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Ted Rall
TGIF! Back from vacation edition.
Posted by The Don

You’re right, it has been a long time since I posted. Since you last heard from me, my part-time job expanded to become (temporarily) larger than my full-time job, a new version of NetNazi at work kept me from all the good internet sites, including this one, I lost my DSL and wireless modems at the same time (you say lightning, I say NSA), causing long delays in restoring service, and much confusion in Bangalore, and then I took a long, much needed (if not particularly well deserved) vacation on the beaches of L.A. For the non-locals, that’s Lower Alabama.

So very many things happened, especially while I was in LA, with no internet, and no TV except the what-you-get-with-bunny-ears broadcast variety. I didn’t know immediately if Larry Craig was a hypocrite, or just someone with a secret. (I’m gonna go with BIG hypocrite.) It was also hard to tell his party affiliation, since the only time the word Republican came up on local right-wing news was in the context of “Republican leaders are demanding that Senator Craig resign.” No responsibility, just the moral high ground.

Gonzo finally turned in his resignation, but definitely not because those mean old Democrats wanted it. He wanted to resign. Really! Buncha damn middle-schoolers. The locals spent more time on the upcoming deer season than on the resignation-under-fire of the corrupt US Attorney General. A lot more time.

Tony Snow is finally leaving, after a stint as liar-in-chief perfectly framed by racism (or at least racial tone-deafness). He started out with “tar babies”, and went out with a snark to a female African-American reporter about white guys looking the same to her. Buh-bye!

David Petraeus turned out to be a complete tool tool of the Bush administration. Raise your hand if you didn’t see that one coming. I know! Let’s put the guy who botched the training of the Iraqis in charge of the occupation! Brilliant!

Coming back after lacking access to real information was overwhelming and intimidating. I have a better understanding of how easy to not follow the news if you don’t want to. Getting back up to speed took a little while, but I think I can post intelligently again. Insert your snarky comment here:_________________.

After all that, I need a drink! Here’s one I call “Stranger in a Bathroom”. It’s one I normally enjoy when I’m travelling and feeling lonely. I like to hold a Stranger in a Bathroom in my hand and slowly suck on it. If one doesn’t do the trick, I pick up another.

On a side note, I only give this recipe for straight people. While I’m OK with gay people drinking, I’m not there yet, and I don’t think the country is ready, for gay people to drink an alcohol as macho as tequila. I’m not uncomfortable drinking with gay people, but I am uncomfortable if they order tequila. I have an uneasy feeling that it threatens my drinking.

So if you’re not gay, and never have been, bottoms up! This recipe is so simple, anyone can make a Stranger in a Bathroom.

Stranger in a Bathroom
Mix equal amounts of Tequila and Sabra (or other chocolate liquer) over ice. Enjoy!

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Ted Rall

Downloadable Video Interview

There’s a video interview of me done at the recent San Diego Comicon.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: The War Party

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Ted Rall

Democrats Lie to Prolong Iraq; Reporters Go Along

Americans don’t know how their government works. Democrats, in control of Congress, are taking advantage of our ignorance to continue the Iraq War. Which brings up two questions: Why won’t the “antiwar” Democrats act to stop the carnage? And why aren’t reporters calling them on it?

“Democrats,” writes Charles Babington in an Associated Press item that appeared in hundreds of newspapers, “control both chambers [of Congress] but lack the numbers to override President Bush’s vetoes of bids to mandate troop withdrawals from Iraq.” It’s a half-truth at best: the Democrats’ narrow majority is less than the two-thirds majority they’d need to override a presidential veto. Here’s the full truth: it doesn’t matter.

The Constitution grants Congress, and only the Congress, to “raise and support armies.” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid could meet over cocktails right now and cut off the funding tomorrow. Within a few months, the Pentagon would run out of money for the war. They’d have to start bringing home troops. The occupation of Iraq would be over in less than a year.

In June Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s Extra! Magazine wrote: “If the Democrat-controlled Congress wanted to force the Bush administration to accept a bill with a withdrawal timeline, it didn’t have to pass the bill over Bush’s veto–it just had to make clear that no Iraq War spending bill without a timeline would be forthcoming.”

Democratic leaders know that. And here’s how I know they know: days after taking control of Congress, on January 30, they invited five constitutional law experts to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee to ask them how they could end the war. Four out of five of the experts swore that the Democrats could stop the Iraq War just…like…that.

