely to cause us harm rather than the ones who came here just to pick tomatoes.

I sincerely doubt that any illegal Mexicans in LA pose a danger of hatching threats to commit terrorist attacks in the US.

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There are also 7,000 to 10,000 Mexicans deported everyday on immigration charges. They understand the game and don’t cry racism but just find a new way in.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Ex-Army: *
There are also 7,000 to 10,000 Mexicans deported everyday on immigration charges. They understand the game and don’t cry racism but just find a new way in.
[/QUOTE]

Oh yeah! Absoultely

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Pakistani Tiger: *

There are over one million Mexcian living illegal in LA.

Millions illegally living in South East Miami from South America.

What would Bush Administration think about that?;)

Is US Laws going to be different for Muslims? I think so!
[/QUOTE]

Have Mexican or South American hate groups declared war on the US? Did they commit the most horrific crime against American citizens in US history? Have they expressed the desire to use chemical, biological and nuclear weapons against US?

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The answer is NO!

But why discriminating those Muslims, who are sincere Americans and loyal to America?

:rolleyes:

Talk about as US haven’t done any horrific things to the mankind.

Atomic bomb on Japan? Doesn’t it rings the bell?

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What part of the word illegal confuses you? Picking on them for breaking the law, the whine of the year.

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[QUOTE]
Originally posted by Ex-Army: *
**What part of the word illegal confuses you? Picking on them for breaking the law, the whine of the year. *

Bad example I suppose!

[/QUOTE]

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According to Scott Ritter, the UN weapons inspections team destroyed about 90% of Saddam's WMD stock in 1995. When it was determined that Richard Butler et al was spying the Iraqis became more obfuscative. The UN then removed it's inspectors so that the US and Britain could bomb areas unrealated to WMD. The facts have been distorted, here. Bush is correct in seriously analysing the potential threat from Iraq. He is correct in having anxiety that Iraq*may* link with terrorists in future. He is doing his job by "war gaming" all dynamics of this. When the US claim of imperative to neutralize a danger is proven to be extremely great, the justafication for the action increases. Until the case is made of Iraq's further capability vis-a-vis WMD, the US cannot go unilateral. There are clear, sound reasons for this. Mr. Ritter has made it clear that the US has very accurate technology to keep an eye on Iraq. He also states the ground strata is not conducive to sub-terra facilities i much of the country. The thing is, does the US embark on a bloody battle, risking US servicemen and a great many Iraqi civilians for something that is a maybe or a maybe not?

Ted Rall's article is spot on. The mass detentions must be turned into something else. Be that trial, deportation or freedom; indefinate legal limbo is very un-American!

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I have no idea what you guys are talking about.

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[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Mr. Fantastic: *
I have no idea what you guys are talking about.
[/QUOTE]

Darling, don't think too hard!

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This is an interesting developement of which I am glad to see appear.

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Ashcroft vs. US Citizens

The LA Times reported that John Ashcroft, Attorney General for the United States, has advocated the creation of detention camps for US citizens deemed “enemy combatants”. Apparently, it made little news.
It should have been titled Ashcroft vs. US Citizens
What degree of paranoia and megalomaniacy must one attain to think there might be so many “enemy” US citizens within his own country as to warrant the creation of camps to detain them all?
Of course, when you’re the one also defining the enemy, finding lots of people to fill all those empty holding-cell spaces may become ridiculously easy.
The States are becoming a very scary place indeed.

Here is the entire article since LA Times requires you to register.

Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft’s Hellish Vision

Attorney general shows himself as a menace to liberty.

By JONATHAN TURLEY, Jonathan Turley is a professor of constitutional law at George Washington University.

Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft’s announced desire for camps for U.S. citizens he deems to be “enemy combatants” has moved him from merely being a political embarrassment to being a constitutional menace.

Ashcroft’s plan, disclosed last week but little publicized, would allow him to order the indefinite incarceration of U.S. citizens and summarily strip them of their constitutional rights and access to the courts by declaring them enemy combatants.

The proposed camp plan should trigger immediate congressional hearings and reconsideration of Ashcroft’s fitness for this important office. Whereas Al Qaeda is a threat to the lives of our citizens, Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties.

The camp plan was forged at an optimistic time for Ashcroft’s small inner circle, which has been carefully watching two test cases to see whether this vision could become a reality. The cases of Jose Padilla and Yaser Esam Hamdi will determine whether U.S. citizens can be held without charges and subject to the arbitrary and unchecked authority of the government.

Hamdi has been held without charge even though the facts of his case are virtually identical to those in the case of John Walker Lindh. Both Hamdi and Lindh were captured in Afghanistan as foot soldiers in Taliban units. Yet Lindh was given a lawyer and a trial, while Hamdi rots in a floating Navy brig in Norfolk, Va.

This week, the government refused to comply with a federal judge who ordered that he be given the underlying evidence justifying Hamdi’s treatment. The Justice Department has insisted that the judge must simply accept its declaration and cannot interfere with the president’s absolute authority in “a time of war.”

