Court: US Gov Officials Free To Do Anything-Even Violate Law & Torture--As Long As They Wear Hoods!

[kpete]

A court decision that reflects what type of country the U.S. is

Even when government officials purposely subject an innocent person to brutal torture, they enjoy full immunity.
By Glenn Greenwald

http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/2a240f03-45c2-4f16-ab64-26efa46d64a4/1/doc/06-4216-cv_opn2.pdf#xml=http://www.ca2.uscourts.gov/decisions/isysquery/2a240f03-45c2-4f16-ab64-26efa46d64a4/1/hilite/....................................

Yesterday, the Second Circuit -- by a vote of 7-4 -- agreed with the government and dismissed Arar's case in its entirety. It held that even if the government violated Arar's Constitutional rights as well as statutes banning participation in torture, he still has no right to sue for what was done to him. Why? Because "providing a damages remedy against senior officials who implement an extraordinary rendition policy would enmesh the courts ineluctably in an assessment of the validity of the rationale of that policy and its implementation in this particular case, matters that directly affect significant diplomatic and national security concerns" (p. 39). In other words, government officials are free to do anything they want in the national security context -- even violate the law and purposely cause someone to be tortured -- and courts should honor and defer to their actions by refusing to scrutinize them.

Reflecting the type of people who fill our judiciary, the judges in the majority also invented the most morally depraved bureaucratic requirements for Arar to proceed with his case and then claimed he had failed to meet them. Arar did not, for instance, have the names of the individuals who detained and abused him at JFK, which the majority said he must have. As Judge Sack in dissent said of that requirement: it "means government miscreants may avoid liability altogether through the simple expedient of wearing hoods while inflicting injury" (p. 27; emphasis added).

The commentary about this case from Harper's Scott Horton perfectly captures the depravity of what our Government has done -- and continues to do -- to Arar. His analysis should be read in its entirety, and he concludes with this:
http://harpers.org/archive/2009/11/hbc-90006024

*****When the history of the Second Circuit is written, the Arar decision will have a prominent place. It offers all the historical foresight of Dred Scott, in which the Court rallied to the cause of slavery, and all the commitment to constitutional principle of the Slaughter-House Cases, in which the Fourteenth Amendment was eviscerated. The Court that once affirmed that those who torture are the “enemies of all mankind” now tells us that U.S. government officials can torture without worry, because the security of our state might some day depend upon it.

more:
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/03/arar/index.html

[drm604]

1. K&R

I don't even know what to say about this. :grr:

[kenny blankenship]

2. Turn your old Klan robes into uniforms of patriotic antiterrorism!

Should easily extend to interrogation of domestic "subversives" too. Who's a subversive you ask? Don't worry. They'll know them when they spot them through the eyeholes of their hoods.

[HillbillyBob]

3. FUCKING INSANE is all I can come up with

and to you idiots calling foul when we say nazi FU!

[kpete]

4. thank you

for saying it, kp

[Octafish]

5. One small kick to the pants of the BFEE.

Those three are most important articles for ALL citizens of the United States to read and remember.

Our country has gone from one fighting the NAZIs to becoming the NAZIs.

[robinlynne]

6. This is terribly sobering. This is dangerous.

[Vidar]

7. Recommended. The Klan is back.