“I think the constitutional scheme does give Congress broad authority to terminate a war,” affirmed Bradford Berenson, Bush’s White House associate counsel from 2001 to 2003. “It is ultimately Congress that decides the size, scope and duration of the use of military force,” added Walter Dellinger, former acting solicitor general and assistant attorney general.
“Today we’ve heard convincing testimony and analysis that Congress has the power to stop the war if it wants to,” said Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI). Yet eight months later, there’s still no end in sight.

The Dems won the 2006 elections with promises to end the war. Weeks after taking over Congress, however, Republicans spooked them with one of the most ludicrous talking points of all time. Cutting off the money, they said, would abandon U.S. soldiers at the front, their ammo dwindling as Al Qaeda insurgents swarmed over them. (Actually–the fact that I have to write this speaks to the American right’s intellectual dishonesty–the troops would go to the airport. They would board airplanes. They would fly home.)

Democrats worry that they’ll be portrayed as weak on defense if they act unilaterally to pull out of Iraq. Irony of ironies, they’re wussing out to avoid looking wimpy. Forcing Republicans to vote with them to end the war, they calculate, would give them political cover. Extra! continued: “Democrats may not have wanted to pay the supposed political costs of [cutting off funding], but news coverage should have made clear that this was a choice, not something forced on them by the lack of a veto-proof majority.”

Rather than set the record straight, the media continues to spread the Democrats-can’t-stop-the-Republican-war meme this week:

Michael Duffy, Time magazine: “If Democrats had more votes–particularly in the House–they might be able to force Bush to change course. But Bush will fight any resolution fencing him in with a veto that, as things stand now, the Democrats cannot override. But the President’s critics will continue to try, hoping to attract moderate Republicans who are fearful of losing their seats next year.” Occasionally Time invites me to its Christmas party. If I score an invite this year, my present for their fact-checkers will be a copy of the Constitution.

Marcella Bombardieri, The Boston Globe: “In the Senate, Democrats have only a 51 to 49 majority, far from the 60 votes needed to prevent a filibuster and the 67 needed to override a presidential veto. All efforts to force a troop withdrawal have failed, and the party will have to count on substantial Republican defections to make any further progress this fall.” I’ll be checking the Globe for a retraction.

Brian Knowlton, The New York Times: Knowlton dutifully quoted Democratic Senator Joe Biden’s claim that there were “political limits on his party, even with the Congressional majority it has held since the November midterm elections. ‘This is the president’s war,’ [Biden] said. ‘Unless we get 67 votes to override his veto, there’s nothing we can do to stop this war…'” Not only did the Times fail to call Biden on his brazen lie, it gave him the last word.

You’d think the Democrats would want to end the Iraq War before their likely retaking of the White House, but that’s because you’re a human being, not a politician. Politicians are happy to dispatch hundreds of young American men and women to certain death (along with thousands of Iraqis), if the bloodshed squeezes out an extra half percentage point at the polls. Reid and Pelosi prefer to run against a disastrous ongoing Republican war than point to a fragile Democratic-brokered peace.

Why are so many respected journalists parroting the Democratic party line? I suspect that corporate media culture, rather than Judith Miller-style malfeasance, is largely to blame. Ink-stained newsrooms have been replaced by bullpen offices indistinguishable from those of banks or insurance companies. Reporters used to come from the working classes. They distrusted politicians and businessmen, and politicians and businessmen loathed them. Today’s journalists are products of cookie-cutter journalism schools. Because graduate schools rarely offer scholarships, few come from the lower or middle classes. They look like businessmen. When they meet a politician, they see a possible friend. They wear suits and ties. And when a U.S. senator like Joe Biden feeds them a line of crap, they gobble it up.

(Ted Rall is the author of the book “America Gone Wild,” which includes a detailed behind-the-scenes look at the most controversial political cartoons of the post-9/11 era.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

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Ted Rall

Sale on Original Artwork

Normally I sell originals for $500 each. Special offer, good for one week only: three for $750. If you’ve had your eye on more than one of my cartoons, this is your big chance to put them on your wall.

Any and all of my syndicated cartoons are available, provided that they’re available (i.e., not sold or on loan to an exhibit). That leaves 99% of them to choose from.

Email chet@rall.com for details.

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Ted Rall

My Tinfoil Hat
posted by Susan Stark

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s that time again.

