The death of the American justice (sic) system?

Ari · Feb 10, 2010

I dont know, I find it far more disturbing that I am only reading about this now, which I guess means the media and general populace is not really interested in this new development. Final nail in the coffin perhaps for our justice system and a fatal blow to our RIGHT (meaning no exceptions) to due process as Americans.

Where is the condemnation from liberals and conservatives alike? You would think this is ONE issue where they would find common ground on.

It is Now Official: The U.S. Is A Police State

By Paul Craig Roberts

Americans have been losing the protection of law for years. In the 21st century the loss of legal protections accelerated with the Bush administration’s “war on terror,” which continues under the Obama administration and is essentially a war on the Constitution and U.S. civil liberties.

The Bush regime was determined to vitiate habeas corpus in order to hold people indefinitely without bringing charges. The regime had acquired hundreds of prisoners by paying a bounty for “terrorists.” Afghan warlords and thugs responded to the financial incentive by grabbing unprotected people and selling them to the Americans.

The Bush regime needed to hold the prisoners without charges because it had no evidence against the people and did not want to admit that the U.S. government had stupidly paid warlords and thugs to kidnap innocent people. In addition, the Bush regime needed “terrorists” prisoners in order to prove that there was a terrorist threat.

As there was no evidence against the “detainees” (most have been released without charges after years of detention and abuse), the U.S. government needed a way around U.S. and international laws against torture in order that the government could produce evidence via self-incrimination. The Bush regime found inhumane and totalitarian-minded lawyers and put them to work at the U.S. Department of Justice (sic) to invent arguments that the Bush regime did not need to obey the law.

The Bush regime created a new classification for its detainees that it used to justify denying legal protection and due process to the detainees. As the detainees were not U.S. citizens and were demonized by the regime as “the 760 most dangerous men on earth,” there was little public outcry over the regime’s unconstitutional and inhumane actions.

As our Founding Fathers and a long list of scholars warned, once civil liberties are breached, they are breached for all. Soon U.S. citizens were being held indefinitely in violation of their habeas corpus rights. Dr. Aafia Siddiqui, an American citizen of Pakistani origin, might have been the first.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan. Her three young children were with her at the time she was abducted, one an eight-month old baby. She has no idea what has become of her two youngest children. Her oldest child, 7 years old, was also incarcerated in Bagram and subjected to similar abuse and horrors.

Siddiqui has never been charged with any terrorism-related offense. A British journalist, hearing her piercing screams as she was being tortured, disclosed her presence. An embarrassed U.S. government responded to the disclosure by sending Siddiqui to the U.S. for trial on the trumped-up charge that while a captive, she grabbed a U.S. soldier’s rifle and fired two shots attempting to shoot him. The charge apparently originated as a U.S. soldier’s excuse for shooting Dr. Siddiqui twice in the stomach resulting in her near death.

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.

Wikipedia has this to say about the trial: “The trial took an unusual turn when an FBI official asserted that the fingerprints taken from the rifle, which was purportedly used by Aafia to shoot at the U.S. interrogators, did not match hers.”

An ignorant and bigoted American jury convicted her for being a Muslim. This is the kind of “justice” that always results when the state hypes fear and demonizes a group.

The people who should have been on trial are the people who abducted her, disappeared her young children, shipped her across international borders, violated her civil liberties, tortured her apparently for the fun of it, raped her, and attempted to murder her with two gunshots to her stomach. Instead, the victim was put on trial and convicted.

This is the unmistakable hallmark of a police state. And this victim is an American citizen.

Anyone can be next. Indeed, on February 3 Dennis Blair, director of National Intelligence told the House Intelligence Committee that it was now “defined policy” that the U.S. government can murder its own citizens on the sole basis of someone in the government’s judgment that an American is a threat. No arrest, no trial, no conviction, just execution on suspicion of being a threat.

This shows how far the police state has advanced. A presidential appointee in the Obama administration tells an important committee of Congress that the executive branch has decided that it can murder American citizens abroad if it thinks they are a threat.

I can hear readers saying the government might as well kill Americans abroad as it kills them at home--Waco, Ruby Ridge, the Black Panthers.

Yes, the U.S. government has murdered its citizens, but Dennis Blair’s “defined policy” is a bold new development. The government, of course, denies that it intended to kill the Branch Davidians, Randy Weaver’s wife and child, or the Black Panthers. The government says that Waco was a terrible tragedy, an unintended result brought on by the Branch Davidians themselves. The government says that Ruby Ridge was Randy Weaver’s fault for not appearing in court on a day that had been miscommunicated to him, The Black Panthers, the government says, were dangerous criminals who insisted on a shoot-out.

