The Wall Street Journal and the case of Jose Padilla

The editorial exemplified the cynicism and dishonesty that are the stock in trade of the Journal’s editorial page. Dripping with contempt for the bedrock issues of democratic rights involved in the Padilla case, the editorial began: “It’s hard to pinpoint the precise moment when Jose Padilla became a liberal icon in the war on terror.”

The summary imprisonment of Padilla is a high-water mark in the Bush administration’s assault on democratic rights. One month after the arrest of Brooklyn-born Padilla by civilian authorities in Chicago’s O’Hare Airport, Bush issued a one-page order declaring Padilla to be an “enemy combatant.” Based on no other legal process, Padilla was transferred to a naval brig in South Carolina where he spent 42 months, the first 22 of which he was held incommunicado.

Then-Attorney General John Ashcroft went on national television to announce that the action was taken because Padilla was involved in a terrorist operation to detonate a radioactive “dirty bomb” in the United States. Two years later, however, a deputy United States attorney claimed that the plot was actually to fill New York apartments with natural gas and explode them. There has never been an evidentiary hearing in any court on either accusation.

The government’s issuing of a criminal indictment last week meant that Padilla would no longer be held in military detention, but would instead be prosecuted in the civilian court system. The indictment announced by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales accused Padilla of conspiring to wage “jihad” overseas. It made no mention of the domestic terrorism allegations used to justify his being declared an “enemy combatant” and thrown into the black hole of indefinite military detention.

This glaring omission alone makes clear the contrived, if not entirely invented, character of those charges, and the fact that the case was motivated by reactionary political considerations from the outset. Ashcroft’s sensational announcement of Padilla’s alleged terror plot was part and parcel of a systematic effort by the Bush administration to frighten the American people in order to justify unprecedented attacks on democratic rights at home and the buildup for war overseas, all in the name of the “global war on terrorism.”

The November 21 indictment was timed to head off an impending Supreme Court battle. According to the petition for certiorari filed by Padilla’s lawyers, the question presented is whether the president has “the power to seize American citizens in civilian settings on American soil and subject them to indefinite military detention without criminal charge or trial.” Gonzales claims that because the administration has released Padilla from military custody to stand trial in a Florida federal court, the issue is now “moot” and, therefore, the Supreme Court should not consider it.

Padilla’s lawyers intend to press forward in the Supreme Court on the basis that the Bush administration continues to deem Padilla an “enemy combatant” and may send him back to military custody at any time.

The Journal editorial of November 25 lashed out at “liberal reaction to Padilla’s indictment,” writing, “the implication—contrary to what the courts have ruled—is that he is an innocent man held illegally for three and a half years.” This passage is a deliberate misrepresentation of the standpoint of those who have opposed the Bush administration’s assertion of quasi-dictatorial powers in the case, as well as court rulings which have gone against the administration’s position.

The editorial writers dishonestly conflate the question of whether Padilla was involved in any illegal or hostile actions with whether the Bush administration should be required to establish in a court of law the legal basis for depriving a person of his liberty. They construct this amalgam to discredit those who oppose Bush’s wholesale assault on constitutional rights by painting them as terrorist sympathizers.

The editorial cites a reactionary ruling on the Padilla case handed down last September by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals as asserting “that the President ‘unquestionably’ has the right to detain a US citizen who has taken up arms against his country.” The wording here is contrived to evade a central issue with vast implications for democratic rights.

How is it to be established that a US citizen took up arms against his country? (In the case of Padilla, the person imprisoned was seized not on a battlefield, but at a US airport). By a one-page presidential order, untested in court? What is implicitly denied is the basic right of a person put in prison to challenge the factual charges made by the state, and the principle that such matters of fact are settled through a judicial process, in which the accused is presumed innocent until the state proves the contrary.

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http://wsws.org/articles/2005/dec2005/wsj-d01.shtml