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Jose Padilla Brings Torture to Trial

Can a DOJ lawyer be held accountable for advocating the inhumane?

By Doug Cassel

When on Jan. 22 a federal court judge sentenced Jose Padilla to 17 years in prison for conspiracy to commit terrorism, it was a one-day story. But, in fact, the Padilla case goes on. Padilla, a U.S. citizen and former Chicago gang member, alleges that he was tortured during the more than three and a half years he spent behind… return to article

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    “Yoo’s overriding legal rationale is that the president’s powers give him constitutional license to override any law—including laws against torture—if he deems it necessary to wage a war.”

    If the President has constitutional license to override literally ANY law, does that include the power to nullify or ignore the Constitution itself, the basis of all US and state/local law?

    If so, that means he or she has the legal power to, um, ignore the foundation of his or her legal power.

    That effectively means that there is no limit to the power of the President, as long as winning an ongoing war is the justification (in the case of the so-called “war on terror” and its purportedly never-ending character, this can be argued to mean the President will be not only unlimitedly powerful, but eternally so as well).

    I don’t think Yoo’s memo is necessarily the proximate cause of what Padilla endured, because the culture of unaccountability that supports a claim of unlimited power permeates Bush’s administration. Yoo’s memo was derivative, not foundational.

    Caveat: if his role at DoJ gave his memo the quality of an order, as when the “opinion” of a court can take on the force of law, then any suffering of Padilla’s caused by illegal practices is indeed his personal responsibility.

    (However, the buck has and always will stop at the desk of a certain elliptical-shaped office at 1600 Penn Av, District of Columbia, not some erstwhile law professor!)

    Padilla should have been dealt with all along as an accused criminal, with particular constitutional rights that all accused may claim. He is a citizen of the US. If there was sufficient evidence that he was involved in a plan for a radiologic bomb attack, he could have been tried years ago and imprisoned, and rightly so. I for one would not mourn his imprisonment.

    But by refusing to treat him as though his legal rights were to be assumed, as would be expected in a constitutional republic that operated as such, the administration damaged the role of the Constitution as the protector of those of us who are not criminals but who may be accused of a crime. Now anyone can be regarded as a non-citizen even if he or she is one, and can be stripped of protecting rights in the name of a person claiming unfettered and everlasting power, even the power to lay aside the foundational document that created that office, and the US itself, in the first place.

    Padilla may have been convicted, but the episode of his convoluted legal status and treatment has had the effect of weakening the protections all citizens can claim in the face of a government accusation of crime. A big part of the reason to have a Constitution is to prevent overweaning state power from running roughshod over citizens in their zeal to halt crime, whether the crime gets the tag of “terrorism” or not.

    Essentially, the Padilla case has set the precedent that you and I can be stripped of our rights too. All they have to do is utter the word “terrorism”, and we’re fucked.

    Really, should the word “terrorism” have such a profound effect on so many aspects of a society, as though it is the worst of all things possible to imagine.

    Should the United States become a fundamentally different kind of society simply because of a single, spectacularly horrifying event in Sept. 2001? Did those attacks change us once and for all?

    Why the hell should it have?

    Unlimited power. What kind of person wants it or would even accept it?

    Would you want John McCain, Hillary Clinton, or Barack Obama to have it? I would not.

    Philippines Posted by Kuya on Feb 20, 2008 at 2:17 AM
    Page 1 of 1 pages

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