In no previous death of a U.S. citizen by the hands of the U.S. government has the government claimed the right to kill Americans without arrest, trial, and conviction of a capital crime.

In contrast, Dennis Blair has told the U.S. Congress that the executive branch has assumed the right to murder Americans who it deems a “threat.”

What defines “threat”? Who will make the decision? What it means is that the government will murder whomever it chooses.

There is no more complete or compelling evidence of a police state than the government announcing that it will murder its own citizens if it views them as a “threat.”

Ironic, isn’t it, that “the war on terror” to make us safe ends in a police state with the government declaring the right to murder American citizens who it regards as a threat.
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Cannonball · Feb 10, 2010

No link = FAIL

Invisible Fan · Feb 10, 2010

http://vdare.com/roberts/100208_police_state.htm

CometsWin · Feb 10, 2010

r****ded thread title. The American justice system doesn't operate in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan.

meh · Feb 10, 2010

CometsWin said:

r****ded thread title. The American justice system doesn't operate in Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Dr. Siddiqui, a scientist educated at MIT and Brandeis University, was seized in Pakistan for no known reason, sent to Afghanistan, and was held secretly for five years in the U.S. military’s notorious Bagram prison in Afghanistan.
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Didn't THIS happen in the US?

On February 4, Dr. Siddiqui was convicted by a New York jury for attempted murder. The only evidence presented against her was the charge itself and an unsubstantiated claim that she had once taken a pistol-firing course at an American firing range. No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier. No evidence was presented that a weapon was fired, no bullets, no shell casings, no bullet holes. Just an accusation.
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StupidMoniker · Feb 10, 2010

There is only no evidence if you choose not to consider testimony as evidence. Of course, many cases are decided based on testimony, so you should have lost faith in the justice system a long time ago if you go that way.

justtxyank · Feb 10, 2010

My favorite part of the article was when it used Wikipedia as the cited source of information regarding the "unfairness" of the trial.

BetterThanI · Feb 10, 2010

No evidence was presented of her fingerprints on the rifle that this frail and broken 100-pound woman had allegedly seized from an American soldier.
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This statement, to me, sums up the entire problem with this article: try to paint the accused in as positive a light as possible, and ignore pertinent facts. According to the accounts I read, the weapon in question was not in the soldiers hands at the time she grabbed it and opened fire, thus her "frail and broken" stature matters not. She didn't "sieze" the weapon from a solider. That's blatantly misrepresenting the facts of the case, and makes the argument much weaker.

Even if this case was mishandled, and was a miscarriage of justice (which I'm still not convinced it is. Her actions were somewhat shady, and she has had eyewitness and informant testimony against her), one faulty case does not represent the "death of the American justice (sic) system". Again, inflammatory and misleading headline = weak case.

meh · Feb 10, 2010

StupidMoniker said:

There is only no evidence if you choose not to consider testimony as evidence. Of course, many cases are decided based on testimony, so you should have lost faith in the justice system a long time ago if you go that way.
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There's a reason why I didn't actually state my opinion on the article. Because I personally don't know jack about the case, hence I don't want to talk out of my ass.

I was just pointing out the fallacy in the post I quoted.

justtxyank · Feb 10, 2010

BetterThanI said:

This statement, to me, sums up the entire problem with this article: try to paint the accused in as positive a light as possible, and ignore pertinent facts. According to the accounts I read, the weapon in question was not in the soldiers hands at the time she grabbed it and opened fire, thus her "frail and broken" stature matters not. She didn't "sieze" the weapon from a solider. That's blatantly misrepresenting the facts of the case, and makes the argument much weaker.

Even if this case was mishandled, and was a miscarriage of justice (which I'm still not convinced it is. Her actions were somewhat shady, and she has had eyewitness and informant testimony against her), one faulty case does not represent the "death of the American justice (sic) system". Again, inflammatory and misleading headline = weak case.
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Dude, shut up. You don't know what you are talking about. I don't know what stupid "accounts" you've read about the incident, but Wikipedia says this poor innocent woman didn't do anything wrong and evil American racists convicted her because she's a Muslim. The next time Wikipedia lies to me will be the first!

meh · Feb 10, 2010

Just so this entire thread isn't so focused on the author rather than the matter at hand, here's Time's version of the story.

http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1954598,00.html

Northside Storm · Feb 10, 2010

A flaw in this case and many others...