It’s now time for another episode of (drum roll) . . . The Osama Show!!

Yes, Osama has taken time off from dragging his kidney dialysis machine from cave to cave to grace us with his presence again.

All of that dragging is making him a little worse for wear, because he has far more wrinkled skin under that false beard he’s wearing just for this occasion.

I must admit, though, he packed more of a punch in his 2004 “October Surprise” episode, repeating without a hitch, all of the concerns of leftists in this country: the stolen presidential election, occupation of Iraq and Palestine, the grotesque power of Halliburton and other corporate gangs. Thus, securing the election for George Bush.

Oh, boy.

Ms. Stark is a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nutbag, to think that Osama would give an election to George. Well, there are plenty of tinfoil hat wearers, including Craig Unger, who wrote House of Bush, House of Saud, which details the relationship between the Bush family and Saudi Arabia, with a special emphasis on the warm relationship with the Bin Laden family. Both Craig Unger and Michael Moore in Fahrenheit 9/11 detail how members of the Bin Laden family were hurried out of the country after September Eleventh, when no one else was allowed to fly. Under normal, rational circumstances, this family would’ve be held for questioning. What other conclusion can you come up with except that the Bushes and Bin Ladens are in cahoots with each other, if the Bin Ladens are allowed a free pass outta Dodge?

Ah, but, Osama is the black sheep of the family. The rest of the Bin Ladens are good little pro-Westerners and capitalists. Not according to BBC reporter Greg Palast in this article here and here. And to think they were let go when we had them cornered.

As for Osama being a leftist? a socialist? Back in 1996, Osama stated quite clearly what his goals are, and they are far from anything that I or any other leftist cares about.

The conclusion? For those of you familiar with the book 1984, Osama is playing Emmanuel Goldstein to George’s Big Brother. For those of you who haven’t read that book, he is playing “bad cop” to Bush’s “good cop”, reinforcing Bush by pretending to espouse liberal and leftist ideals, thus making it appear that leftists are on “Osama’s side”. True liberals and leftists (and their concerns) are effectively marginalized.

Those who believe that 9/11 was perpetrated by the Bush Regime are probably the true tinfoil hat-wearers, but their arguments are becoming more and more palatable to me each and every time we are subjected to one more of these lame-ass Two Minutes Hate videos from Osama, which strangely enough only seem to help his supposed enemy, George Bush.

I’ll gladly wear my tinfoil hat, if only out of spite.

SYNDICATED COLUMN: Kill the Poor

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Ted Rall

Phony Poverty Study Fools Lazy Journalists

They’re baaack! Once again the Heritage Foundation is mangling statistics to whitewash the ugly facts of life in Republican-run America.

Last time, in 2005, they attacked the image of U.S. soldiers as cannon fodder being exploited for Halliburton. Au contraire, claimed the conservative propaganda mill. American troops, they said were actually “wealthier, more educated and more rural than the average” citizen. Of course, this wasn’t true. “Military personnel are poorer and less educated” than the average Joe, I found when I took a closer look. Heritage’s soldier study used junk logic and apples-to-oranges statistics to promote the GOP’s wars against Iraq and Afghanistan. And it worked.

The lazy men who run the big newspapers and TV networks, deluded into believing there are two sides to every story, dutifully repeated Heritage’s lies. They never questioned a word. More soldiers died. The Heritage story made us feel less guilty about it.

Now Heritage is telling us that there are no poor people–very few, anyway, and then only for short periods of time–in the United States. The truth is that capitalism is failing millions of Americans. The less we think about the problem, the less we think it is a problem, the worse it will become.

The pseudoacademic demagogues of the right want us to distrust our own eyes. Panhandlers? “Homeless by choice” urban campers, Ronald Reagan, patron saint of modern Republicanism, called them. Single mothers? He said they were “welfare queens.” Americans who live in the sprawling slums of the inner cities, the washed-up Walmarted Main Streets of the farm belt, and the scary barred-window suburbs of California and Georgia and Illinois? They’re living large, says the Heritage Foundation in a “study” whose dubious findings have already been reprinted–completely unquestioned, as usual–by hundreds of newspapers read by millions of gullible subscribers.

The Census Bureau says that 36.5 million Americans–one in eight–are poor. But “if poverty means a lack of nutritious food, adequate warm housing, and clothing for a family, then very few of the people identified as living ‘in poverty’ would, in fact, be characterized as poor,” says Heritage’s Robert Rector. “The typical person defined as ‘poor’ by the Census has cable or satellite TV, air conditioning, a microwave, a DVD player or VCR, and two color TVs.”

