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Witness Monday. The beginning of the very end. Like the end of the Roman Republic, and the beginning of the Empire.
Monday John Ashcroft ruled that a US citizen can be assigned a "military combatant" and deprived of the rights of citizenship, to be tried in a secret trial, if at all.
I haven't seen anyone bring up the freakiest thing about this dude. Note the dates. He's been in custody for about a month, right?
For a guy who has been held for a month, what was the urgency of the zoo created on Monday, all the people scared, probably trying to get their hands on potassium iodine (which, coincidentally, was being passed out in several American cities over the weekend in little pills), whatever the fuck. All the news reports about panic being worse than the dirty bomb itself (does this actually ring true to you? I start sneezing bullshit on the spot. We must all really be idiots if we will destroy ourselves in panic if a dirty bomb goes off. I guess I'd just drive somewhere pretty and wait to start puking).
Ashcroft interrupts a trip to Moscow to make the announcement FROM Moscow? Isn't that a little freaky? All these dudes got press handlers, flak catchers. Every announcement is crafted in such a way for a kind of "play" in the media and a particular spin with the public. Speakers in GOP admins at least are all drilled to stay "on message," (in Dem admins as well, but without the party line control--maybe we are already seeing the absence of Karen Hughes here--see that Esquire article where Andrew Card was telling tales out of school.)
Karen Hughes would have never let Ashcroft take the script from Moscow, no matter how embattled the FBI is. This announcement could have been made any time in the last month, and it is made when he is in Moscow, where miscommunications can occur, where handlers would have to work harder at damage control if shit got out of control? (meaning a garbled message, or an unexpected public reaction--that is how PR people think about control)
If this thing was announced in this way at this point in time, it was done for a VERY specific reason. OBJECT LESSON: al Qaeda controlling the world's attention by diverting it AWAY from the areas it wants to hide through actions in Israel and India-Pakistan.
Was the Bush admin looking to divert our attention AWAY from something? The announcement was guaranteed to become the lead story in every news outlet. What stories were being upstaged? Hearings in the Senate about FBI failures? Yeah, but if that was all they wanted to divert us from, it wouldn't require such drastic action. UNLESS something really big were about to come out on whatever path the senators were pursuing.
Still, would that be worth the risk and lack of convention of Ashcroft making the announcement from Moscow, when he could have made it from the US days before, or a flak or a White House spokesperson could have made the announcement?
If they just wanted to detain the guy a little longer and suspend his constitutional rights, such a drastic action was not needed either. Was the dude's lawyer threatening to go to the press if his client were not released? Well duh, let him get in line with all the other lawyers of people who have been detained coming from Pakistan or places like it. The world didn't need to be turned upside down just to hold this guy.
OK, so rule out all those reasons. What remains? Why would they do such a curious thing?
Is the dirty bomb threat way worse than we'd already been told? Is that why the American public needed that exact moment to be told to start shitting its pants? The urgent timing of the Ashcroft announcement--if all those other reasons are ruled out--would mean what, a dirty bomb has already gone off somewhere, and until we start puking, we won't know it? Mid-air weather balloon or something? Are we being softened up for some worse news? Is there something going on that the govt has been keeping quiet about--an imminent threat--and the timing of the Ashcroft announcement was needed to cover its ass? In that case, I'd say expect that bad thing, whatever it is, within a week.
Personally, I'd rather believe their motives are crass and political, a simple but awkwardly executed campaign to divert the Senate from something, sort of like sending a bulldozer to do something that could have been accomplished with a shovel. Just because it was stupid and risky, a gamble that PR people would not normally make (you don't want a mouthpiece talking so far away you can't control him if he decides to shoot off his mouth--esp in Ashcroft's case, cuz his use of the law in a inconsistent fashion is so idiosyncratic--the flak catchers and spin doctors would want to be prepared to correct something wrong he might say, without being surprised by it themselves--imagine the movie "Wag the Dog, if you will. Not the circumstances, but the role of the handlers, also like in the show "Spin City." The mop up they are always having to do after the Mayor's blunders. Imagine if you were Prince Philip's flak catcher. Not an enviable job.)
I mean, most of us would not fare so well talking in interviews or press conferences. We'd step in something stinky and some flak catcher would have to spring into action and do damage control.
Which is why there is NO WAY they would have let Ashcroft, of all people, a man with a history of giving his flak catchers a workout, make the statement so far away from DC and his full staff--unless something about the situation were not extraordinary. But the dude was in jail for a month. Ashcroft could have made the announcement anytime, and from DC. It is truly a puzzle.
Or we will find out something else extraordinary by the end of the next couple of weeks. Either what they were REALLY trying to warn us about, or what they were trying to hide.
We might say, well, OK, this was a very bad guy. I agree. He probably is a really bad guy.
But even really bad guys are considered by our law as innocent until proven guilty. A silly little document called the Bill of Rights applies to them, PERIOD. Even if we don't like them. Rules of evidence apply. Due process applies. Government in the open applies.
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