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"I Want My Lawyer" -Khalid Sheikh Mohammed
From a long article on CIA secret prisons and interrogation techniques in the International Herald Tribune of 6/20 or 6/21:
"Mohammed met his captors at first with cocky defiance, telling one veteran CIA officer, a former Pakistan station chief, that he would talk only when he got to New York and was assigned a lawyer — the experience of his nephew and partner in terrorism, Ramzi Yousef, after Yousef's arrest in 1995."
"Mohammed" is the infamous Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, who has proudly claimed the honor of sawing off the head of Nathan Pearl, the American journalist.
Assuming the accuracy of the Tribune's reporting, is there even one knee-jerk liberal TPM reader who would concede that the more (American) rights granted to legitimate terrorists, the less likely those terrorists are to relinquish information that could prevent the loss of innocent lives?
That's the sole question.
[It presupposes the fact that the individuals are terrorists, not in any narrow legal sense, but in the meta-sense. Example: If one of the hijackers who slit a flight attendant's throat on 9/11 survived, as did 3 passengers who witnessed the event, that throat slitter, prior to any trial, would be a terrorist.]
This question is not posed as a subtle defense of torture. It's posed because fairly soon Sen. Obama is going to face these real-world questions as the president....Perhaps his FISA position reflects the fact that he is much more realistic than many of his doctrinaire supports?
MyBlog: http://ProteanPerspectives.blogspot.com
Comments (10)
Well actually I read that article earlier today - it was fascinating - but my overall reaction when I was only half way through it was depression that it could be written and published for anyone across the world - including terrorists - to read.
This entire debate about law in relation to terrorism, habeus corpus etc., seems unreal to me. All policy, whatever its focus, always involves tradeoffs and nowhere are they more complicated and conflicting than in relation to civil rights and terrorism. Thus I can't understand anyone who can genuinely come down with moral certitude on either extreme. Surely there's some balance to be found somewhere?
It seems to me that the most glaring problem with the modern terrorism issues is that we're involved in a war that isn't a war that everyone is caught up in and self-evidently impacted on. It was simple in WWII. Everyone knew they were in a war. All the fit men of fighting age were off fighting in it. Women working in the weapons or parachutes factories etc. Rationing.
The idea then that you would give habeus corpus to enemy military would have been met with a blank stare.
I was stunned watching Mort Kondracke today(not exactly hard core rightwing) saying because of the Supreme Court's habeus corpus decision, US soldiers would have to go back out there on the battleground in Afghanistan and look for bullet shells to be used as evidence against any Taliban they'd picked up in fighting!
It's clearly the case that this whole debate is bogged down because of the difficulty of identifying enemy combatants, and what's warranted is some way of distinguishing clearly known combatants in war zones and more ambiguous situations.
(Any chance of you thinking up a better adjective than `legitimate` terrorists? wry grin
June 21, 2008 11:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
Well, who can you believe? The US government with a proven track record of lies and misdirections, or some Arab nutcase with a proven track record of lies and misdirections?
June 22, 2008 6:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
BTW the other day you posted on Obama's new seal.
Thought you might be interested in the Slate comment on it. I'm looking forward to finding out whether he's right (on Axelrod's reaction)
http://www.slate.com/id/2193674/
June 21, 2008 11:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not this one. I believe that treating prisoners humanely makes it more likely that you will actualy learn somethng usefull from them. It is still not likely but is orders of magnatude less likely that you will get good information by other methods. Even if he is a terrorist what makes you think he has the information you seek or that you would know it if you hear the truth?
June 22, 2008 3:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
I'm with you. The creators of the USA, those who conceived the Constitution, considered the right to habeas corpus to be so important they included its guarantee in Article I, not waiting some four years for the adoption of the Bill of Rights where are enshrined the more famous guarantees of our personal liberties.
Notice that the Constitution’s language, clear enough one might think for those who hold themselves out as strict constructionists, establishes no limitations as to the guarantee related to one’s nationality or one’s location. The provision seems pretty clearly intended as a check on arbitrary, abusive government actions, as Justice Kennedy notes.