No doubt, poor people in a technologically advanced nation like the United States don’t live as minimally as those in undeveloped states like Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, on the other hand, a middle-class American homeowner would be spectacularly wealthy. A man worth $500,000 could become a warlord. There are no Afghan billionaires. Poverty is relative.
Even the claim that gadget ownership is incompatible with true poverty doesn’t hold up: Rector refers to “a DVD player or VCR.” But VCRs are antiquated, a decade out of date. It’s like saying that someone who owns “a computer or a typewriter” isn’t poor.

“Poor Americans living in houses or apartments, on average, have more living space per person than does the average citizen living in European countries such as England, France and Germany,” the Heritage study asserts. There’s a footnote–but the source material doesn’t include figures for per-capita housing density in Europe. (As far as I can tell, such data doesn’t exist.) Even if it’s true, though, it’s a factoid without a point. Europe, urbanized for the past 2000 years, has an overall higher population density than we do–yet enjoys the world’s highest standard of living.

The more you think about Heritage’s BS, the worse it gets.

“Three quarters of these ‘poor'”–note the quotes–own a car,” Rector continues. Are those cars in good working order, or up on blocks? He doesn’t say–but there’s a difference.

“When asked, [the typical ‘poor person’] reports that his family was able to obtain medical care whenever needed during the past year,” he continues. True–sorta. Uninsured people often rely on hospitals, enduring long waits and high fees for substandard care rendered by harried emergency room staffers. Hospitals are legally obligated to treat them–but it’s hardly a workable system. Many poor (and middle class) people put off going to the doctor as long as possible.

Then there’s this sparkling gem of compassion: “Some poor families,” admits Rector, “do experience a temporary food shortage, a condition touted as ‘hunger’ by activists. But even this condition is relatively rare: 89 percent of the poor report their families always have ‘enough’ food to eat, while only 2 percent say they ‘often’ do not have enough to eat.”

“Temporary food shortage.” If that isn’t hunger, what is? “Very simply,” says the U.S. Department of Agriculture, “hunger is defined as the uneasy or painful sensation caused by lack of food. When we talk about hunger in America, we refer to the ability of people to obtain sufficient food for their household. Some people may find themselves skipping meals or cutting back on the quality or quantity of food they purchase at the stores. This recurring and involuntary lack of access to food can lead to malnutrition over time.”

Economists consider a society’s infant mortality rate to be the most reliable indicator of its citizens’ quality of life, and the prevalence of poverty. The United States has the second-worst infant morality rate in the industrialized world–behind Latvia, tied with Hungary, Malta, Poland and Slovakia. Western Europe–France, Germany, etc.–kicks our national ass. The poverty rate for American children under 18 was 21.9 percent in 2006, the highest in the developed world.

Upwardly mobile Americans can escape poverty numerous ways–by, for example, earning a college scholarship. But we also suffer a lot of downward mobility, typically after losing a job. “While in any given year 12 to 15 percent of the population is poor,” says Michael Zweig, author of “What’s Class Got To Do With It, American Society in the 21st Century” (2004), “over a ten-year period 40 percent experience poverty in at least one year because most poor people cycle in and out of poverty.”
Even the Heritage Foundation concedes that some poverty exists in this best of all possible laissez faire worlds. But, they argue in the finest tradition of blame-the-victim, it’s “self-inflicted, a result of poor decisions and self-defeating behaviors.”

Poor Americans, they say, have a “weak work ethic.” The evidence: “The typical poor family with children is supported by only 800 hours of work during a year–16 hours per week. “If work in each family were raised to 2,000 hours per year–the equivalent of one adult working 40 hours per week throughout the year–nearly 75 percent of poor children would be lifted out of official poverty.” This assumes that poor parents live in a magical job market where they can work as many hours as they please–a condition that would only exist with zero percent unemployment.

“Father absence is another major cause of child poverty,” says Heritage’s poverty study. True. “Nearly two-thirds of poor children reside in single-parent homes; each year, an additional 1.3 million children are born out of wedlock.” Again true. The conservative solution: “If poor mothers married the fathers of their children, almost three-quarters would immediately be lifted out of poverty.” Stupid welfare queens! Why do they refuse to marry the fathers of their children?

