Should careerpoliticians decidewho gets a trial andwho doesn’t?
Bush Administration Working To Silence Terror SuspectBy Cliff MontgomeryThe Bush Administration is attempting to keep a terrorist suspect who has spent years in a secret CIA prison from having access to a civilian attorney because, officials claim, he could reveal the agency’s closely guarded “interrogation” techniques.In recently filed court documents, the Justice Department claimed that suspects who spent time in those prisons have no right to disclose any information about their interrogations, even to a lawyer, the government said.”Improper disclosure of other operational details, such as interrogation methods, could also enable terrorist organizations and operatives to adapt their training to counter such methods, thereby obstructing the CIA’s ability to obtain vital intelligence that could disrupt future planned terrorist attacks,” the Justice Department wrote.The documents, which were first reported by The Washington Post, were filed in opposition to a request that the U.S. government recognize terror suspect Majid Khan‘s natural right to an attorney. Khan, 26, immigrated from Pakistan and graduated from high school in Maryland.According to documents filed on his behalf by the Center for Constitutional Rights, Khan was arrested in Pakistan in 2003. During more than three years in CIA custody, Khan was subjected to interrogation techniques that defense attorneys say amounted to torture.Bush acknowledged the existence of the CIA system in September and transferred Khan and 13 other suspects the administration has accused as being “terrorist leaders” to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Under a law passed in October, they are to be tried before special military commissions and may not have access to civilian courts.The Center for Constitutional Rights is among several advocacy groups which say that law is unconstitutional, as the Constitution recognizes every prisoner’s natural right to challenge his detention.The Justice Department claims that civilian courts–and, by insinuation, the Constitution–no longer have jurisdiction to intervene in the case. According to the department, keeping every detail about the CIA program secret is essential because national security is at stake.”Information obtained through the program has provided the United States with one of the most useful tools in combating terrorist threats to the national security,” the government claimed in court documents.Gitanjali S. Gutierrez, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, responded in court documents Friday that there is no evidence Khan has classified information, and accused the administration of using national secrecy concerns to “conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct.”In fact the problem with the administration’s argument is that it hinges on the logical fallacy of the “circular argument”: We must believe the administration is doing the right thing, because we must believe the administration is doing the right thing.One must first believe, with an absolute acceptance approaching that of a religious faith, that the same Bush Administration which lied so much and so often to get the U.S. into Iraq cannot possibly lie when it comes to “interrogation techniques” which could well be simple torture–and thus acts which give neither help nor assistance to the terror fight.During the Cold War, the West sometimes saw films of captured U.S. soldiers who had been tortured by their captors “confess” to unspeakable “crimes” they had supposedly committed while performing their missions. Are we to believe the U.S. soldiers must have been telling the truth, since they too had been “interrogated”?An administration which makes various unproven claims about a suspect–indeed, about any judicial case whatsoever–must be made to prove those claims. A democracy must have a balance of power at all costs to remain a democracy.We otherwise have over us a power accountable to no one, which may claim whenever it wishes that it is doing something for our good…an unproven claim we then must merely accept with bowed submission and blind faith.And that point we are no longer men and women, but mere soulless subjects to an idiot king.To those who still think that every such “interrogation” must certainly be protecting us, we put forth a two-word retort: Abu Ghraib.On May 7, 2004, The Wall Street Journal published excerpts of a confidential report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) on detentions in Iraq. It concluded that abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. military intelligence personnel was widespread and in some cases “tantamount to torture.”When ICRC officials warned military intelligence officers of the abuse at Abu Ghraib in the fall of 2003, they were told that such tactics were all “part of the process” when trying to “obtain confessions and extract information.”If not for a handful of patriots in the military leaking photos and other information regarding the “process” to the press and the American people, we would never have known about such madness being conducted at the now-infamous Iraqi prison–and no doubt, it would still be going on, and this administration would still claim that such acts are classified…and absolutely necessary.
