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Did
you know that John Ashcroft has announced that
he intends to put "U.S. citizens he deems
to be enemy combatants" into camps? Well
best selling author Michael Moore has heard about
it and it reminds him of the Nazi concentration
camps...
"Meanwhile,
Attorney General John Ashcroft proposed camps--and
not the kind where you make 'Smores over a campfire--for
US citizens who he deems enemy combatants. Detainees
at these concentrated camps would be stripped
of their Constitutional rights. With only two
"enemy combatants" so far, we'll have
to find some more soon to make it a really good,
fun camp. All hail the mutterland!"
The
Democratic Underground has heard all about Ashcroft's
plan too. For them it hearkens back to Japanese
internment camps from WW2....
"Attorney
General John Ashcroft has got some fabulous new
ideas for Dubya's war on terror. The latest and
greatest idea is one which will not be unfamiliar
to those who remember World War II: internment
camps!"
Other
publications like the "Online Journal"
seemed puzzled as to why this story hasn't been
all over the news....
"George
W. Bush's power-crazed attorney general, John
Ashcroft, is now proposing to set up "camps
for U.S. citizens he deems to be 'enemy combatants.'"
You
probably didn't hear a word about this on so-called
television news and definitely not on Wednesday
night's Nightline"
Indeed,
the Online Journal was correct. Although this
story has spread far and wide across the internet,
it's gotten very little attention from the mainstream
press with one notable exception (which will be
discussed shortly). For example, I did a search
for the words "Ashcroft" & "Camps"
on CNN, Fox News, & MSNBC and I didn't find
a single reference to this story. That seems a
bit odd at first glance doesn't it? You'd think
a story like this would create a virtual tsunami
of hostile press coverage. Oddly enough, every
single reference to this story that I found on
the net seemed to be somehow linked to a single
editorial written by Johnathan Turley in the LA
Times.
In
Turley's August 14th piece called 'Camps for Citizens:
Ashcroft's Hellish Vision,' Johnathan Turley states
over and over again in the article that John Ashcroft
intends to create "camps" for American
citizens.
In
Turley's editorial, the word "camp"
or "camps" appears eight times. Turley
refers to Ashcroft's "announced desire for
camps." He twice mentions Ashcroft's "camp
plan." Later in the article, a shocked Turley
notes that Ashcroft's wants to 'reestablish' camps
like the Japanese internment camps from WW2. Apparently
the "only" difference is that Ashcroft
is "thinking smaller,"
"Few
would have imagined any attorney general seeking
to reestablish such camps for citizens. Of course,
Ashcroft is not considering camps on the order
of the internment camps used to incarcerate Japanese
American citizens in World War II. But he can
be credited only with thinking smaller."
Considering
that the WW2 camps held a 120,000+ Americans that
still gives Ashcroft a lot of room to work with.
Just in case the point hasn't already been driven
home yet, Turley finishes with this,
"Every
generation has its test of principle in which
people of good faith can no longer remain silent
in the face of authoritarian ambition. If we cannot
join together to fight the abomination of American
camps, we have already lost what we are defending."
Indeed
the specter of Japanese internment camps or worse
yet, Nazi-style concentration camps, would certainly
be a frightening prospect. But again, why wasn't
the mainstream press jumping all over this one?
I found that puzzling...at first.
So
I decided to do a little more research into Ashcroft's
"camp plan." According to Turley's article,
"Ashcroft's plan" was "disclosed
last week but little publicized." That's
not a lot to go on, but when you have Google at
your fingertips this type of research usually
isn't all that hard.
Unfortunately,
in this case I couldn't find anything about Ashcroft's
"camp plan" that didn't seem to be directly
related to Turley's article. It looked as if "Ashcroft's
plan" was "little publicized" indeed.
So I decided to contact Mr. Turley himself from
my Brass Knuckles Webzine email account to see
if he could tell me where the story came from.
Much to my surprise, he promptly replied this
morning,
"The
quick answer to your question is that no formal
policy has been issued. The disclosure of the
proposal first appeared in the Wall Street Journal
on August 8th with confirmation from various unnamed
aides to Ashcroft. Since the op-ed in the LA Times,
various newspapers have confirmed the story and
the internal deliberations over the structure
and locations of such camps. The WSJ article has
never been denied. There was no formal statement
issued by Ashcroft and members of Congress are
now inquiring into the status of the proposal.
I hope that this helps."
I
certainly appreciated the reply Mr. Turley gave
me. However, while he gets an "A" for
courtesy, his grade for accuracy appears to be
"F."
To
begin with, saying that "no formal policy
has been issued" seems to be odds with Mr.
Turley's talk of an "Ashcroft plan."
Furthermore, despite Turley's claim that "various
newspapers have confirmed the story and the internal
deliberations over the structure and locations
of such camps," I could only find one story
in over an hour of searching that seemed to tie
the August 8th WSJ story to the creation of "camps"
in any way whatsoever. That was on the World Socialist
Web Site and even though they were obviously familiar
with both articles, they concluded Turley's editorial
referred to an "additional proposal"....
"To
accommodate this new group of prisoners, a special
wing to hold 20 US citizens has been prepared
at the Goose Creek, South Carolina Navy Brig.
According to George Washington University Professor
of Law Jonathan Turley, Attorney General John
Ashcroft last week announced an additional proposal
to construct detention camps for US citizens deemed
“enemy combatants.”
It's
easy to see why they came to that conclusion since
the story Turley mentions as his source makes
absolutely no mention of any "camps"
being created by the US government or any sort
of Ashcroft "camp plan."
The
article called "White House Seeks to Expand
Indefinite Detentions in brigs" focuses on
the "constitutional showdown" between
the Bush administration and the Federal courts
over the 'enemy combatant' status of Jose Padilla
& Yaser Hamdi. Presumably, Turley's entire
screed in the LA Times sprang from the third paragraph
of the piece,
"The
White House is considering creating a high-level
committee to decide which prisoners should be
denied access to federal courts. The Goose Creek,
S.C., facility that houses Mr. Padilla -- mostly
empty since it was designated in January to hold
foreigners captured in the U.S. and facing military
tribunals -- now has a special wing that could
be used to jail about 20 U.S. citizens if the
government were to deem them enemy combatants,
a senior administration official said."
First
off, whatever you may think of possibly jailing
20 "enemy combatants" without trial,
doing so certainly does not in any way, shape,
or form mean you've created a "camp."
Furthermore, how does imprisoning 20 men in one
Navy brig somehow constitute creating "camps",
much less having a "camp plan?" Worse
yet, to compare jailing less than two dozen people
believed to be connected to terrorist organizations
to putting 120,000+ Americans in camps based on
their ethnicity goes beyond gross exaggeration
into what many people would call deliberate deception.
This
editorial raises a number of troubling questions.
First off, why did Turley himself not mention
that the Wall Street Journal article was the source
for his claim right up front? Moreover, how is
it that a paper with the stature of the Los Angeles
Times could publish an editorial making these
sorts of outrageous claims without asking the
writer to disclose his source? Also, why hasn't
the LA Times been plastering their front page
with screaming headlines about this incredible
"scoop" that they've broken on their
editorial page? Could it be that they did a little
more research and found that the story had no
merit? If so, why didn't they set the record straight?
Whatever the case may be, the LA Time's readers
deserve an explanation. Either the LA Times should
explain why they're unconscionably sitting on
a huge story or they should make it clear that
they've misled their readers. Sadly, I suspect
that the latter is the case and that no correction
will be forthcoming.
John
Hawkins is the Editor of Right
Wing News
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