A cat or dog understands hunger. The fact that we have to have this discussion demonstrates the success of the right in redefining basic terms–and the failure of the press to question it.

COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

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Ted Rall

This Week’s Column: GONZALES V. UNITED STATES

Here’s this week’s column. Comments may be posted here.

A Torturer Takes a Victory Lap
NEW YORK–Al Capone served six years at Alcatraz–for tax evasion. The true Original Gangsta was never held to account for the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre that left seven men cut in half by machine gun fire. Or the two disloyal wiseguys he ordered beaten to death with baseball bats. Or the corruption and mayhem his gangsters inflicted during the years he terrorized Chicago. Eliot Ness was cute, but the justice system failed. Capone won in the end.

Like Capone, Alberto Gonzales has gone down for a mere misdemeanor: firing U.S. attorneys for investigating Republican politicians. What led to his resignation as attorney general was his smearing them as incompetent. Hell hath no fury as a man fired without a positive recommendation. (Gonzales, a buffoon on his best day, perjured himself in spectacularly inept style in testimony about domestic wiretapping before Congress–an outfit that has forgotten more about lying than lesser lights will ever know.)

Gonzales’ crime was a doozy: He created the legal framework for American fascism. No punishment could suffice for America’s Eichmann, author of infamous pseudolegal rationales for torture and the end of habeas corpus. And none will he face.

“Fredo” (Bush’s nickname for him) quit over a procedural personnel matter. If he ultimately faces justice, it will be for mere perjury. Even his critics don’t care about his monstrous role as the legal architect of our post-9/11 gulags–proof positive that the master corrupter of democracy has triumphed, that we Americans are not a decent people.

“Are we being forward-leaning enough?” Gonzales used to ask his colleagues. “Forward-leaning” was Bush Administration jargon for toughness in the war on terror. It didn’t mean bending the rules. The Bushies were radicals. Trashing centuries-old constitutional protections–the right to an attorney, to face your accuser in a court of law, not to be tortured–wasn’t enough for our suburban Robespierres. They longed for an American Rome ruled by a harsh, omnipotent emperor over legions of troops standing ready to destroy all who challenged them, foreigners and Americans alike. They said 9/11 had changed everything. The new order required new laws.

One of the first steps down the road to perdition was a January 25, 2002 legal memorandum advising Bush to deny legal rights to Afghan POWs. “There are reasonable grounds for you to conclude that [the Geneva P.O.W. Convention] does not apply…to the conflict with the Taliban,” wrote Gonzales, then working as White House counsel. Deploying his characteristic blend of ignorance, arrogance and illogic, he called the Geneva Conventions–which have saved the lives of thousands of captured American soldiers–“quaint.” He then argued “that the Taliban and its forces were, in fact, not a government but a militant, terrorist-like group.” Actually, the Clinton and Bush Administrations had treated the Taliban regime as a government, negotiating with its leaders over oil-pipeline transit fees and subsidizing it with millions of U.S. taxdollars. U.S. allies, including Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, had embassies in Kabul. History was collateral damage in the war of terror.

Having denied captured Afghan soldiers POW status–“detainees,” newspapers began calling them–the Bush Administration looked for “forward-leaning” ways to abuse them. Children as young as 12 were beaten, shipped in shackles, their heads shaved and covered with gunny sacks, to Guantánamo Bay. Years have passed; they’ve grown up in Camp Delta. These kids–rural conscripts who couldn’t have attacked the U.S. even if they’d thought of it–still haven’t been allowed to see a lawyer or their parents.

Worried that the American people might someday return to its senses and prosecute them for their monstrous crimes against humanity, the Bushies again turned to their affirmative-action poster child–this time for a C.Y.A. memo validating torture. The CIA wanted permission to use six “pressure techniques” against prisoners. Mock burial, Gonzales and his legal staff thought, was a mite “too harsh.” The medieval practice of waterboarding, on the other hand, was OK. Another practice, “open-handed slapping of suspects, drew much discussion,” reported Newsweek. The idea was “just to shock someone with the physical impact,” one of Gonzales’ staffers said, with “little chance of bone damage or tissue damage.” Gonzales approved it.

The discussion resulted in an August 1, 2002 memo to Gonzales, which he passed on to Bush. The CIA and U.S. soldiers were free to subject prisoners to “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment. All they needed was permission from the Emperor. “Those committing torture with express presidential authority,” The Washington Post reported about the memo, “were probably immune from prosecution.” Abu Ghraib followed.

