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HE'S DEFENDING OUR CIVIL LIBERTIES
Celebrated
defense attorney
A high-profile Jewish defense attorney has come up with a lovely idea in support of George Dubya's self-declared "War on Terrorism. In a new book entitled Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge, Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz, a self-proclaimed champion of civil liberties and oozer of liberal compassion, gives new meaning to the concept of human rights with his call for "torture warrants," as he reveals the Talmudic mindset so typical of his tribe. In this review a noted investigative author and distinguished visiting professor at the University of California at Berkeley offers his thoughts.
Making
Them Talk By JAMES BAMFORD As the United States fights its holy war against the Muslim hordes, new ways must be found to deal with nonbelievers and criminal suspects back home. If celebrity lawyer Alan M. Dershowitz could have his way, those methods would include such Draconian tactics as "torture warrants," collective punishment and national ID cards. "I am willing to think the unthinkable and move beyond any kind of conventional wisdom," he admits in Why Terrorism Works: Understanding the Threat, Responding to the Challenge (Yale University Press). Dershowitz, who has long championed the cause of Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard, spends much of this convoluted book arguing that Ariel Sharon's hard-line approach to the Palestinians has not been hard enough. The sometime civil libertarian also chastises those who seek to understand the "root causes" of the Middle East violence, arguing that it merely plays into the hands of the terrorists. On one of his many visits to Israel, Dershowitz analyzed the Israeli government's program of collective punishment against the Palestinians—demolishing the homes of innocent relatives of those involved in suicide bombing. It is a practice outlawed under international law. Nevertheless, Dershowitz decided to recommend a more effective policy—leveling the buildings in entire villages. "The next time the terrorists attack," he said, "the village's residents would be given twenty-four hours to leave, and then Israeli troops would bulldoze the houses." Dershowitz also came up with the idea of torture while on a visit to Israel. He discovered that the Israeli government regularly used the technique, also long outlawed under international statutes, against Palestinians in custody and thought it might be useful in the United States. After all, he argues, law enforcement does it anyway, so why not legalize it and allow judges to issue "torture warrants"? "I think there would be less torture with a warrant requirement than without one," he argues. Thus if a person still refuses to talk, or tell where a bomb is hidden, after the "torture warrant" has been issued, says Dershowitz, "he would be subjected to judicially monitored physical measures designed to cause excruciating pain without leaving any lasting damage." One form of torture recommended by Dershowitz— "the sterilized needle being shoved under the fingernails."
James Bamford
is the author of Body of Secrets: Anatomy of the Ultra-Secret
National Security Agency, in which he details the Israeli
attack on the USS Liberty, as well as those instances in which
the U.S. government intrigued to use terror and murder against its
own citizens as an instrument of official policy. Now available for
$33 postage paid from: NS Publications PO Box 188 Wayndotte MI 48192.
Remember the LIBERTY?
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