04 September 2016
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Throughout the Cold War, the U.S. national-security state told the American
people that it was necessary for America to go over to the dark side in order
to combat the threat of communism and the Soviet Union. By that, they meant
adopting policies and practices employed by the communists. It was a mindset
akin to fighting fire with fire.
That's how America ended up with a formal program of assassination, whereby
U.S. agents wielded the power to assassinate people around the world who were
suspected of being communists, despite the fact that the victims had never
initiated any force against the United States. It was essentially a system of
legalized murder or, as President Lyndon Johnson termed the program, ''Murder,
Inc.''
It's also how the national-security state ended up with the authority to oust
democratically elected regimes in which people had elected the ''wrong''
people (i.e., communists or communist sympathizers) to be their president or
prime minister.
It's also how the federal government embraced the top-secret medical
experimentation program known as MKULTRA, whose records were destroyed by CIA
officials when the program came to light, a program that could easily have
been modeled after the medical experimentation program of National Socialist
Germany, many of whose officials were secretly being hired by the CIA after
World War II.
And of course there was a formalized program of torture, as manifested by
Operation Phoenix in the Vietnam War, a war that sacrificed more than 58,000
American men in the purported attempt to keep America from being taken over by
the communists.
Indeed, the entire national-security state apparatus, which was grafted onto
America's governmental system after World War II, was justified as a response
to the Soviet communist threat, notwithstanding the fact that the Soviet Union
was a national-security state as well.
Unfortunately, with the end of the Cold War, that dark-side mindset did not
disappear. Not only did the national-security state apparatus stay in
existence, so did its assassination program, its regime-change program, and
other dark-side practices, many of which had been employed the communists.
Among the most evident manifestations of the communist-like policies that U.S.
national-security state officials adopted was the ''judicial'' system they
established at Guantanamo Bay — a system that would have fit perfectly within
the Soviet regime of Joseph Stalin.
There is no better example of this phenomenon than the case of Abu Zubaydah,
the man who has been incarcerated by the U.S. national-security state for over
14 years. If there was ever a case that shocks the conscience, it is that one.
When U.S. national-security state officials first took Zubaydah into custody,
they were 100 percent convinced that he was a high official in al Qaeda, which
was the U.S. national-security establishment's official enemy of the day at
that time.
According to an article in yesterday's New York Times, during the entire 14
years that Zubaydah has been in custody, he has never been seen by the outside
world. When the outside world saw him for the first time at a hearing held
this week, one of the things that people noticed about him was the fact that
U.S. officials, in some way, had destroyed one of his eyes as part of their
top-secret torture and brutality system that they established early on at
Gitmo.
Blinding him in one eye wasn't all that they did to Zubaydah. He was the first
detainee to be waterboarded, a brutal process that subjects a person to the
feeling that he is drowning. Unfortunately for Zubaydah, they didn't
waterboard him only once or twice or even 10 times. They waterboarded him a
total of 83 times. Yes, you read that right — 83 times!
Why did they do that so many times? Because – remember: they were absolutely,
100 percent convinced that Zubaydah was a top official in al-Qaeda, and so
when he refused to disclose the information they were certain he possessed
after the first few dozen times they waterboarded him, they were convinced
that it was because of his top-notch training as a top-line terrorist. When a
terrorist suspect isn't opening up and talking, there is only one thing to do:
waterboard him again and again again until he gives up the information.
Why did they stop at 83? That's not exactly clear. But it could have something
to do with the fact that they finally realized that they had made a mistake —
that Zubaydah wasn't a top al-Qaeda official after all and, therefore, didn't
possess the information that they were trying to get out of him with their 83
waterboardings.
Why hasn't Zubaydah come to trial? After all, isn't that what the Pentagon's
''judicial'' system is supposed to be — an alternative to the judicial system
established by the Constitution? Isn't 14 years a sufficient amount of time to
give a person a trial?
The reason he hasn't been provided a trial in 14 years is because the Pentagon
and the CIA don't want to give him a trial. Equally important, they know that
none of the other three branches, including the judicial branch, wields the
power to force them to give him a trial.
What they've done to Zubaydah is no different from how the North Korean
communists treat people who they consider are threats to the national security
of North Korea. Don't forget, after all, that North Korea is a
national-security state too, just like the United States became to fight the
Cold War. When the North Korean communists take a person into custody who they
suspect is a threat to national security, they do the same things to him that
the U.S. national security state has done to Zubaydah and other suspected
terrorists.
That's not the America that the Framers envisioned when they called the
federal government into existence. They didn't want an America where the
government could torture people, gouge their eyes out, isolate them from the
world, keep them imprisoned for as long as they want, or execute them without
trial or due process of law. That's why our American ancestors adopted the
Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, and Eight Amendments to the Constitution — to ensure
that everyone, no matter how dangerous or no matter how guilty, would be
guaranteed a speedy trial, due process of law, trial by jury, and other
procedural guarantees. The last thing they wanted for America was the
communist type system that the U.S. national-security state runs and operates
in Cuba.
Even Zubaydah's hearing this week was bizarre. It wasn't a trial where
evidence was submitted to determine guilt or innocence. Instead, it was a
hearing to determine whether he is ''dangerous.'' Presumably, if the Pentagon
determines that he's not ''dangerous,'' he will be released without ever
having to go to trial. If the Pentagon determines that he is ''dangerous,''
which is a virtual certainty, then he will be returned to his isolated state
to await a trial that is always pending but never arrives.
I'll bet that George Orwell wouldn't be surprised at what the Pentagon and CIA
have done at Gitmo. I'll bet that Stalin wouldn't be either. Both of them
fully understood the nature of governments that become national-security
states.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom
Foundation. He was born and raised in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in
economics from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree from the
University of Texas. He was a trial attorney for twelve years in Texas. He
also was an adjunct professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the practice of law to become
director of programs at the Foundation for Economic Education. He has
advanced freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all across the
country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto and Greta van Susteren shows and
he appeared as a regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch. View these interviews at LewRockwell.com and from Full
Context.
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