Slippery slopes are usually cited as cautionary tales. Gonzales saw post-9/11 fear as an opportunity to be exploited. He pushed for the USA Patriot Act. Foreign detainees, he decided, would get military kangaroo courts. Using Gonzales’ advice as back-up, Bush signed an executive order authorizing himself to declare any U.S. citizen an “enemy combatant” and have him assassinated. Next came the terrifying Military Commissions Act, which allows a president to declare martial law, seize control of the National Guard from the states, and throw U.S. citizens into concentration camps for the rest of their lives.

But no one objected to any of these attacks on our freedom. Not the news media. Not the Democrats–they voted for them.

After Torturer-in-Chief Gonzales announced his departure, Ted Kennedy slammed him–for perjury. “He has exhibited a lack of candor with Congress and the American people and a disdain for the rule of law and our constitutional system,” said the liberal stalwart. “The rampant politicization of federal law enforcement that occurred under his tenure seriously eroded public confidence in our justice system,” added House speaker Nancy Pelosi, focusing, like everybody else, on the fired U.S. attorneys. The word “torture” didn’t come up.

Gonzales will be remembered as corrupt and intellectually deficient. Nevertheless, his legal legacy will likely remain in place for the foreseeable future. Torture isn’t in the news because it isn’t news. It’s normal.

The monster dragged the rest of us down to his level. We are all Alberto Gonzales.

COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

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Ted Rall

We Will Bury You!
posted by Susan Stark

An urban legend has it that Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev pounded his shoe on a table and said those four words to the West, indicating that Communism will bury Capitalism.

We chuckle at that now, because after all, we won, didn’t we? We buried communism.

Well, yes, we did, after a fashion.

Unfortunately, though, it’s rearing it’s ugly head again. No, I’m not talking about Hugo Chavez with his Bolivarianism, or Putin with his resurgent Mafia-socialism. What I’m talking about is popping up in the good old U S of A.

Comrades, let me introduce you to Chairman Rupert Murdoch. He is doing what Khrushchev wanted to do but didn’t live to do: He is burying us.

If we are all eventually forced into reading or listening or watching HIS media for our information, it would certainly be the equivalent of reading Pravda.

Just as much as if the Walton family owned every means of buying stuff, as they are trying to do right now. Imagine long lines at Wal-mart snaking around the block, parallel to the Soviet lines to buy clothing or toilet paper.

Because, that’s the irony. The greater the corporate and individual concentration of ownership in our society, the closer we come to Soviet-style economy, where everything is owned and distributed by a single entity (in their case, it was the State).

When Chairman Murdoch gains control of a newspaper, for instance, he “promises” not to change the content. But he turned the New York Post from a mainstream liberal paper into a tabloid/fascist rag that hasn’t made a profit since he acquired it. But profit isn’t nearly as important as dominance, when you’re trying to manipulate public opinion.

Fortunately, we have an alternative to this corporate-communism, if we are willing to make the effort. There is a little-known news network that aims to become an alternative to not only to Fox News, but also to CNN and the rest of the cookie-cutter networks.

It’s called the REAL NEWS!!!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAXtLgMedyI

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Ted Rall

Column: IT DID HAPPEN HERE

Here’s this week’s column, available for comment:

American Citizen Tortured, Convicted of Thought Crime

NEW YORK–“Just about everyone agrees that the recent conviction of Abdullah al-Muhajir, a.k.a. Jose Padilla, is a good thing,” wrote right-wing pundit Neil Kressel in The New York Post. Indeed, just about everyone did. “It is hard to disagree with the jury’s guilty verdict against Jose Padilla, the accused, but never formally charged, dirty bomber,” opined the liberal editorial board of The New York Times. (They went on to criticize the way the Bush Administration denied Padilla due process.)

Meet Mr. Not Everyone.

Padilla, a 36-year-old American citizen born in Brooklyn who converted to Islam, was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport in May 2002. Using the bombastic “1984”-style rhetoric of the post-9/11 era, then-attorney general John Ashcroft announced that Padilla had participated in an “unfolding terrorist plot to attack the United States by exploding a radioactive dirty bomb.” Padilla’s arrest, Ashcroft ranted, would have caused “mass death and injury” in an American city.

