John Ashcroft

“At 3 am on 9-11-2001 according to a local family who had a niece in the USMC based at the Pentagon, she received a call to report to duty and her unit was put on full military alert.

redhawk


I have a cousin that knows someone whos ex brother in-law has a neighbor that overheard the same thing so I guess that proves it.
Bush knew it was coming and just figured oh well....

FUEGO”

“Wow isn't that interesting, let's see here though, my dad was put on alert quite often when he was stationed at Norfolk. And yet there weren't any terror attacks back then.... hmmmmmmmm... maybe because it's a standard response to non-specific intelligence....”

“Hey, no fair bringing facts into it.”

“Scum-sucker Ashcroft blames Clinton for the 9/11 failure. The scum-sucker wasn't even interested in terrorism in 2001 before 9/11. This S.O.B. Bush administration needs to be taken behind the barn and horse-whipped.”

“I hear the guy is a great dancer.”

“geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee



hawwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwddd



busssssssssssssssssshhhhshshshhhhhh”

“Ashcroft REALLY cracked me up today talking about how the Iraqis had "evil biology and evil chemistry" LMAO --

Lookout John! They probably had a couple of those eeevil calico cats too! Iraqi women even have those evil breasts!

Somebody call the freakin' Strategic Air Command.”

“ASHCROFT ROASTS THE CLINTON ADMINISTRATION

If there is one man the Bush-haters hate more than Bush, it's John Ashcroft. To the left, he might as well be the devil himself. Anyway, Attorney General John Ashcroft testified yesterday before the 9/11 Blame Commission and dropped a bombshell. And it's about time somebody said it...these "hearings" have turned into a partisan debacle, so the Bush administration is fighting back.

Ashcroft blamed the Clinton administration for leaving America open to attack, saying that the attacks of 9/11 happened because "for nearly a decade our government had blinded itself to our enemies." The Democrats on this commission and their buddies in the media want to start assigning blame, then let's put it where it belongs. Ashcroft went on to say that once in office, he moved to overturn a failed policy that was restricting American agents from killing Osama Bin Laden, allowing only capture. For eight long years, that was the Democratic approach...treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem. "Even if they could have penetrated Bin Laden's training camps, they would have needed a battery of lawyers" to take action, he said. This hits the nail right on the head folks. The media is roasting the Bush administration over some vague memo before 9/11 when the Clinton administration had Bin Laden in their sites on several occasions? Spare me.

If these people want to pin the 9/11 attacks on somebody, they're talking to the wrong administration.”

“Send Freak Boy back to Missouri in November.”

“tilt tilt tilt....you always have a slogan...but never offer any substance to back up your hatred of the administration.

the one liners are cute but won't fool the voters....

any real thoughts in that head of yours? besides trig i mean...”

“Like I said before, the best defense is a good offense. And this bunch is running with that!”

“Ashcroft went on to say that once in office, he moved to overturn a failed policy that was restricting American agents from killing Osama Bin Laden, allowing only capture. For eight long years, that was the Democratic approach...treating terrorism as a law enforcement problem....
-strat

Riiiight, and never mind that Clinton tried to kill Osama with Tomahawk missiles.”

“Strat supports a politician who can only think in terms of bumper stickers... yet has the audacity to accuse others of sloganising?

Tsk. Tsk.


Ya gotta love the irony.”

“Riiiight, and never mind that Clinton tried to kill Osama with Tomahawk missiles."
USA
10:22:29 PM
04/14/04

You talking about when he was hiding out in the aspirin factory?”

“Ashcrack is so hated in Missouri that people voted in a dead guy rather than have that christofascist scumbag in office.

Any man who is scared of a stone boob loses all credibility about, well, pretty much everything.

This is just further proof that the religous right is comprised of a bunch of scumf*cks.”

“He is also afeared of tabby cats.

They are from de debil.”

“but what about all those conspiracy theories that the big 4 allowed 9-11 to happen? Yup, you heard it here first, Bush,Cheney,Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft needed 9-11 to happen so they could push their military agendas with the US public approval. fromthewilderness.com”

“(The New Republic) This column from The New Republic was written by Jason Zengerle.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

It's an illuminating experience when John Ashcroft goes to testify on Capitol Hill. Who can forget his appearance, two and a half years ago, before the Senate Judiciary Committee when he said civil libertarian critics of the Justice Department "only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve?" Ashcroft was rightly pilloried for that comment and, since then, the mere derisive mention of his name has become a guaranteed applause line for Democrats across the country. Indeed, Ashcroft is now such a bogeyman that it's almost tempting to feel sorry for the guy. You find yourself thinking: He can't be that bad, can he? But then Ashcroft goes up to the Hill, as he did yesterday to testify before the 9/11 Commission, and he gives a performance that makes you conclude his harshest critics aren't nearly harsh enough.

The deck was stacked against Aschroft even before he was sworn in yesterday. In one of its staff reports, the 9/11 Commission had already offered a harsh assessment of Ashcroft's performance before the attacks, portraying him as uninterested in terrorism issues and unresponsive to pleas from the FBI to beef up its counterterrorism efforts. And earlier that day former acting FBI director Thomas Pickard and former FBI counterterrorism chief Dale Watson — two of the main sources for the negative information about Ashcroft contained in the staff report — had expanded on their criticism of the attorney general in public testimony before the commission.

By the time Ashcroft's turn arrived, some fairly serious charges about him were on the table. Why, one day after telling the Senate in May 2001, that combating terrorist attacks was his highest priority, did Ashcroft issue a memo outlining the Justice Department's strategic goals that didn't mention counterterrorism -- a memo that Watson testified almost made him fall out of his chair? Why, in the summer of 2001, did Ashcroft reject a request from Pickard for an extra $58 million to help the FBI combat al Qaeda? And why did Ashcroft, after being briefed twice by Pickard on terrorist threats that summer, tell the acting FBI director that he didn't want to hear about the matter anymore?

