Jon,

Thanks to you and your colleagues for the terrific effort on this case. I'm wondering if a challenge could be mounted in court to the notion that the government can be a party to a legal proceeding while also having some control over what evidence is introduced? From my naive civilian viewpoint, this seems fundamentally wrong and unfair.

Show me a world where the government is always right, warrantless wiretaps and searches are never misused, the detained are always guilty, and torture is always used only as a last resort to save a city moments from destruction (or "the kidnapped blond daughter of a U.S. diplomat", the example used by Dan Mitrione in Langguth's book Hidden Terrors)- and I'll show you someone's imagination slumming with cheap movie plots. Castles made of words.

Fantasy- and for most ordinary Americans laying that game in their minds, always ending with the Triumph of Truth, Justice, and Public Safety, in undoubted accord with one's self-image as a morally upright person. An honorable person.

Reality: in Argentina in the late 1970s, in apparent agreement with the sentiments of people like "kufir77", the counter-terrorist policies of the government dispensed with rules of evidence, habeus corpus and trials in favor of rule by decree, and detention at the whim of "deputized agents" of the government.

After a few years, the "deputized agents" of the government were pulling teenage girls off the street and bundling them into unmarked cars.

But you know: it took years for it to get that bad.

And hey, even then-

most of the people living in Argentina never were targeted by the authorities, were they? As a percentage of the total population, only a very few were sent to the detention centers, or executed, right? Everyday life didn't stop for most ordinary Soviet citizens, did it?

Same as here- right?

Come on- aren't the problems of living in a police state sort of, you know, understimated? You aren't a terrorist, you'll be fine- as long as you don't belong to the wrong religion, or have the wrong facial features, or wear the wrong clothes, or have the wrong accent. Can't be too safe, after all. And that reward of continued safety justifies, in turn. the rest of the clauses implicit in an efficiently operating security state: as long as you don't live on some property that a local "deputized agent" would like to have a shot at owning. As long as you aren't a business rival against someone with deeper political connections. As long as you aren't interested in the same woman as the local homeland security official. As long as you keep your mouth shut about things- including, perhaps, what happened to your daughter, on her way home from school the other day.

I'm sure you wouldn't mind, if you were ever arrested, from having all your conversations with your lawyer taped and provided to the prosecution. Or would you?

The threat posed to their own futures by dispensing with Constitutional rights and defendant protections is never, ever taken seriously by those willing to give them away so trustingly. Neither do they pay serious mind to the possibility of the innocence of those who find themselves under the notice of police authority, and the threat of detention or imprisonment.

Instead, on those questions they live in exclusive fantasy worlds where the target is always guilty; where Constitutional guarantees have no utility whatsoever beyond aiding the guilty in escaping justice and penalty for their crimes; where anyone who rises to act in the defense of the target is aiding and abetting in the offenses they've supposedly committed, or even guilty of treason conspiracy- despite the FACT that the Bill of Rights guarantees the RIGHT of criminal defendants to be aware of the charges against them; the RIGHT to mount a defense in the courts; the RIGHT to have access to all evidence produced in a case, both in their favor and against it; and the RIGHT to have their defense aided by competent professionals with a knowledge of the law.

Still. Despite the assaults on those protections by the Bush administration.

Disregarding all that- after all, it's only part of the Constitutional underpinning of the country they claim to love so much- they prefer to live up in their heads, producing mind-movie fantasies like this typical example:

Dear Useful Idiots,

Thank you so much in your support of our terrorist front organization. We can always count on a large number of you stupid Americans in helping us use your own Constitution against yourselves. We Middle Easterners are not dumb, in fact we are smarter than the majority of you. Instead of simply using bombs, we know that the REAL American way is the way of courts and laws. Our scholars work day and night looking for any loophole in order to get any legitimate case against us or our friends thrown out on simple technicalities. Our far superior form of law, Sharia, would NEVER allow such injustices. If you were part of an American group working against Islam, your heads would have been chopped off long ago.

Of course Bush knew we were up to no good. Why else would he take such a risk, if it wasn't worth it? Bush rightly knew we were a threat, but we knew the stupid Americans would flub up, and we would come out on top.

But many thanks to you all, for having so much faith in your Constitution that you will even support a group actively trying to destroy you. Our religion is Islam, yours in Constitutionalism. May the fleas of a thousand camels infest you and your family, for the rest of your days.

Sincerely,

Suliman al-Buthe

Ex-Director of al-Haramin Foundation -kufir77 (back there on page 3 of the comments here)

How simple the courts and the criminal justice system would be, if only that screed were admissible in court!

And there's no lack of ample historical precedents for allowing writings like that as evidence/proof against a target of criminal proceedings- the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics during the era of Josef Stalin hurtles to mind as one real-world example.

And it "worked" for that country for many years- despite the fact that it was a "system" that allowed fantasy, conjecture, and forgery to be used as proof against its targets. If there wasn't enough in the way of actual evidence, castles made of words were enough.

Hey, most of the people of the Soviet Union were never targeted by the authorities, were they? As a percentage of the total population, only a very few were sent to the gulags, or executed, right? Everyday life didn't stop for most ordinary Soviet citizens, did it?

Same as here.

And, come on, admit it- who's to say the targets of Stalin weren't all guilty? Can you prove they weren't?

Substitute the name "Bush" or the more anonymous but less informative "the government" for the name "Stalin", in cases like this one, and you get an identical argument to ones that I've heard people make to me, with their bare faces hanging out.