June 22, 2008 9:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
LG,
The point of my posting that paragraph was that our friend Khalid was going to just clam up, thinking he was going to be accorded all the rights and privileges of a criminal suspect in the US.
You can believe what you like, but if you think feeding Khalid dates and glasses of plum wine would have made him talk....
This guy sawed off the head of a living human being with a kitchen knife, just to make a point; he plotted the 9/11 box cutter attacks, likely down to the last detail of making a point to the passengers by having his minions slit flight attendant (and others') throats while the passengers watched.
In this particular case, when the USG thought, rightly or wrongly, that other massive 9/11-style attacks were imminent, would you, as part of the elected national leadership, kept the date-feeding up indefinitely? For weeks, months? Would you have Mirandized him? Allowed some Saudi oil billionaire to foot the bill so he could put together a Dream Team of lawyers who would only need to bamboozle one of twelve jurors to have this guy escaped conviction at trial?
These are question you and I can write about. We don't have to make them in real life. Most likely, Obama will. Try putting yourself in his shoes, or even Bush's and see what that might do to your thinking.
FB
June 22, 2008 5:10 PM | Reply | Permalink
Mr. Bernanke: consider moving to China. That is a country not afraid to deal decisively and harshly with subversive elements. You ought to like it there!
June 22, 2008 6:07 AM | Reply | Permalink
When did habeas corpus become an American right? These are concepts that date back hundreds of years and are considered the backbone of western law. The right to face your accuser. The right to see and challenge the evidence against you. Do we actually consider these "American" rights, or are they basic human rights?
Hundreds of people have been detained at Gitmo. What's never mentioned is that after months and years of detainment, the vast majority have been released without charge. Many former detainees were picked up on the flimsiest of evidence, and many were accused by people receiving bounty payments from the US. Many, if not most, were innocent men.
Two tiers of justice, one for us, one for them, means that we have no true justice. If America is to be the moral leader in this world, it must live up to its high standards and exemplify true justice and principle even if a price is exacted down the road. Otherwise, how do we differ from thug regimes?
June 22, 2008 8:06 AM | Reply | Permalink
Go read the McClatchy series and then come back and tell us you don't think that each detainee ought not to have the opportunity for judicial habeas corpus review.
June 22, 2008 9:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
Chris Brown,
Thanks for your comments.
1. The recent SC decision--and I read both the majority opinion and the Scalia and Roberts dissents--hinged on the issue of US "sovereignty" over the GOTMO Naval base. The majority decided that the base was de facto under US sovereignty and, therefore, habeas corpus applied.
2. Nowhere in the ENTIRE Constitution is there a mention of "nationality" or "location," because it is obvious the Constitution is the Constitution of the United States, not Iran or Germany or Zimbabwe or China. Its ours. It governs our actions on our soil toward people on our soil, under our sovereignty.
3. I agree with the majority decision. To me it is, among other examples, another example of the incompetence of the Bush Admin to have set up such a facility on what has clearly been a de facto US "territory" for about 100 years.
4. I have read the McClatchey series and read comments for the Maj. Gen., now retired, who did the initial investigation of Abu Ghraib. Very disturbing reading.
5. In neither of your comments, however, do you address the point implicit in my quote from the article, namely, that these guys--assuming you think terrorists even exist--were operating under the assumption, prior to 9/11, that if captured, they were going to be treated like OJ. Is that what you seek?
Are we being dragged into the very pit of the inhumane behavior we condemn in others by the uniqueness of the adversary we face? That's a very real possibility, and we can't erase what we as a nation have already done.
Its for the new leadership--probably Obama--to cease and desist from USG activity that can be fairly characterized as torture or war crimes. But that's only step one.
The new leadership must also devise tactics that are effective in extracting information from and neutralizing those who would commit violence upon us and others. The civilian Criminal Justice system certainly does not have the tools to do this alone.
Neither you nor I have to make these judgments and bear the awesome responsibility if the judgments are wrong. Obama will.
My personal hope is that he has the intelligence and courage to make the right ones. And since he says his hero is Lincoln, and has studied Lincoln's Presidency closely, I think he has a good chance of succeeding in a very difficult task.
FB
June 22, 2008 4:42 PM | Reply | Permalink
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