Truman over at Irregular Times has an excellent post regarding the use of National Security as a basis for imprisonment, torture, and the general breaking of laws by the U.S. government. Each day seems to bring news that the U.S. government and George Bush are totally out of control. Judge Rules That Justice Is Inconvenient for National Security:

This news comes to us from the Washington Post this morning:

A federal judge yesterday threw out the case of a German citizen who says he was wrongfully imprisoned by the CIA, ruling that Khaled al-Masri’s lawsuit poses a “grave risk” of damage to national security by exposing government secrets… Sources have said Masri was held by the CIA for five months in Afghanistan because of mistaken identity. Masri says he was beaten, sodomized and repeatedly questioned about alleged terrorist ties. But [Judge] Ellis said the remedy cannot be found in the courts. Masri’s “private interests must give way to the national interest in preserving state secrets,'’ the judge wrote in dismissing the lawsuit filed last year against former CIA director George J. Tenet and 10 unnamed CIA officials.


Think about this for a minute, and consider what it says about the radical impact of the right wing judiciary installed by George W. Bush. Judge Ellis ruled that the United States government has the power to break the law, imprison and abuse an innocent person without a trial or hearing of any kind, and never pay the price, so long as the government claims that national security is involved. If Judge Ellis’s ruling stands, is there anything our government could not do, using national security as an excuse?All indications are that Khaled al-Masri was never involved in terrorism. Yet, he was kidnapped and flown by American agents across international borders to a secret prison in order to be tortured. If a person cannot file suit in America for such treatment, what are our courts good for anymore? What good is American law anymore?

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