Liz Cheney: Guilty 'til Proven Innocent

(The New Republic)  Jonathan Chait is a senior editor at The New Republic.

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Earlier this month,the conservative organization Keep America Safe launched a PR fusillade against Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys who represented Guantánamo detainees. "The crux of the matter," says Liz Cheney, chair of the organization, "is the American people have a right to know whether lawyers who used to represent and advocate on behalf of terrorists" are working at DOJ. They just want to know who the terrorist lawyers are. An innocent question, to be sure.

Bill Kristol, a board member for Keep America Safe, chimes in that another question is "whether former pro bono lawyers for terrorists should be working on detainee policy for the Justice Department." Perhaps the terrorist lawyers should have more harmless roles--say, advocating for low-income tenants over at HUD.

The important claim here is not the stated argument that terrorist lawyers should be publicly revealed, or that they shouldn't be working for the DOJ.

It's the assumption that they are representing terrorists. The assumption permeates conservative rhetoric on issues of torture and detainee rights. Consider some brief passages from a recent column by former Bush speechwriter Marc Thiessen:

"Unless they have been charged before military commissions or civilian courts, the al-Qaeda terrorists held at Guantánamo do not have a right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment. They are not accused criminals. They are enemy combatants held in a war authorized by Congress. ... Yet thanks to the habeas campaign, al-Qaeda terrorists who violate the laws of war now enjoy all these privileges. ... [The DOJ lawyers] have reached outside the judicial system and dragged the terrorists in. ... The same is true if they choose to devote their time to freeing America's terrorist enemies from lawful confinement under the laws of war" [emphasis added].

Thiessen makes explicit the position that the rhetoric about "terrorist lawyers" is meant to imply--namely, that terrorists should not have lawyers at all. The conclusion flows naturally when you begin by defining the defendants as "terrorists." The truth, though, is that a good number of these "terrorists" are not terrorists at all. One CIA intelligence analyst well-versed in Islamic extremism who interviewed detainees at Guantánamo determined that one-third had no connection to terrorism at all. A subsequent study by Seton Hall University Law School found that over half of the detainees were not determined to have committed any hostile act against the United States, and only 8 percent were characterized as Al Qaeda fighters.

The vast majority of the detainees were turned in not by U.S. forces but by Pakistani or Afghan locals, many of whom received financial bounties. And some of the detainees were hardly caught red-handed on the battlefield. The process for screening detainees was "horrible," a former Pentagon official told McClatchy newspapers. "'Captured with weapon near the Pakistan border?' Are you kidding me?" This, of course, is why lawyers were needed in the first place.

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[imnho]

Cheney's are arrogant and corupt. When the get politcal power they become even more corupt. During the Vietnam war Cheney's resonse to the draft was that he had other "priorties". In other words it was ok for other people to die in a war, but he should not have to be inconvince by it. He is a pure chickenhawk and does not care how many people he gets killed or who's rights get violated in the process.

[ugot2bekidn]

We get what we pay for. Bush/Cheney ticket got elected not once but twice. The right's political machine continues to crank out bull droppings about there opponents. What bothers me most, is not their machine politics, it's how many people buy into it. I've seen numbers like 20% of the population support the "tea partiers" and the right-wing nut jobs. Disturbing.

[ianlou]

I can't stand Nepotism.

Especially when we would have been far better off without the original.

[taxchurches]

This whole "enemy combatant" bugaboo is *********. The Geneva Conventions (there are 4, to which we are signatory) protect "civilians and persons taken captive in military conflict."

Plus, who cares whether or not they were wearing uniforms? We didn't attack people who were wearing uniforms. In declaring a meaningless and open-ended "War on Terror" we were not attacking a formal army, we were attacking people in mufti. The people we attack can't always rush out and buy a uniform when they decide to protect their homeland which we invaded.

[babooph]

Does Liz get her ideas from the same bottles as her father?

[lawyertom1]

The Bush "lawyers" knew they were doing a work-around to well establish treaties and laws, and providing a rationale for torture, which nearly all experts agree does not work. They were also (very likely) fronts/beards for VP Cheney and his band of crazies. When a lawyer is a prostitute for his client, he acts unethically and should be disbarred. Here the consequences of what they did was obscene, but it is no different than some lawyers who pimp for/enable their mobster clients. In the same category, in terms of the rules lawyers should live by, I would also put those tax attorneys who sell their soul for fees so that their clients can engage in highly questionable (I am being polite, since some shelters are pure scams) tax dodges that saddle the rest of the citizenry with the cost of government services that the dodgers get to enjoy without covering their fair share. Lawyers who defend the downtrodden and less advantaged are engaged in the best aspects of our profession, helping the helpless. All accused are entitled to the presumption of innocence, that is our system which benefits us all. The next time Bill Crystal or Liz Chaney are busted (e.g., DUI, drugs, conspiracy), I hope they also enjoy this benefit of our liberty, a benefit that they would take away from everyone else because, as pure geniuses who are better than the rest of us, they know best. LOL. Hubris in the extreme. May this sin come back to haunt them when they meet their maker.

[noloyalisti]

The Rule of Law in America does not apply to anyone but Faux Noise listening white people. And even then it does not apply if you are rich.

[mikelpond]

ah, Liz Cheney! You know, get we most of our core values from our parents. Does she really hate all Muslims, Democrats and anyone who ever questioned Nixon? Or is she just trying to please daddy? Dick never saw a war he didn't like, or couldn't profit from - I think she's just going into the family buisness. Liz has the credentuals to be a true chickenhawk : she never served a day in the service but she loves her some hot war! but making a profit from it, now that's another thing. Does she have what it takes to lie the country into a war and then take money from the contrators who profit from the war? Only time will tell!

[inventagod]

And how on earth could these "detainees" ever get a fair trial?

Even the 9/11 Commission caved in to DOJ pressure and didn't investigate that atrocity.

http://rawstory.com/2010/03/revealed-ashcroft-tenet-rumsfeld-warned-911-commission-line-should-cross/

[countrycuz1]

Hmmm...Yeah I guess we're better off with Obama's policy of allowing the Pakistanis and Jordanians to do the interrogations. Believe me, their facilities make Gitmo look like a Club Med. As to their techniques for extracting info, let's just say that they make waterboarding look like a day lounging at the pool.