Ashcroft is a world-class f&*k-nut

[dberdinka]

I guess you either line-up in agreement with what Krugman writes or you discount what he says completely. Not a lot of middle-ground with what he has to say. Hard to refute what he has to say about our Attorney General though!

 

n April 2003, John Ashcroft's Justice Department disrupted what appears to have been a horrifying terrorist plot. In the small town of Noonday, Tex., F.B.I. agents discovered a weapons cache containing fully automatic machine guns, remote-controlled explosive devices disguised as briefcases, 60 pipe bombs and a chemical weapon — a cyanide bomb — big enough to kill everyone in a 30,000-square-foot building.

 

Strangely, though, the attorney general didn't call a press conference to announce the discovery of the weapons cache, or the arrest of William Krar, its owner. He didn't even issue a press release. This was, to say the least, out of character. Jose Padilla, the accused "dirty bomber," didn't have any bomb-making material or even a plausible way to acquire such material, yet Mr. Ashcroft put him on front pages around the world. Mr. Krar was caught with an actual chemical bomb, yet Mr. Ashcroft acted as if nothing had happened.

 

Incidentally, if Mr. Ashcroft's intention was to keep the case low-profile, the media have been highly cooperative. To this day, the Noonday conspiracy has received little national coverage.

 

At this point, I have the usual problem. Writing about John Ashcroft poses the same difficulties as writing about the Bush administration in general, only more so: the truth about his malfeasance is so extreme that it's hard to avoid sounding shrill.

 

In this case, it sounds over the top to accuse Mr. Ashcroft of trying to bury news about terrorists who don't fit his preferred story line. Yet it's hard to believe that William Krar wouldn't have become a household name if he had been a Muslim, or even a leftist. Was Mr. Ashcroft, who once gave an interview with Southern Partisan magazine in which he praised "Southern patriots" like Jefferson Davis, reluctant to publicize the case of a terrorist who happened to be a white supremacist?

 

More important, is Mr. Ashcroft neglecting real threats to the public because of his ideological biases?

 

Mr. Krar's arrest was the result not of a determined law enforcement effort against domestic terrorists, but of a fluke: when he sent a package containing counterfeit U.N. and Defense Intelligence Agency credentials to an associate in New Jersey, it was delivered to the wrong address. Luckily, the recipient opened the package and contacted the F.B.I. But for that fluke, we might well have found ourselves facing another Oklahoma City-type atrocity.

 

The discovery of the Texas cyanide bomb should have served as a wake-up call: 9/11 has focused our attention on the threat from Islamic radicals, but murderous right-wing fanatics are still out there. The concerns of the Justice Department, however, appear to lie elsewhere. Two weeks ago a representative of the F.B.I. appealed to an industry group for help in combating what, he told the audience, the F.B.I. regards as the country's leading domestic terrorist threat: ecological and animal rights extremists.

 

Even in the fight against foreign terrorists, Mr. Ashcroft's political leanings have distorted policy. Mr. Ashcroft is very close to the gun lobby — and these ties evidently trump public protection. After 9/11, he ordered that all government lists — including voter registration, immigration and driver's license lists — be checked for links to terrorists. All government lists, that is, except one: he specifically prohibited the F.B.I. from examining background checks on gun purchasers.

 

Mr. Ashcroft told Congress that the law prohibits the use of those background checks for other purposes — but he didn't tell Congress that his own staff had concluded that no such prohibition exists. Mr. Ashcroft issued a directive, later put into law, requiring that records of background checks on gun buyers be destroyed after only one business day.

 

And we needn't imagine that Mr. Ashcroft was deeply concerned about protecting the public's privacy. After all, a few months ago he took the unprecedented step of subpoenaing the hospital records of women who have had late-term abortions.

 

After my last piece on Mr. Ashcroft, some readers questioned whether he is really the worst attorney general ever. It's true that he has some stiff competition from the likes of John Mitchell, who served under Richard Nixon. But once the full record of his misdeeds in office is revealed, I think Mr. Ashcroft will stand head and shoulders below the rest.[/img]

[Jim]

Did anyone catch his testimony in front of the prison abuse Congressional Panel? He just flat out denied to release the justice department memo to the White House regarding the justification of torture. The panel members, Republicans and Democrats were seething! They asked him if he was refusing on the grounds of Executive Privilege or if the documents were classified. He refused to answer their direct questions and went on about his opinions. One of the members cut him off and said the panel wasn't interested in his opinion - what was the legal justification. He refused to answer the question. WTF? This is the head of the justice dept. The documents finally were leaked a couple days later.

 

Sen. Bidden made an excellent point while trying to get Ascroft to answer. He said the US doesn't torture prisioners because we want our service men and women treated decently. He added he wanted his son, who is in Iraq, protected under the treaties we have signed.

 

Ascroft is an arrogant SOB. He'll be out soon enough.

[CascadeClimber]

I saw the testimony. I think he was just following orders. Doesn't make it right, but I don't think he's the brains behind his actions.

 

There is just so much wrong with this administration that it kind of defies description.

 

Support our troops: Get them a new boss.

 

-L

[Jim]

There is just so much wrong with this administration that it kind of defies description.

 

Support our troops: Get them a new boss.

-L

 

[Greg_W]

he specifically prohibited the F.B.I. from examining background checks on gun purchasers.

 

Mr. Ashcroft told Congress that the law prohibits the use of those background checks for other purposes — but he didn't tell Congress that his own staff had concluded that no such prohibition exists. Mr. Ashcroft issued a directive, later put into law, requiring that records of background checks on gun buyers be destroyed after only one business day.

 

Since its inception, the Brady Bill has required that records of gun purchasers under the instituted N.I.C.S. check system and 7-day wait period be destroyed by BATFE immediately after the check is complete. There is no extant "list" for the FBI to check. The Brady Bill requires that background checks be destroyed; this was put into law before Ashcroft took his position.

[Dru]

i honestly don't think that if the us suddenly announced it was going to treat all prisoners via geneva convention that al-qaeda would stop beheading hostages. but it might go a ways toward reclaiming some moral high ground and swaying other parts of the arab world, or at least europe.

[Jim]

I think that is a good point. We don't want to use the barbarians as a yardstick (meter stick for Dru) on how we conduct ourselves.

[Greg_W]

I don't think we could do anything to "sway the rest of the arab world." In their tribalist society, we are the outsiders (and always will be).

[thrutch]

Really what is wrong with focusing exclussivly on brown non-christains, they do seem to have what we want so lets kill em all!

 

[Dru]

KILL BABY JESUS AND SAVE THE WHALES FROM OIL