But there wasn’t any evidence. Or there wasn’t enough to convict him in court. Which was, under the system of justice citizens of Western countries have lived under for eight centuries, the same thing.

Before 9/11 and “preventative detention” and legal torture and scary new laws like the USA-Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act eliminated habeas corpus, Padilla would have sat in jail a day or two. He might have gotten roughed up. Then he’d have walked.

That was under democracy. In Bush’s neofascist security state, Padilla rotted in solitary confinement–in a military brig–for three and a half years. (Read Henry Charriere’s classic prison memoir “Papillon” if you doubt that solitary confinement is a form of torture.) No family visits. No lawyer. They subjected him to sensory deprivation, covering his eyes and ears to make him lose his mind.

And still no trial. Because the government knew Padilla was innocent.

By 2006 Bush was unpopular. Federal judges had begun to regrow their ‘nads, ruling that the Administration had to charge Padilla or release him. So the Bushies came up with a clever dodge whose narrow legalism was worthy of depends-on-the-meaning-of-is: they transferred Padilla to the civilian justice system and charged him with something else.

Or, to be specific, something less. They added Padilla to a case against two Middle Eastern men on trial for “conspiracy to murder, kidnap and maim people in a foreign country” and “material support” for Islamic terrorism. Padilla had met the two in Florida and, prosecutors say, traveled to Afghanistan in 2000 to join Al Qaeda. The key evidence presented was Padilla’s supposed Al Qaeda application form, which fingerprints proved he had handled.

Padilla’s public defenders claimed that their client was forced to pick up the “Al Qaeda form” in the brig. Who knows what happened while he was “disappeared” during those three and a half years?

“There is no need to show any particular violent crime [in a conspiracy trial],” said law professor Robert Chesney, of Wake Forest University. “You don’t have to specify the particular means used to carry out the crime.” Nevertheless, Padilla faces the possibility of life in prison.

Of course, the United States wasn’t at war with Afghanistan in 2000. Before 9/11 the Clinton and Bush Administrations both sent millions of dollars to the Taliban. The vast majority of Muslims who trained at Al Qaeda camps never plotted against the U.S. They planned to fight in places like Chechnya, Kosovo and Xinjiang. Padilla’s membership in Al Qaeda, even if proven, doesn’t prove anti-Americanism.

Post-9/11 conspiracy prosecutions are de facto attempts to make anti-Americanism–the mere thought, not any action–illegal.

“It is a pretty big leap between a mere indication of desire to attend a camp and a crystallized desire to kill, maim and kidnap,” said Peter Margulies, a law professor at Roger Williams University. The conspiracy count against Padilla, Margulies continued, “is highly amorphous, and it basically allows someone to be found guilty for something that is one step away from a thought crime.”

The charge was laughable and the standard of proof rock-bottom. But the masters of Padilla’s show trial didn’t miss a chance to cheese up the proceedings.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Brian Frazier never presented evidence that Padilla actually joined or was accepted by Al Qaeda. Nevertheless, reported the Associated Press, he “mentioned Al Qaeda 91 times in his opening statement and more than 100 times in his closing, according to court transcripts.” Padilla had nothing to do with 9/11. To link him to the attacks in jurors’ minds, Frazier had them watch a seven-minute video clip of Osama bin Laden. (There’s no evidence that Padilla ever watched the 1997 CNN interview.)

Padilla’s lawyers asked the judge in the case to dismiss the case because he had been denied a speedy trial. Marcia Cooke said no–and ordered them not to talk to the jury about the three and a half years the defendant had spent being tortured and deprived of his rights.

Reporters’ eyes rolled as Frazier said that government wiretappers heard Padilla and his two co-defendents use code words like “football” to mean jihad and “eggplant” and “zucchini” for weapons. “They wanted to recruit, fund and train fighters,” he told the jury. “Playing this kind of football was more important than anything else to these men. What they were doing was no game.” But, reported the AP, Padilla’s “voice was only picked up on seven of the FBI intercepts, [and] he never talked in code.” He shouldn’t have been convicted–even on those lame-ass conspiracy charges.

Osama bin Laden is an ends-justifies-the-means kind of guy. So, apparently, is Uncle Sam. Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary’s University, said after the verdict: “It’s kind of a dirty victory because of the way the case came about, but still it’s a victory nonetheless.” Yeah. But for whom?

(Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.)
COPYRIGHT 2007 TED RALL

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