The case that finally made it to the 2nd Circuit Court, Turkmen v. Ashcroft,
was originally filed as a class action in 2002 at a time it was
dangerously daring to challenge the shrub's policies that swept up hundreds of
predominately muslim men after the September 11 terror attacks. Instead
of targeting the shrub White House, which likely would have garnered a
visit from a black ops hit team, the plaintiff’s lawyers only cited
former attorney general John Ashcroft and former F.B.I. director Robert
S. Mueller III as defendants. Filing a lawsuit against the shrub or
his White House in 2002 would have been an insanely foolish, and likely
deadly, move.
There was a similar case
in 2009 to the one the 2nd Circuit just decided, Ashcroft v. Iqbal,
where the Supreme Court ruled another wrongly-detained man was
prohibited from suing Ashcroft and Mueller III. The High Court claimed
that Mr. Iqbal had failed to supply enough detail about what Ashcroft
and Mueller did wrong in rounding him up as a terrorist, but according
to the 2nd Circuit’s ruling this past week, “the plaintiffs cleared that
(legal) hurdle.”
In writing a joint opinion for the 2nd Circuit Court
of Appeals, Judges Rosemary S. Pooler and Richard C. Wesley said that
the eight plaintiffs, who are either Arab or South Asian immigrants,
were unjustly detained, tortured, and generally abused because the shrub junta’s policies after 9/11 informed them that Muslim
immigrants were terrorists. If the shrub junta did not determine
the brown-skinned immigrants were already Al Qaeda terrorists, they did
claim they were ‘suspected terrorists’ based on their “perceived faith
or race” according to the 2nd Circuit.
The eight men were arrested under orders from the shrub junta under the guise of committing the most heinous and
deadly of all immigration violations; working without legal
authorization or overstaying a visa after the shrub family’s Saudi
Arabian friends committed unspeakable acts of terror on 9/11. The truth
is that the men were arrested and seized (according to the 4th
Amendment) because they were “suspected of being muslims,” not because
of petty immigration violations and the 2nd Circuit’s judges were
perfectly capable of working that out of their own accord. The eight
men were detained by the shrub junta for being “suspected
terrorists” and sequestered in jail between three to eight months in New
York and New Jersey, abused by prison guards, and placed in solitary
confinement for extended periods of time.
In fact, according to the 2nd Circuit ruling, “The
suffering endured by those who were imprisoned merely because they were
caught up in the hysteria of the days immediately following 9/11 is not
without a remedy. Holding individuals in solitary confinement 23 hours a
day with regular strip-searches because their perceived faith or race
placed them in the group targeted for recruitment by Al Qaeda violated
the detainees’ constitutional rights.” Further, the judges wrote, “We
simply cannot conclude at this stage that concern for the safety of our
nation justified the violation of the constitutional rights on which
this nation was built. The question at this stage of the litigation is
whether the eight foreigners arrested on immigration charges have
plausibly pleaded that the (shrub) government officials exceeded the
bounds of the Constitution in the wake of 9/11. We believe that they
have. The Constitution defines the limits of the Defendants’ (shrub junta’s) authority. Detaining individuals as if they were
terrorists, in the most restrictive conditions of confinement available,
simply because these individuals were, or appeared to be, Arab or
Muslim exceeds those limits.”
In what has to be the most bizarre, most absurd, and
most typically neo-con thinking possible, particularly for a Circuit
Court judge, Reena Raggi wrote in a 91-page dissenting opinion that no
court was fit to decide if the eight men were illegally detained or if
the shrub junta violated the Constitution in seizing, torturing,
and holding them captive without due process. Judge Raggi, a 2002 shrub appointee, said that deciding what is and is not
constitutional is the sworn duty of the United States government’s
legislative branch, not the judicial branch. It leads one to ponder why the shrub appointed this person who is without a rudimentary comprehension of
the Constitution or what the separate branches of government’s specific
duties are. According to the Constitution Judge Raggi swore to uphold,
it is the judiciary that determines what is constitutional; Congress
makes laws. However, lacking that fundamental knowledge Raggi foolishly
wrote in her dissent that “Congress, not the judiciary, is the
appropriate branch to decide whether the detained aliens should be
allowed to sue executive policymakers in their individual capacities.”
It is a simple task to fathom why the shrub
appointed Raggi to the 2nd Circuit Court. In typical shrub fashion she
railed on the “majority” opinion and said they made a serious error in daring allow a lawsuit against “the nation’s two highest-ranking law enforcement officials for executing (shrub) policies propounded to safeguard the nation in the immediate aftermath of the infamous Al Qaeda terrorist attacks.”
One gets the true neo-con thinking in Raggi’s statement that arresting,
detaining, and abusing eight men because they were perceived as muslims
was a public good and display of tolerance. Seriously, she actually
said that “it is difficult to imagine a public good more demanding
of decisiveness or more tolerant of reasonable judgments than the
protection of this nation and its people from further terrorist attacks.”
Only in neo-con world is the idea of imprisoning and abusing eight
human beings living in America for appearing muslim that made them “suspected terrorists” considered “a public good” or a remotely “reasonable judgment” regardless the reason or who in the shrub White House issued the executive order.
After thirteen years, the eight plaintiff’s lawyer
said the ruling sent a powerful message. A lawyer with the Center for
Constitutional Rights, Rachel Meeropol concurred with the plaintiff’s
lawyer and held out hope there will be more defendants going forward.
Ms. Meeropol opined that, “although punishing low-level perpetrators
is necessary, it is hardly sufficient to prevent future abuse. Orders
came from officials at the highest levels of government. Now we have the
chance to ensure that they are held accountable and not treated as if
they are above the law.”
However well-intentioned Meeropol’s assertion, high
level shrub junta officials are above the law or they would be
sitting in the Hague awaiting trial or waiting to see which prison they
would be spending the rest of their pathetic war criminal lives in.
However, they are above the law and free because here in America the
rule of law is not applicable to Republican war criminals. Why? Because
it is more crucial for Democrats to “look forward” and “not backwards”
at seven-and-a-half years of a Republican junta that regularly
violated the Geneva Convention and the United States Constitution.
However,
it appears that now, thanks in great part to the long-suffering and
perseverance of eight men the shrub’s junta perceived were muslim
and therefore terrorists, and a decision by the 2nd Circuit Court of
Appeals, at least two of the shrub criminals will face their accusers in a
court of law. Sadly the shrub duo is not being sued for war crimes, but
for violating the U.S. Constitution that they do not
believe applies to a Republican junta.
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