{"id":443,"date":"2007-12-19T19:41:00","date_gmt":"2007-12-20T00:41:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/19\/the-padilla-tapes\/"},"modified":"2007-12-19T21:22:16","modified_gmt":"2007-12-20T02:22:16","slug":"the-padilla-tapes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/2007\/12\/19\/the-padilla-tapes\/","title":{"rendered":"The Padilla tapes"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Ralph Lopez<\/strong><\/p>\n

padilla.jpg<\/a><\/p>\n

Fox News recently refused to air an ad that criticizes the Bush administration for \u201cdestroying the Constitution\u201d by the use of torture and other tactics. The ad, \u201cRescue the Constitution,\u201d is narrated by actor Danny Glover.<\/p>\n

In a response to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which produced the ad, Fox News wrote that it could not approve the ad \u201cwith it being Danny Glover\u2019s opinion that the Bush Administration is destroying the Constitution.\u201d Fox said \u201cIf you have documentation that it is indeed being destroyed, we can look at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

If the Constitutional \u201cdocumentation\u201d against \u201ccruel and unusual punishment\u201d doesn\u2019t float Fox\u2019s boat, how about more? The Sixth Amendment of the Constitution, the \u201cBill of Rights\u201d states: \u201cIn all criminal prosecutions, the accused, shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State.\u201d<\/p>\n

On May 8, 2002, the government seized an American citizen, Jose Padilla, on American soil on allegations, but not formal charges, of terrorism. George Bush ordered the military to take custody of Padilla as an \u201cenemy combatant\u201d in the June 9, 2002, Presidential Order to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, which said:<\/p>\n

\u201cI, GEORGE W. BUSH, as President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces, hereby DETERMINE for the United States of America that…Jose Padilla, who is under the control of the Department of Justice and who is a U.S. citizen, is, and at the time he entered the United States in May 2002 was, an enemy combatant…you are directed to receive Mr. Padilla from the Department of Justice and to detain him as an enemy combatant. \u201c<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dry words, but important. In military detention, Padilla was made to sleep on a metal cot, subjected to hooding, stress positions, assaults, threats of imminent execution, and the administration of “truth serums,” according to his lawyer. Padilla was not even allowed a lawyer until two years after his arrest. When the government released him to the civilian courts three-and-a-half years later, Padilla was docile, and did little to assist in his own defense. The charges against him bore no resemblance to the original allegations.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And what could be so important in the destroyed CIA tapes that are the object of current controversy, that despite the criticism which would certainly follow, they were destroyed anyway? Abu Zubaydah, a subject of the tapes, is none other than the foreign national whom Padilla\u2019s lawyers say was tortured into linking Padilla with Al Qaeda. This was the lynchpin of the government\u2019s case against Padilla.<\/p>\n

We\u2019re talking about an American citizen who was deprived of his birthrights for nearly four years. In its legal argument, the government stressed that Padilla\u2019s legal team could not prove that Zubaydah had been tortured. <\/p>\n

The CIA tapes involve the most audacious of the administration\u2019s many audacious extensions of Executive power, the power to lock up Americans indefinitely without a trial.<\/p>\n

Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff\u2019s recent, curiously timed musings that the next terror threat might be \u201chomegrown\u201d makes it seem that they are already spinning Americans to view the enemy as themselves.<\/p>\n

Bush\u2019s elevation of the radical, never-before-seen doctrine of \u201cwartime powers\u201d in a war that lasts forever, and its placement alongside the Constitution, is like putting lipstick on a pig. Bush cites \u201ca state of war\u201d as his basis for overriding basic rights. But if the war has no end, doesn\u2019t that mean the Constitution itself has been overturned? And is this not a violation of the presidential oath to \u201cpreserve, protect and defend the Constitution\u201d? There is not one single, solitary word in the oath about pertekin\u2019 the American people, which Bush labels his \u201cmost solemn duty.\u201d The oath is to the Constitution alone. <\/p>\n

New battle lines are appearing. We are seeing the emergence of what may be called \u201cConstitutionalist\u201d versus \u201ccorporatist\u201d forces, and of alliances which cut across party lines. Unlikely allies such as Pat Buchanan and Naomi Wolf, Republicans like Bruce Fein, Ron Paul, and Democrat Dennis Kucinich are aligned on one side, and the money-machine candidates like Hillary Clinton and Rudy Giuliani are aligned on the other. The money machines will spar on social issues, but never say a word about the subversion of our rights taking place before our very eyes. <\/p>\n

At Iwo Jima the American death rate was a man per minute for the first 60 hours of the assault, about 3600 men dead in less than three days. t Omaha Beach, Normandy, the death rate was even more appalling. In both instances, we fought against forms of government in which you could be swept off the street, kept in secret, tortured, and either released or held indefinitely according to the whims of the government.<\/p>\n

Thomas Paine said \u201cThese are the times that try men\u2019s souls.\u201d We must see the danger clearly, or else, rich, poor, conservative, liberal, powerful, ordinary, we relinquish forever those rights which have defined us as American. <\/p>\n

Ralph Lopez is a writer from Tularosa, New Mexico.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Ralph Lopez Fox News recently refused to air an ad that criticizes the Bush administration for \u201cdestroying the Constitution\u201d by the use of torture and other tactics. The ad, \u201cRescue the Constitution,\u201d is narrated by actor Danny Glover. In … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-newscommentary"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=443"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/443\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scpronet.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}