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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (11943)	11/29/2001 1:32:08 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 281500

Ashcroft on the Hot Seat By Howard Kurtz Washington Post Staff Writer Thursday, November 29, 2001; 8:45 AM John Ashcroft is in the bull's-eye again. Just like old times. The Democrats need someone to beat up on, and the attorney general is their man. Early this year, the Dems painted the Justice Department nominee as a racially insensitive, right-wing zealot. At the time, the former Missouri senator had lost his job to a dead man, Mel Carnahan, whose widow Jean was appointed to the seat. But while Ashcroft became the left's favorite bogeyman, he succeeded in rebuilding his reputation and silencing many of the critics during his first months on the job (other than a flap over leading prayer sessions in his office). Now, of course, Ashcroft is the chief law-enforcement officer in the war on terrorism. He's staked out some serious hard-line ground: in favor of detaining hundreds of suspects in secret, eavesdropping on conversations between suspects and their lawyers, military tribunals for terror suspects. Those, of course, are George W. Bush's positions as well. But Ashcroft is a juicier target at the moment. Ashcroft's pushing of the civil liberties envelope has stirred some legitimate opposition, even among conservatives such as New York Times columnist William Safire. But his Hill opponents were having trouble getting ink. So they convened some hearings, which began yesterday. Ashcroft doesn't appear until next week, but all this is clearly aimed at him. ********************************** ...By the way, most Americans support the Ashcroft crackdown, according to a Washington Post/ABC poll: "Six in 10 agree with President Bush that suspected terrorists should be tried in special military tribunals and not in U.S. criminal courts – a proposal that has come under increasing fire from civil libertarians as well as some influential Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. Seven in 10 Americans believe the government is doing enough to protect the civil rights of suspected terrorists." Wall Street Journal editorial page, in a piece called "The Ashcroft 'Fatwa,'" rushes to the man's defense: "The war on terrorism has already given Afghans a taste of long-suppressed freedom. But to hear some Americans talk, you'd think the Taliban had merely transferred their Koranic rules and holy war guidebooks to the Bush Administration, and especially the Justice Department. "A strange-bedfellows coalition of everyone from Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders to the ACLU to Georgia libertarian Bob Barr is sounding alarms that the real threat to liberty comes not from Osama bin Laden, but from Attorney General John Ashcroft. The air is thick with op-ed references to 'star chambers,' 'witch hunts' and 'Orwellian' government. Pat Leahy, who runs the Senate Judiciary Committee, has suggested that the Administration favors 'secret trials' and 'summary executions.' "It all sounds scary, if only it were true. But when you cut through the hysteria, it turns out that what Mr. Ashcroft is proposing is far from threatening. Compared with previous American wars, his actions are quite modest." cont washingtonpost.com