9/11 and the LA 8 + Forging a Case for War

From: "APFN" 9/11 and the LA 8 + Forging a Case for War
9/11 and the LA 8 + Forging a Case for War
http://disc.server.com/discussion.cgi?disc=149495;article=45237;title=APFN
Posted October 9, 2003
9/11 and the LA 8
by David Cole
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20031027&s=cole
David Cole represents the LA 8.
The next time you hear Attorney General Ashcroft dismiss complaints about
civil liberties abuses under the USA Patriot Act as "built on misrepresentation,
supported by unfounded fear [and] held aloft by hysteria," consider the plight
of Khader Hamide and Michel Shehadeh. Born in the West Bank, both men came to
the United States in their college years and have now lived here thirty-two and
twenty-four years, respectively. They are lawful permanent residents and
hard-working fathers--Hamide supplies luxury coffee shops; Shehadeh runs an
Italian restaurant. They have never been charged with even the most minor
criminal offense. Yet in September they learned that the government will seek
their deportation under the Patriot Act for distributing Palestinian magazines
and raising humanitarian aid in Los Angeles more than twenty years ago.
Such activity was legal at that time, and it is plainly protected by the
First Amendment. Yet the Bush Administration claims that the Patriot Act
authorizes the government to deport the two men.
To be sure, Hamide and Shehadeh's troubles did not begin with the Patriot
Act, or even with this Administration. Immigration authorities arrested them
sixteen years ago with five other young Palestinians and a Kenyan woman--dubbed
the "LA 8" by the media--on charges of being affiliated with the Popular Front
for the Liberation of Palestine, then the second-largest faction of the
Palestine Liberation Organization. The government claimed that the PFLP
advocated world communism, making affiliation with it a deportable offense under
the McCarran-Walter Act. At the time FBI Director William Webster testified
before Congress that none of the eight had engaged in any criminal activity, and
that had they been US citizens there would have been no basis for their arrest.
In 1989, in a case I litigated with the Center for Constitutional Rights,
the National Lawyers Guild and the ACLU, a federal judge declared the
McCarran-Walter Act charges unconstitutional. The following year Congress
repealed that McCarthy-era law. The government nonetheless pursued deportation
under new charges. The federal courts next barred the deportations on the
grounds that the government, in violation of the First Amendment, had
selectively targeted the group for constitutionally protected political
activities. In 1996, however, Congress stripped federal courts of authority to
hear selective-enforcement challenges to deportation, and in 1999 the Supreme
Court ruled that the cases could go forward.
The Administration's Patriot Act charges render foreign nationals
deportable for providing "material support" to any group of two or more that has
threatened to use or has used a weapon with intent to endanger person or
property. The government need not show that the support has any connection to
terrorist activity. In the Orwellian land of the Patriot Act, distributing
magazines becomes "material support." And it gets worse. At the same time, the
Administration also announced that it would seek Hamide and Shehadeh's
deportation under the original McCarran-Walter Act charges. The statute still
technically applies, because its repeal did not affect pending cases.
But what interest does the government have in enforcing a statute that
punishes speech and association, was declared unconstitutional fourteen years
ago and was repealed by Congress thirteen years ago?
It's all in the name of the "war on terrorism," the government will say.
But the LA 8 case, seen in Arab-American communities as the prime example of US
hostility toward Arab immigrants, has probably done more to undermine that
effort than any case in the past twenty years. Immigrants from all over the
world have come here, distributed magazines discussing the conflicts back home
and sent charitable donations there as well. But the only immigrants in
deportation proceedings for doing so for at least a quarter-century have been
pro-Palestinian activists.
The vendetta against the LA 8 was a critical reason for the Arab
community's deep distrust of the government even before 9/11. The cost of that
distrust became clear in the aftermath of the attacks, as the government,
evidently with no idea where the terrorist threats might lie, rounded up several
thousand Arab and Muslim foreign nationals who had nothing to do with
terrorism--further alienating the communities it most needs to cultivate. The
latest chapter in the LA 8 case, courtesy of the Patriot Act, will do nothing to
make us more secure--and much to make us less free.
===============================================
about
David Cole
Legal Affairs Correspondent
David Cole (cole@law.georgetown.edu), The Nation's legal affairs
correspondent and a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, is the author
of No Equal Justice: Race and Class in the American Criminal Justice System (New
Press), co-author, with James X. Dempsey, of Terrorism and the Constitution:
Sacrificing Civil Liberties for National Security (New Press) and author of
Enemy Aliens: Double Standards and Constitutional Freedoms in the War on
Terrorism (New Press).
more...
http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=32
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'Knowing All That We Know Now'
07/08/2003 @ 6:42pm
GO HERE FOR LINKS:
http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?pid=803
It isn't honesty, and sure isn't contrition. But the White House has
finally, grudgingly conceded it was wrong of the President to assert in his
State of the Union address -- on the basis of a ludicrous, childlike forgery --
that Iraq had been attempting to acquire uranium from Niger for a nuclear bombs
program. In a statement given to The Washington Post, the Administration says:
"Knowing all that we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire
uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union
speech."
Skip over the "knowing all that we know now" -- that's some weaselly
window-dressing, a throw-away phrase designed to suggest the Administration
accidentally came to make this accusation. The reality -- according to the man
Dick Cheney sent to get to the bottom of the Iraq-Niger-uranium fairy tale,
career diplomat Joseph C. Wilson -- is that this was no accident. In an op-ed
article in The New York Times, Wilson writes: "Based on my experience with the
administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to
conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program
was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Interestingly, Wilson also says he
was asked to check out a memorandum making this accusation -- but was not given
a copy of it. Perhaps that's because it was a transparent joke: According to
Reuters, UN investigators found it a jaw-droppingly crude fake debunked by a
"simple Internet search" -- which revealed this document got the name of the
foreign minister and of the government itself entirely wrong. (Let's hope our
savvy MBA President doesn't get one of those chain letters from the "chairman of
Niger" offering to deposit $20 million in his bank account.)
As Congressman Henry Waxman has pointed out on his web page about the
Niger forgery scandal, the White House answer is not really an answer. (An
answer would get into how and why a joke-forgery came to be cited as
justification for the eventual combat deaths of 200 American citizens.) And the
Republicans in Congress are fighting mightily to stuff this "we lied about
everything" genie back into the bottle.
But we're closing in on an answer. As diplomat Wilson writes: "The vice
president's office asked a serious question. I was asked to help formulate the
answer. I did so, and I have every confidence that the answer I provided was
circulated to the appropriate officials within our government.
"The question now is how that answer was or was not used by our political
leadership. If my information was deemed inaccurate, I understand (though I
would be very interested to know why). If, however, the information was ignored
because it did not fit certain preconceptions about Iraq, then a legitimate
argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses."
=====================================
Forging a Case for War
07/11/2003 @ 7:12pm [permalink]
Here's a fun game: Imagine the Chinese government announces itself
threatened by a secret American plot, and declares it is preparing preemptive
military action against us. Making Beijing's case before the UN, President Hu
Jintao waves around a set of documents laying out a complicated conspiracy. One
of the documents purports to be from "Prime Minister Richard Cheney of the
Unionized States of America." Another, dated October 2000, is signed by
"Secretary of State James Baker." The Chinese would look absolutely deranged,
relying on such obvious forgeries; the world would recoil in confusion and fear.
Yet this is what our President did in his State of the Union address, when he
cited similarly ludicrous forgeries as evidence Saddam was uranium-shopping in
Niger.
GO HERE FOR FULL STORY AND LINKS:
http://www.thenation.com/outrage/index.mhtml?bid=6&page=6

This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale!
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/leakgate.htm