As the "weak on terror" Wurlitzer winds up once more (it's clockwork, every two years), Sam Stein has a reminder about the Bush DOJ under Ashcroft, a Republican hack who has seen his reputation restored by virtue of not being Alberto Gonzales. It's burnished a bit more by this: his praise of criminal prosecutions--not military commissions, not kangaroo courts--of terrorists.
A document from John Ashcroft's Department of Justice in 2005 praises the work done by criminal prosecutors to put terrorists behind bars.
"Altogether, the Department has brought charges against 375 individuals in terrorism-related investigations, and has convicted 195 to date," the 24-page memo reads. "While every component within the Justice family has contributed to the fight against terror, the men and women of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Criminal Division, the U.S. Attorney's Offices, and the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review have led the Department's work to protect America from terror."
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Titled "Preserving Life and Liberty," the document is a memento of sorts to the spectacular overstatements and exaggerations that the Bush administration often applied to framing the war on terror. In many respects, it's important to take much of the material with a grain of salt.
Still, the whole thing is a worth a read, if only to recall the pride the Bush DoJ took in the criminal convictions they were able to secure in terrorism-related cases -- and how common sense such a judicial process once seemed.
Back in the day, before we knew the extent of the lawlessness of the Bush administration, the outward face was all about the rule of law and American justice. Until the world found out about torture, and then it became all about creating a new beast of military commission where evidence tainted by torture wouldn't be a problem. And of course now the issue for Republicans is that we're not torturing every suspect from the moment they're apprehended.