Civil Liberties & Muslim Americans & War on Terror

It looks like that somebody has not yet realized how the terrorist network works. They use civil rights ande freedoms in order to destroy them. They know that there always is a minority which will never support restrictions on these rights. Just read Michael Moore´s Hey Dude, where is my country? . It is a good example of the kind of people I am talking about. He says that Bush governemente has created a climate of paranoia, but Moore is actually the big paranoic- according to his book, the US looks like Chile in the 70,s . But it is not true!!

In fact, I think that the real mistake is try to ensure civil liberties at the cost of US security. Do not pay attention to fools like Moore.

Just remember what Barry Goldwater said: Extremism is not a vice when it is used to protect freedom.

You're serious, JW, aren't you? Our civil liberties have never -- I repeat, never -- in the history of this country been in more peril. People held on suspicion of having some tenuous terrorist connection are denied the right to see counsel. The FBI requests libraries to provide them with lists of books that people read. Our armed forces apparently routinely torture prisoners of war, not only at Abu Graib but at Guantanamo as well. Do you read the newspapers? Do you listen to the news on RV or the radio? Besides Fox, I mean.

are y'all really gonna let a few screeching librarians get the best of you?

I was asking for personal experiences, not generalities, but to answer your question, yes, I'm serious.

The Patriot Act is nothing more than reorganization and recodification of existing statutes that have been extended to cover terrorism and to take new technology into account, so what's all the hoopla about?

I do read newspapers, although I'm not much on TV or radio news, but I must have missed the alert where we are routinely torturing prisoners of war. Maybe you can provide a link to this routine event.

DrewDad: I believe I brought the Padilla case to light on another thread, but again I was wondering if anyone here has had their liberties trampled.

Maybe I don't scare easily enough or I'm just not prone to hysteria in general. On the other hand, are y'all really gonna let a few screeching librarians get the best of you?

Oh, I'm sure some of those less than truthful folks over at DU would be willing to come up with a few tall tales to suit their purposes

In particular, the Dec. 30 memo disagrees with the statement that "severe" pain under the terror statute was limited to pain "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

The new document also disagreed that "severe" pain is limited to "excruciating and agonizing" pain.

It also disagreed with the detailed discussion in the August memo defining the precise meaning of "specific intent."

"In light of the president's directive that the United States not engage in torture, it would not be appropriate to rely on parsing the specific intent element of the statute to approve as lawful conduct that might otherwise amount to torture," it said.

DrewDad: I believe I brought the Padilla case to light on another thread, but again I was wondering if anyone here has had their liberties trampled.

Maybe I don't scare easily enough or I'm just not prone to hysteria in general. On the other hand, are y'all really gonna let a few screeching librarians get the best of you?

Oh, I'm sure some of those less than truthful folks over at DU would be willing to come up with a few tall tales to suit their purposes

Using the Freedom of Information Act, the American Civil Liberties Union has uncovered thousands of government documents detailing torture of detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay. One FBI memo about Gitmo cited "strangulation, beatings, placement of lit cigarettes into the detainees' ear openings, and unauthorized interrogations." It also repeatedly referred to a "cover-up."

The White House has long insisted that detainee abuses, first detailed at Abu Ghraib, were isolated, unrelated to interrogations, and certainly not happening at Gitmo. While the documents don't prove that torture was official policy, they do, as an acerbic Washington Post editorial put it, "establish beyond any doubt that every part of this cover story is false."