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07/05/2004:
"A Defeat in Disguise?"
By Elaine Cassel AlterNetMany are calling this week's Supreme Court rulings a victory for civil libertarians. It may be a hollow victory.
Forget what the media's talking heads have told you about the cases of Hamdi, Padilla, and Rasul representing a victory for civil liberties and a curb on Presidential power. While it is significant that the court ruled that the prisoners have some access to U.S. courts, the President won far more than he lost. Taken together, the decisions are more important for what they did not do and their significance for the future cannot be underestimated.
Rumsfeld v. Padilla
To begin with, the Court dodged the most important case, that of Jose Padilla. Padilla, recently vilified by a highly-placed Department of Justice attorney, is the American citizen arrested on a material witness warrant in Chicago two years ago. The government's story then was that he was planning to detonate a dirty bomb. Attorney General John Ashcroft held a press conference and announced the incarceration of Padilla and told us what a dangerous man he was. Of course, if they had evidence that he was planning to detonate a dirty bomb, they would have charged him with a host of crimes, and tried him. But they never charged him with anything. What does that tell you? A couple of weeks ago, Ashcroft sent out one of his top deputies to change the story on Padilla. That story may have influenced the Court's decision, though we will never know this. The official denied that the press conference at which he announced that Padilla had "confessed" to plotting to blow up high-rise apartment buildings may have been held to punctuate the government's belief that Padilla was a very, very dangerous man. So if he is so dangerous, why is he not being charged? Or, you have to love this reason: Because the government denied him his rights and repeatedly interrogated him without an attorney (and, maybe even tortured him, for all we know) his confession is no good! Can't be used in court. So since we denied him his rights, we cannot try him, but we can hold him without charging him forever. Because we say he is dangerous.full article
