[wordup] Dershowitz advocates torture?!

[Adam Shand]

This is two articles, the first from Dershowitz and the second a dose of
reality from a reportor.  Read the second even if you just scan the first.

Adam.

Via: Jon Callas <jon at callas.org>
From: http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/news/D2614FEED949540D86256AFB0043EB5B?OpenDocument&highlight=2%2Cdershowitz?opendocument&headline=U.S.+now+might+have+to+consider+what+once+was+unthinkable,+Dershowitz+says

[Editor's note: This one goes past my threshold of reality. I can't do
anything but laugh. And I fully expect to have to run a retraction, or
perhaps I hope I do. -- jdcc]

U.S. now might have to consider what once was unthinkable, Dershowitz says
By Tina Hesman
11/04/2001 06:07 AM

Americans may have to consider ideas as foreign as truth serums and
torture warrants when thinking about striking a balance between liberty
and security after the terrorist attacks Sept. 11.

That was the message celebrity lawyer and civil libertarian Alan M.
Dershowitz delivered to a crowd packed into a gymnasium Sunday at the
Jewish Community Center in Creve Coeur. Dershowitz was the opening speaker
for the Jewish Book Fair.

He originally was scheduled to talk about his book "Supreme Injustice," a
critical account of the Supreme Court's ruling on the presidential
election last year. But Dershowitz instead turned his comments to civil
liberties.

"I'm not in the mood to start being critical of the legitimacy of the
president at a time like this," he said.

Dershowitz said he always supported the philosophy that it was better to
let criminals go free than to unjustly detain innocent people. But he
suggested that terrorist acts should make civil rights activists readjust
their thinking on some issues.

The American Civil Liberties Union nearly revoked his membership for
suggesting that national identity cards should be required, he said. The
cards would carry basic information - a person's name and Social Security
number - and a picture, he proposed.

Law enforcement officials and security workers could request to see the
cards to verify the identity of a person at any time, he said. The civil
libertarians are opposed to such a measure because they say it would
violate the right to privacy.

Dershowitz counters that the measure does not violate privacy rights but
does take away a guarantee of anonymity that terrorists have used to their
advantage.

It's time to reassess laws and decide how to deal with situations that may
arise when dealing with terrorists, he said. Legislators should evaluate
and revise quarantine laws before a wholesale bioterrorism attack strikes
the United States, he said, calling the current anthrax attacks "retail
bioterrorism."

Americans need to consider what measures should be allowed to get
information from unwilling terror suspects, he said. After law enforcement
officials have asked, begged, cajoled, threatened and bribed a
close-mouthed witness, they may need to take more drastic measures to
elicit vital information, Dershowitz said.

Americans should begin thinking about whether it would be permissible to
grant the suspect immunity from prosecution and then administer truth
serum.

Even torture may not be off the table as an information-gathering tool,
Dershowitz said. But there must be a national debate about the
circumstances in which torture is permissible and who should have the
power to decide when to use it. Dershowitz suggested that judges could
issue torture warrants in certain cases.

Americans must plan their approach to these disquieting issues carefully
and not allow the basic values of the country to erode, he said.

"If Osama bin Laden comes out with a white flag, we'd darned well better
arrest him. We're still a country under the rule of law," Dershowitz said.

Dershowitz, a professor from Harvard who has been called the lawyer of
last resort, said that even he wouldn't take bin Laden's case.

"That's not a call I want to get."

Via: The Eristocracy <Eristocracy at merrymeet.com>
From: Tom Parmenter <tompar at world.std.com>

When I covered the Criminal Courts in Chicago in the early 60's, I was
shown worn grooves on the top of the doorframe between the door and the
transom window.  It was said these were marks made by slinging a rope over
the door and hoisting a prisoner with hands tied behind his back to help
him remember what he wanted to say.  This was in the prosecutor's office,
not the police station.  The grooves were well varnished over by the time
I saw them.  The only brutality I ever actually witnessed was committed by
an old-time police reporter in a police station and the cops made him quit
pushing the prisoner around. Not to say it didn't happen.

It was also a commonplace at the time that the capital-punishment
statistics were off because they didn't count people killed when caught
committing a crime.  There was at least one fatal ambush of a gang of
supermarket robbers while I was covering police and crime.

The police frame guilty people much more often than they frame innocent
people.

That is to say it won't be the end of the world if Dershowitz is right,
but it was damned disconcerting then and it still is now.

Tom P.
"I used to be a reporter myself."