In its early editions today, the New York Times raised a number of interesting questions about the arrest of Sami Al-Arian. He is the Florida professor arrested last week on terrorist charges, and it's already beginning to smell like another Wen Ho Lee monumental foul-up. But that was only in the early editions. By this evening, the same story had been transformed on the Times website into a puff piece promoting the attorney general's swell new Patriot Act. The original story explored the curious fact that the Justice Department has been investigating Mr. Al-Arian for almost a decade. Why is he only now being arrested? The attorney general was saying, in effect, that he could never have made this case without this swell new act he scared Congress into passing, so let's not have any more of this treasonous whining about lost civil liberties. But the Times reporters had already pointed out that the laws existing way back in 1994 had been perfectly adequate to "produce evidence linking (Mr. Al-Arian) to the plots." Why, then, didn't the Clinton Justice Department bring charges? Or the Bush Justice Department for that matter? Mr. Ashcroft has had the case for two years now. The reporters found out that the answer wasn't nearly so simple as the lack of a Patriot Act: By this evening, all of the material above had disappeared from the Times website. What had started out as a skeptical examination of troubling questions raised by the Al-Arian case had morphed throughout the day into a credulous commercial for the Patriot Act. :m: Peace.
Making Themselves Look Good: Justice Dept. Inflated Terror Cases "Terror must be maintained, or the Empire is doomed. It is the logic of history." --Alternate universe Spock, "Mirror Mirror" :m: Peace.
I guess there's been some progress in this country, that the Ashcrofts of our country can't always lynch their scapegoats before there's a chance of truth leaking out. I'm pissed, and I want some of these Busheviks stripped of their flag-draped dignity someday- they are sorely abusing our patriotic trust and gullibility.
The brother of Sami Al-Arian was arrested for three years without formal charge, the judge dropped the case as there were no solid foundations. Now, things are different, in fact Sami Al-Arian is very lucky. As a labeled terrorist and with Bush’s new decree, he could just have being shoot without having to explain anything!!
