Tortured Justice

"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in rather
a scornful tone,"it means just what I choose it to mean
--neither more nor less."
--Through the Looking Glass, Lewis Carroll
__________

During GWB's press conference yesterday, Newsweek's Richard Wolffe asked Bush "a simple question" -- "What's your definition of the word torture?

Bush hedged, saying "That's defined in U.S. law, and we don't torture."

Wolffe persisted, "Can you give me your version of it, sir?

"Bush: No. Whatever the law says.

Dan Froomkin in the Washington Post reads it this way: "Bush has consistently refused to say what he means when he says 'we don't torture,' rendering the phrase essentially meaningless. Saying 'whatever the law says' doesn't clear things up at all. It just means that if we do it, his lawyers have found a way not to call it torture (Torture Watch.)

It has been just over a week since the Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal filed on behalf of Khaled el-Masri, a German citizen who claims he was abducted and tortured by United States agents while imprisoned in Afghanistan (Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Torture Appeal.)

"Without comment, the justices let stand an appeals court ruling that the state secrets privilege, a judicially created doctrine that the Bush administration has invoked to win dismissal of lawsuits that touch on issues of national security, protected the government’s actions from court review. In refusing to take up the case, the justices declined a chance to elaborate on the privilege for the first time in more than 50 years."

El-Masri says he was "detained while on vacation in Macedonia in late 2003, transported by the United States to Afghanistan and tortured while held there for five months in a secret prison before being taken to Albania and set free, evidently having been mistaken for a terrorism suspect with a similar name." We're so sorry, Uncle Albert.

A German court issued arrest warrants 1/13/07 for 13 CIA agents, and the episode has become a public example of the United States government’s program of "extraordinary rendition." Kidnapping and rendition conducted by intelligence agents paid for by your taxes.

"In their Supreme Court appeal, Mr. Masri’s lawyers argued that previous rulings allowed the state secrets doctrine to become 'unmoored' from its origins as a rule to be invoked to shield specific evidence in a lawsuit against the government, rather than to dismiss an entire case before any evidence was produced."

So, all the government need do is invoke state's secrets, and you have lost the right to sue in federal court.

Where is the system of checks and balances envisioned in the American experiment called democracy? When state's secrets trump the rights of individuals, then Ranger reckons there is no longer a concept of individual rights that will protect persons from government corruption and malfeasance -- including torture, kidnapping and extraordinary renditions.

And please don't say Mr. el-Masri was not a U.S. citizen. The rights of all persons should be respected in a U.S. court of law. In effect, the court has effectively removed the judicial branch from the equation that provides for checks and balances on our government and protects our way of life. Two legs do not keep a table standing.

The balance of the scales of justice demands the participation of the judiciary. Remember the blindfold? There are no ear plugs.