jessh.
...would seem to be a better choice and a better use of the limited resources.
Regarding the question of determining the
criteria on the list:
Two MIT students looked at the issue of "reverse-engineering" and gaming the criteria used for profiling for additional security screening. They conclude that random tests would seem to be a better choice of resources.
http://www.acfnewsource.org/cgi-bin/printer.cgi?506
I do not remember where I read about this first (some blog), so I can't give credit.
I don't have any specific knowledge, but I'd like to engage in some speculation. I would agree that it seems unlikely that Mrs. Plame would run a clandestine spy ring somwhere in the Middle East, and probably her life is not put in danger.
However, from the fact that, according to Corn in the Nation, she is an "energy analyst", I would deduce that she probably had ample contacts inside energy companies and access to many people, in the US and abroad, in particular in the nuclear power industry, who would probably talk freely to her. My guess is that she regularily provided the CIA with "inside scoops" from the industry. That would fit well with the fact that she was reported to be a proliferation expert.
Her ability to do this job would certainly be compromised by identifying her as a CIA operative. All the networking she has done is now for nothing, for people who might have trusted her without knowing about her job as well as for foreign contacts who might have known but now have to be wary to talk to her.
bryan:
You are right, there are indeed also people held for deportation, or pending their approval of refugee or asylum status. Especially grave are the cases of people who are held indefinitely, when they cannot be deported because their home country does not want to take them back.
I think that is wrong as well. But apart from the last category (which should not exist at all), at least these people have a right to an adjudication of their status.
Graydon:
spot on, a very good point.
On some level I find this really absolutely astonishing: throughout the history of modern terrorism, terrorists have always claimed for themselves the status of combatants, and rejected to be treated as criminals, and governments have consistently denied them this recognition (for example, the IRA in Northern Ireland, where terrorists in British prisons are often regarded as prisoners of war, or the RAF in Germany, which also claimed this status for its prisoners).
Of course, the understanding then was that their status as POWs would be much better than that of a common criminal. The US government has now given terrorists combatant status, but has found an ingenious solution to the problem that normally this would entitle them to more rights: they are "combatants", they fight in a "war", but yet they are not prisoners of war and not entitled to the rights that are afforded to POWs according to law and treaty.
They exist in legal limbo. It used to be that there were only two categories of people detained by the state, with clearly defined rights: criminals and those accused of criminal wrongdoing, and soldiers captured in armed conflict. Now there's a third category, and they do not seem to have any rights at all. Really ingenious.
Yehudit said:
"I don't think the ability to designate American citizens who fulfill certain criteria (i.e. fighting for an designated enemy of the US) as enemy combatants is new. Nor is it different from the laws in just about every other country, including democratic ones."
That's just not right. For an American citizen, fighting for an enemy against the United States is treason, and it is a crime. If the state accuses somebody of a crime, the state has to prove that the person did in fact commit the crime in a court of law.
That's just the point of contention, and Jim Henley, as cited in Patrick's post, said it eloquently enough. But let me still restate it: everybody would agree that people who "fulfill certain criteria" (for example, who have killed someone) are criminals. But the determination of the fact that they indeed fulfill the criteria has to be made in a court of law, according to the US Constitution, by trial by jury, in public, and with the right of the accused to confront his accusers, and to secure testimony and witnesses on his behalf, and with assistance of counsel.
According to the US Constitution it is not the president, and not the department of defense, who determines that somebody did in fact commit the crime of treason.
And you know what, Yehudit? This "ability to designate [...] as enemy combatants" is not in the law, I believe that it does not have any basis in law. It's based on an executive order, not a law passed by Congress.
And contrary to your assertion, no country that values human rights and safeguards them has a law like this on the books.
It's a disgrace.
It makes my head spin to even think about the rationalizations for this, and I feel like I was dropped into the world of "Catch-22". I really do wonder: where is the outrage?
Military tribunals, enemy combatant designation, indefinite incarceration without trial not only seem clearly unconstitutional on their face, they do not even have a foundation in law! It is absolutely beyond me how any court can let this stand.
There is really not much to argue about: as soon as the first American citizen, arrested on American soil, was imprisoned, indefinitely, without a trial and due process of law, simply on the president's say-so, the rule of law was lost for all. Only the whim of the president now stands between freedom and prison for life without recourse, for every person in this country. "A Nation of Laws, not Men." I wish.
I was struck much more by the disparaging statements about the broadcast media in the same article:
The media of "1984" are broadcast technology imagined in the service of a totalitarian state, and no different from the media of Saddam Hussein's Iraq or of North Korea today 97 technologically backward societies in which information is still mostly broadcast. Indeed, today, reliance on broadcasting is the very definition of a technologically backward society.
(I make the assumption that Mr. Gibson did not mean to say that the US are "technologically backward".)
This assessment seems flat out wrong to me. While it is true that the internet is playing a role of increasing importance in the formation of public opinion, to most people in the US it is not near as important as television (and here I would certainly include cable television in the definition of broadcast media). I think in particular for propaganda purposes (such as in the buildup to and during the recent war) television is still unsurpassed, and I don't see that changing anytime soon. There is no better medium to influence a large percentage of the population.
I also believe that the formation of a public consensus through the internet is much more difficult to achieve than through the national television channels, exactly because of the wealth and the resulting fragmentation of information. Even though there are many more tv channels now than only a few years ago, they still move in lockstep to a certain degree, and the internet is even more fractured into different interests. Though Gibson outlines an interesting vision, I think he overlooks the role of information in propaganda. With the increasing disconnect between the actual events and television news coverage (and even newspapers), I'm not sure that "we've missed the train to Oceania".
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| 2003 | 9 |
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