In Padilla’s case, Ashcroft initially claimed that the arrest stopped a plan to detonate a radioactive bomb in New York or Washington, D.C. The administration later issued an embarrassing correction that there was no evidence Padilla was on such a mission. What is clear is that Padilla is an American citizen and was arrested in the United States–two facts that should trigger the full application of constitutional rights.

**Ashcroft hopes to use his self-made “enemy combatant” stamp for any citizen whom he deems to be part of a wider terrorist conspiracy.

Perhaps because of his discredited claims of preventing radiological terrorism, aides have indicated that a “high-level committee” will recommend which citizens are to be stripped of their constitutional rights and sent to Ashcroft’s new camps.**

Few would have imagined any attorney general seeking to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course, Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese American citizens in World War II. But he can be credited only with thinking smaller; we have learned from painful experience that unchecked authority, once tasted, easily becomes insatiable.

We are only now getting a full vision of Ashcroft’s America. Some of his predecessors dreamed of creating a great society or a nation unfettered by racism. Ashcroft seems to dream of a country secured from itself, neatly contained and controlled by his judgment of loyalty.

For more than 200 years, security and liberty have been viewed as coexistent values. Ashcroft and his aides appear to view this relationship as lineal, where security must precede liberty.

Since the nation will never be entirely safe from terrorism, liberty has become a mere rhetorical justification for increased security.

Ashcroft is a catalyst for constitutional devolution, encouraging citizens to accept autocratic rule as their only way of avoiding massive terrorist attacks.

His greatest problem has been preserving a level of panic and fear that would induce a free people to surrender the rights so dearly won by their ancestors.

In “A Man for All Seasons,” Sir Thomas More was confronted by a young lawyer, Will Roper, who sought his daughter’s hand. Roper proclaimed that he would cut down every law in England to get after the devil.

More’s response seems almost tailored for Ashcroft: “And when the last law was down and the devil turned round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? … This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast … and if you cut them down–and you are just the man to do it–do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then?”

Every generation has had Ropers and Ashcrofts who view our laws and traditions as mere obstructions rather than protections in times of peril. But before we allow Ashcroft to denude our own constitutional landscape, we must take a stand and have the courage to say, “Enough.”

Every generation has its test of principle in which people of good faith can no longer remain silent in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot join together to fight the abomination of American camps, we have already lost what we are defending.

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More op/ed by Ted Rall.

**THE TRUTH ABOUT SEPTEMBER 11 **
Wed Aug 7, 9:02 PM ET
By Ted Rall

It’s Time for Our Government to Answer Questions

NEW YORK-A year has passed since September 11th. Yet we, the American people, still don’t know exactly what happened. There are still no plans for a public investigation of how more than 3,000 Americans lost their lives, what could have been done to prevent the attacks or reduce their impact.

Secrecy has been the watchword of the obsessively inscrutable Bush administration. So preoccupied are they with keeping the people’s business away from the people that, rather than spark a national discussion of what went wrong and what we could do better, these public servants are asking members of Congress to take lie-detector tests-to find out who’s been leaking plans to attack Iraq.

Without a doubt, military intelligence requires secrecy. But there is no conceivable national security interest in keeping Americans in the dark about September 11th, a horribly public mass murder that devastated our national sense of invulnerability. A crisis whose first few weeks were marked by patriotic unity rapidly devolved into a divisive “war on terrorism” marked by opportunistic assaults on the Bill of Rights, old-fashioned oil wars and a cynical neo-McCarthyism whereby those who question Bush and the Republican Party are smeared as “anti-American.” “United we stand” bumper stickers aside, the terrorists have skillfully turned us against each other: citizen against immigrant, Republican against Democrat, Christian against Muslim. Secrecy only deepens those divisions.

To hell with closed-door Congressional hearings. America needs a full, open, publicly-televised investigation into 9-11, and it needs it last October. Using the post-JFK assassination Warren Commission as a model is a start, though that panel’s lack of openness fed conspiracy theories that continue to cause Americans to distrust their government four decades later. The best way to avoid alienating the public from its public servants is to keep an investigation 100 percent transparent.

During times of crisis both the electorate and the elected forget that this country belongs to the former. The latter are lackeys, not the other way around! As American citizens and taxpayers, therefore, we deserve-and should demand-honest answers to the following still-unanswered questions:

What did Bush know and when did he know it? A few months ago it was revealed that, while vacationing in Crawford, Texas on August 6, 2001, Bush had received an “analytical report” warning from National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice ( news - web sites) that a terrorist attack was imminent. What was the exact nature of that warning? How detailed was it? Should Bush have cut short his vacation and headed back to Washington? The administration has stonewalled on this issue, but they can only allay suspicions of a September Surprise by coming clean now about the briefings he received before 9-11.

