|
Scooter Meet José Padilla
Suddenly, Bush Embraces Right of Fair Trials
By DAVE LINDORFF
10/28/05 "Counterpunch"
-- -- When President Bush was confronted by
reporters as he left the White House for Camp David following the
announcement of the five indictments of, and the resignation of Vice
President Dick Cheney chief of state I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, he
offered up a lame comment, which at the same time exposed him as a
grotesque hypocrite.
"In our system," he said, "each individual is presumed innocent and
entitled to a fair trial."
Sure. That's what will happen with Scooter, and with Karl Rove if he
gets indicted when the other shoe drops.
But what about Jose Padilla? This U.S. citizen, picked up at
Chicago's O'Hare International Airport back in 2001, has been held
in a military brig without charge, without access to an attorney,
and in solitary confinement without any contact with family members
for four years because President Bush has claimed the right, on his
sole authority, to declare any American citizen to be an "enemy
combatant" and to revoke their Constitutional rights and rights of
citizenship.
No formal charges have been filed against Padilla. Instead, the
Justice Department has just made unsupported statements claiming
first that he was planning to build and detonate a dirty-nuke bomb,
then dropping that and claiming that he planned to blow up gas lines
in apartment buildings. Since Padilla is unable to contest these
charges-or really even to know what the charges are or who has been
testifying against him-no one can know their veracity.
The same thing was been done to another American-born citizens,
Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was ultimately stripped of his birthright and
deported to his parent's homeland, Saudi Arabia, after the
government had to admit that it didn't have the evidence to try him
as a terrorist. (The weakness of the President's case in revoking
Hamdi's citizenship rights and his right to the fair trial Bush so
ardently insists on as Libby's right, is that the government has
said it's willing to allow Hamdi to return to the U.S. with his
family to visit Disneyworld.)
And what, for that matter, about the thousands of Muslim residents
in America who have been rounded up and deported over the last few
years without even a hearing, often on charges of minor traffic or
visa violations which they were not given a chance to contest in
court?
Clearly Bush does not really believe that everyone in America has a
right to the presumption of innocence and to a fair trial-only
people in his administration who are charged with serious crimes.
But as the noose starts to tighten on this administration for its
lies in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, and for its many other
crimes, from initiating a war on a country that posed no threat to
the U.S. to subverting the electoral system and violating the Geneva
Convention against torture, it is understandable that this President
is suddenly invoking the very Constitution and Bill of Rights he has
been trashing for the last five years.
Dave Lindorff is the author of Killing Time: an Investigation into
the Death Row Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal. His new book of CounterPunch
columns titled "This Can't be Happening!" is published by Common
Courage Press. Information about both books and other work by
Lindorff can be found at
www.thiscantbehappening.net.
He can be reached at:
dlindorff@yahoo.com
Translate
this page
(In accordance with Title 17
U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to
those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the
included information for research and educational purposes.
Information Clearing House has no affiliation whatsoever with the
originator of this article nor is Information Clearing House
endorsed or sponsored by the originator.) |
