Greg Weiher

 OpEdNews.com

There may be other politicians who have lost elections to dead people, but their names don’t spring readily to mind. When John Ashcroft did, his political career was itself pretty much belly-up. That is until George Bush was made president by the Supreme Court. Shortly after George’s immaculate selection (no relationship with the voters was ever actually consummated) we witnessed Ashcroft’s second coming, this time as Attorney General of the United States.

After his near-death experience, Ashcroft seems to be wonderfully liberated from even the modest burdens of conscience and character that he bore during his years as a senator. And his resurrection has been mightily assisted by 9/11. When the dust from the World Trade Center had cleared, it quickly became apparent that John had found a dog that would hunt.

Ashcroft was at the forefront of those pushing for the American Patriot Act. When others appeared ready to accept something less than full abrogation of the Constitution, Ashcroft simply pointed out that subsequent terrorist slaughters would be on their heads, not his.

In the aftermath of the Patriot Act’s passage, a pattern emerged that is now well-established. For instance, Ashcroft’s Justice Department greatly overstated the number of terror convictions it secured in the first year after 9/11. Of 288 claimed convictions, 132 could not be verified as terrorist related. Of 174 convictions supposedly involving international terrorism, a terrorist connection could be verified in only 43. Justice Department officials said the mistakes were caused by a lack of time to evaluate cases fully. Full evaluation has not been the forté of the Justice Department during Ashcroft’s tenure.

His latest expropriation of the symbols of 9/11 involved the charge that a Somali immigrant, Nuradin Abdi, was a conspirator in an Al Qaeda plot to bomb a shopping mall in Ohio. Can John pick ‘em or what? This one includes all of the Satanic elements, from a Muslim foreigner manipulating American generosity (give me your huddled masses) to the hideously evil, if somewhat amorphous, Al Qaeda. And what could be more evocative to the American psyche than the alleged target of the alleged attack? A shopping mall!

Given the American national credo (Purchaso ergo sum), bombing a shopping mall in the U.S. would be like destroying a mosque in Iraq or the Wailing Wall in Israel. Have they no shame?

Of course the juicy stuff was all played up at the press conference and crowded into the headlines. The more prosaic details, like the fact that this fellow never came near to actually hurting anybody, don’t show up until you get into the story. In the New York Times, for instance, it is not until the fourth paragraph that one reads “Law enforcement officials . . .

cautioned that [the plot] appeared not to have advanced beyond the discussion stage. The officials expressed doubt that Mr. Abdi had the financial, organizational or technical skills to carry out an attack.” In other words, in ranking terrorists, Mr. Abdi falls among those who don’t have much more than a gleam in their eyes.

This recalls the case of Jose Padilla who was outed by Ashcroft at a similar press conference about two years ago. Padilla, Ashcroft solemnly intoned, was part of an Al Qaeda plot to explode a dirty bomb in an American city. Not just a bomb, mind you, but a dirty bomb! The dirty son-of-a-bitch!

It was only about two weeks ago that Ashcroft called another press conference to say that terrorists were “about 90 percent ready . . . to hit the United States and hit it hard.” He cautioned Americans to be on the lookout for seven particularly odious terrorists, beaming their swarthy faces into homes across America.

Again, be sure to read the fine print. The reactions of other administration officials revealed that Ashcroft was free-lancing on this one. The Department of Homeland Security was not consulted or asked about sounding additional alarms.

Ray McGovern, the former CIA analyst, pointed out that the supposed Al Qaeda spokesman who said that arrangements for an attack were 90% complete was from a group who “have claimed responsibility for the power blackout in the Northeast last year, a power outage in London, and the March 11 train bombings in Madrid.” A “former deputy to counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, notes, ‘The only thing they haven’t claimed credit for recently is the cicada invasion of Washington.’”

Furthermore, the announcement by Ashcroft offered no new information. An administration spokesman said, “There’s no real new intelligence, and a lot of this has been out there already.” Newsweek reported that the U.S.

counterterrorism officials it contacted “were aware of no sudden surge in “chatter” . . . or other indicators of a possible imminent attack.” The New York Times noted that “The names of six of the seven [suspects] were publicly circulated by the authorities months ago, and . . . that they had no reason to believe any of the seven suspects were in the United States.”

At this point, the irreverent may start to ask if Ashcroft’s splashy announcements reflect concern for the welfare of Americans, or if they aren’

t self-serving. The greater the perceived threat, after all, the more necessary Ashcroft’s bogeyman-busting services seem to be.

The question here is not whether there are really terrorists out there plotting ill for the United States. There certainly are. The more pressing issue is whether by continually crying “terrorist” Ashcroft is doing anything to protect Americans from them. After all, some of the bad guys are seriously competent at killing people. Have you drawn a bead on any of those John?