Did Echelon cough up the 9-10 warnings? The National Security Agency acknowledges that it “intercepted” two messages (one said “tomorrow is zero hour”) from terrorists indicating that the next day, September 11th, would be the date of a major attack. Unfortunately, those messages weren’t processed and evaluated until it was too late, on September 12th. The NSA maintains a sophisticated voice- and keyword-recognition computer system called Echelon. A former NSA director told the French magazine Le Nouvel Observateur that Echelon uses automation to monitor every phone call, fax transmission, e-mail and wire transfer in the world. Did the 9-10 warning come from Echelon? Is Echelon being used to monitor ordinary Americans? Is there any way to speed up the rate at which the NSA processes important intercepts?

Why didn’t our Air Force shoot down the hijacked planes? Air traffic controllers lost contact with all four aircraft within minutes of takeoff. Two were off course and ignored controllers for more than an hour and a half, yet the mightiest air defense network in the world failed to prevent the suicide bombers from striking their targets. Did overworked air traffic controllers fail to notice the errant planes? How long did it take them to get the word to military authorities? Did a bureaucratically inept Air Force fail to react quickly enough?

…]
Was United Flight 93 shot down over Pennsylvania? The Pentagon ( news - web sites) has neither denied shooting down United 93 nor confirmed that its heroic passengers caused the flight to crash while trying to wrest its controls from the hijackers. The flight was airborne some two and a half hours before crashing outside Shanksville, leading many to speculate that it was fired upon to protect the White House or other likely targets in Washington. It seems unlikely that a cockpit voice recording of a struggle between passengers and jihadis exists; if it did, why not release such an inspiring artifact to a public hungry for inspiration? All 9-11 flight information, including any Flight 93 recordings, ought to given to the media. And it’s time for the military to indicate whether or not they, rather than the passengers, brought down the jet.

Why didn’t federal law require reinforced cockpit doors? This common-sense proposal had been adopted by carriers in other countries years earlier, but not in the United States. Did the airlines lobby against the move because of increased costs? If so, which airlines? And which federal officials and/or members of Congress are criminally responsible for jeapordizing the safety of the flying public for the sake of a few bucks?

Who locked the roof doors at the World Trade Center? During the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, hundreds of workers escaped smoke by going to the roofs. On September 11th hundreds died when they went up dozens of flights of stairs only to find those same roof doors locked. Why did city fire officials order those doors locked between 1993 and 2001, and more importantly, why didn’t they post notices through the World Trade Center complex to advise that roof doors would no longer be unlocked? Prosecutions may be in order for criminal negligence.

Who skimped on FDNY communications? Scores of New York firefighters died in the stairwells of the World Trade Center after they’d been ordered to evacuate the buildings-because they couldn’t hear those orders on their antiquated radio system. The fire department had requested up-to-date equipment years earlier. Which city officials refused to allocate the necessary funding, causing firefighters to die needlessly? Do the FDNY and other urban fire departments now have better communications?

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When did the U.S. decide to invade Afghanistan ( news - web sites)? As recently as April 2001, the Bush Administration funneled millions of dollars in aid to the Taliban in order to reward the hardline Islamic regime for virtually eliminating opium production. By June, however, relations had cooled noticeably and invasion plans were being prepared. Would we have invaded Afghanistan if September 11th hadn’t happened? Were there any discussions between future U.S. puppet Hamid Karzai and the Bush Administration before or immediately after 9-11?

Where was Osama on 9-11? Afghans told reporters that bin Laden and his entourage fled Afghanistan for Kashmir ( news - web sites) on September 10th, yet military officials were saying as late as January that the world’s most wanted man was holed up in the Tora Bora region. Did the U.S. really know where Osama was on 9-11, and if so, where was he? Why weren’t American commandos inserted into Afghanistan or Pakistan in order to apprehend him? If the U.S. knew that he had left Afghanistan, is this why it refused to negotiate with the Taliban for his extradition?

How many civilians died in Afghanistan? Perhaps the most deliberately underreported story of 2001-2002 was the number of Afghan civilians killed by American bombs, missiles, mines and bullets. (Estimates begin at CNN’s conservative 3,500.) While the Pentagon’s argument that it’s difficult to track these things from satellites and high-flying planes rings true, there’s no doubt that they know more than they care to admit. We deserve to know how many innocent people our taxdollars have killed, and how many of their relatives now have reason to despise America.

Is the government spying on American citizens? Not only is the federal government asking postal workers and meter readers to report on anything unusual they see in our homes, anecdotal evidence suggests that opponents of administration policy are being targeted for wiretaps and other forms of harassment and intimidation by government intelligence agencies. Obviously there is no place for such retro-Cold War behavior in this country; the FBI ( news - web sites), CIA ( news - web sites) and NSA must reveal and cease all such unconstitutional activities against Americans.

Why doesn’t the Bush Administration want a real investigation of 9-11? The House and Senate, whose intelligence committees are now meeting in private, are considering bills that would set up limited, closed-door independent investigative panels, but Bush has stymied even those watered-down efforts at openness, arguing they “would cause a further diversion of essential personnel from their duties fighting the war.” What is he hiding? Americans pay Bush’s salary, and Americans deserve to know what he’s doing.