Yesterday, in South Carolina, an Obama-appointed federal judge dismissed a lawsuit brought by [accused 'Dirty Bomber' Jose] Padilla against former Bush officials Donald Rumsfeld, John Ashcroft, Paul Wolfowitz and others. That suit alleges that those officials knowingly violated Padilla's Constitutional rights by ordering his due-process-free detention and torture. In dismissing Padilla's lawsuit, the court's opinion relied on the same now-depressingly-familiar weapons routinely used by our political class to immunize itself from judicial scrutiny: national security would be undermined by allowing Padilla to sue; "government officials could be distracted from their vital duties to attend depositions or respond to other discovery requests"; "a trial on the merits would be an international spectacle with Padilla, a convicted terrorist, summoning America's present and former leaders to a federal courthouse to answer his charges"; the litigation would risk disclosure of vital state secrets; and "discovery procedures could be used by our enemies to obtain valuable intelligence."
We can’t have them inconvenienced by depositions, now, can we?
And why are they using discovery procedures that someone else can get hold of?
Not a single War on Terror detainee has been accorded any redress in American courts for the severe abuses to which they were subjected (including innocent people being detained for years, rendered and even tortured), and worse, no detainee has been allowed by courts even to have their claims heard.[...]
As Padilla's counsel, Ben Wizner, said, the court yesterday ruled "that Donald Rumsfeld is above the law and Jose Padilla is beneath it." That's just what the American justice system is.
Yeah. Tough shit, huh?
....but hey, do what you want....you will anyway.
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