Ashcroft Wants Camps for Citizens Labeled Enemy Combatants - LA Times!

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> Camps for Citizens

> Labeled Enemy Combatants - Los Angeles Times!

>

> This is an article from the LA Times!!!!

>

>

> http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0814-05.htm

>

>

> Camps for Citizens: Ashcroft's Hellish

> Vision

> Attorney general shows himself as a menace

> to liberty.

>

> by Jonathan Turley

>

> 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.

>

> Jonathan Turley is a professor of

> constitutional law at George

> Washington University.