The bedrock of the American judicial process is the honesty of witnesses in trial. Eyewitness testimony can make a deep impression on a jury, which is often exclusively assigned the role of sorting out credibility issues and making judgments about the truth of witness statements.1 Perjury is a crime, because lying under oath can subvert the integrity of a trial and the legitimacy of the judicial system. However, perjury is defined as knowingly making a false statement—merely misremembering is not a crime.2 Moreover, the jury makes its determinations of witness credibility and veracity in secret, without revealing the reason for its final judgement.3 Recognizing the fallibility of witness memories, then, is especially important to participants in the judicial process, since many trials revolve around factual determinations of whom to believe. Rarely will a factual question result in a successful appeal—effectively giving many parties only one chance at justice. Arriving at a just result and a correct determination of truth is difficult enough without the added possibility that witnesses themselves may not be aware of inaccuracies in their testimony.

Several studies have been conducted on human memory and on subjects’ propensity to remember erroneously events and details that did not occur. Elizabeth Loftus performed experiments in the mid-seventies demonstrating the effect of a third party’s introducing false facts into memory.4 Subjects were shown a slide of a car at an intersection with either a yield sign or a stop sign. Experimenters asked participants questions, falsely introducing the term "stop sign" into the question instead of referring to the yield sign participants had actually seen. Similarly, experimenters falsely substituted the term "yield sign" in questions directed to participants who had actually seen the stop sign slide. The results indicated that subjects remembered seeing the false image. In the initial part of the experiment, subjects also viewed a slide showing a car accident. Some subjects were later asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "hit" each other, others were asked how fast the cars were traveling when they "smashed" into each other. Those subjects questioned using the word "smashed" were more likely to report having seen broken glass in the original slide. The introduction of false cues altered participants’ memories.

Courts, lawyers and police officers are now aware of the ability of third parties to introduce false memories to witnesses.5 For this reason, lawyers closely question witnesses regarding the accuracy of their memories and about any possible "assistance" from others in the formation of their present memories. However, psychologists have long recognized that gap filling and reliance on assumptions are necessary to function in our society. For example, if we did not assume that mail will be delivered, or that the supermarkets will continue to stock bread, we would behave quite differently than we do. We are constantly filling in the gaps in our recollection and interpreting things we hear. For instance, while on the subway we might hear garbled words like "next," "transfer," and "train." Building on our assumptions and knowledge, we may put together the actual statement: "Next stop 53rd Street, transfer available to the E train." Indeed, we may even remember having heard the full statement.

So what is an "original memory?"6 The process of interpretation occurs at the very formation of memory—thus introducing distortion from the beginning. Furthermore, witnesses can distort their own memories without the help of examiners, police officers or lawyers. Rarely do we tell a story or recount events without a purpose. Every act of telling and retelling is tailored to a particular listener; we would not expect someone to listen to every detail of our morning commute, so we edit out extraneous material. The act of telling a story adds another layer of distortion, which in turn affects the underlying memory of the event. This is why a fish story, which grows with each retelling, can eventually lead the teller to believe it.

Once witnesses state facts in a particular way or identify a particular person as the perpetrator, they are unwilling or even unable—due to the reconstruction of their memory—to reconsider their initial understanding. When a witness identifies a person in a line-up, he is likely to identify that same person in later line-ups, even when the person identified is not the perpetrator. Although juries and decision-makers place great reliance on eyewitness identification, they are often unaware of the danger of false memories.
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If we take the article at face value and there is no physical evidence...I would strongly consider this a show trial. Eyewitness accounts are often about as accurate as mud. If you're going to build a case on them entirely, well then, your case is on a very shaky foundation indeed.

CometsWin · Feb 10, 2010

meh said:

Didn't THIS happen in the US?
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The author isn't claiming she was denied her rights at trial in the US. He just doesn't like the outcome apparently. There's not enough information presented here to show she didn't get a fair trial. The writer seems to imply that she's entitled to Constitutional rights while being held in a foreign country.

BetterThanI · Feb 10, 2010

justtxyank said:

Dude, shut up. You don't know what you are talking about. I don't know what stupid "accounts" you've read about the incident, but Wikipedia says this poor innocent woman didn't do anything wrong and evil American racists convicted her because she's a Muslim. The next time Wikipedia lies to me will be the first!
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You're right. How silly of me to question the all-powerful Wikipedia. She must have done it if Wikipedia says it. I recant! I recant! :grin:

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