The gravity of these charges was undoubtedly why, in his opening statement to the 9/11 Commission, Ashcroft went on the offensive in a way that no witness testifying to the Commission has before. The attorney general blamed the failure to prevent 9/11 on the "wall," a government-imposed legal barrier that prevented intelligence investigators from sharing information with criminal investigators. Disparaging the wall is, in itself, relatively uncontroversial: Not long after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration and Congress tore down the wall as part of the Patriot Act, a decision that a federal appeals court upheld in November 2002. But then Ashcroft went a step further: He claimed the Clinton administration was responsible for building the "wall" in the first place -- and that the administration's primary bricklayer had been none other than current 9/11 Commissioner Jamie Gorelick. Brandishing a secret memo that Gorelick wrote as deputy attorney general in 1995 -- a memo that Ashcroft had helpfully declassified for the occasion -- the current attorney general declared, "Somebody built this wall. ... Full disclosure compels me to inform you that the author of this memorandum is a member of the Commission."

It was a smug bit of political theater, but it was both disingenuous and irrelevant to the proceedings at hand. For one thing, Gorelick didn't exactly build the wall on her own. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which established a secret intelligence court and relaxed the standard Fourth Amendment rule requiring "probable cause" when the government sought search warrants for the "primary purpose" of gathering foreign intelligence. But over the years, in order to prevent criminal investigators from abusing FISA -- and its lower threshold for obtaining search warrants -- the government built a wall to keep criminal and intelligence investigations separate. Gorelick's memo merely codified what was already standard practice. What's more, if Ashcroft really thought the wall was such an impediment to combating terrorism, he could have moved to tear it down himself before 9/11. But as 9/11 Commissioner Slade Gorton, a former Republican senator from Washington, noted, the Bush Justice Department actually ratified the existence of the wall, noting in its own secret memorandum on August 6, 2001, that "the 1995 procedures remain in effect today."

The Gorelick memo was a way for Ashcroft to turn the harsh spotlight on someone other than himself -- which he needed to do since his responses to the criticisms leveled by Pickard and Watson were decidedly unpersuasive. Ashcroft initially said that the May 2001 memo that didn't list counterterrorism as one of DOJ's top priorities -- the memo that almost made Watson fall out of his chair -- was based on a strategic plan issued by his predecessor, Janet Reno. But he also conceded that Reno's strategic plan did indeed include mentions of terrorism. As for his rejection in the summer of 2001 of Pickard's request for $58 billion more in counterterrorism money for the FBI, Ashcroft tried to fudge matters by noting that the FBI was working under a Clinton administration budget when the attacks occurred and that the first Bush budget for the FBI, which was for fiscal year 2002, substantially increased counterterrorism spending. But of course it did; that budget was crafted after the 9/11 attacks. Finally, Ashcroft just denied that he ever told Pickard he didn't want any more briefings on terrorism issues. That left Ashcroft in a he-said/he-said dispute with a career FBI agent whose integrity -- unlike the attorney general's -- has never before been questioned.

Ashcroft's testimony amounted to an attempt to blame his own failures on others -- Clinton, Reno, and, most inappropriately, Gorelick. Alas, it might work. Just one day after the Commission offered such a harsh assessment of Ashcroft's performance -- an assessment which Ashcroft failed to contradict convincingly -- it's Gorelick, rather than the attorney general, who is under fire. Today House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Sensenbrenner called for Gorelick's resignation. Isn't it time someone called for Ashcroft's?

Jason Zengerle is an associate editor at TNR.”

“FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

From: John Ashcroft, Attorney General and Snake-Handling, Tongue-Talking Child of God


To: All American so-called citizens who are not currently registered to vote with God's Own Party, the GOP


Re: Your legal obligation to identify yourself as a Godless Liberal

This administration continues its glorious crusade against all ideas inconvenient or novel. Our primary objective of cowering those who express such annoying thoughts into silence (or, at a minimum, neglect by all media) is moving briskly along ahead of schedule and with far less opposition than we could have ever dreamed. Nevertheless, we have not lost sight of the need to brand potential America-haters who have not yet expressed opinions contrary to this administration, but show a statistical likelihood to do so in the near or remote future.

To assist in our new and all-encompassing domestic surveillance of folks that rub the GOP, and therefore the Lord Jesus, the wrong way, as of March 1, 2003 all people who have not given $5,000 in the preceding calendar year to the Bush re-election campaign shall be required by law to identify themselves by wearing "Liberal" t-shirts to be made available by America's Best Christian, Mrs. Betty Bowers.”

“The Patriot Act -- Who's being targeted?

By Jonathan Turley

ATTORNEY GENERAL John Ashcroft recently went to Congress to herald another record year of fighting terrorism, showcasing numbers showing 310 defendants charged as evidence that "the Patriot Act is al-Qaida's worst nightmare."

Few would argue about the nightmare part, but it is hard to see al-Qaida losing much sleep: To a large degree, Mr. Ashcroft has used antiterrorism laws against citizens with no ties to al-Qaida or even terrorism.

With many in Congress opposed to renewing parts of the USA Patriot Act, the 29-page report by Mr. Ashcroft attempts to show "a mountain of evidence that the Patriot Act continues to save lives," but it omits critical facts that seriously undermine that claim. In fact, the report is part of an annual effort by Mr. Ashcroft to prod local prosecutors to bolster their terrorism numbers - often by using terrorism laws against conventional criminals and a curious hodgepodge of nuns, protesters and artists.

During the Vietnam War, the U.S. military was heavily criticized for its obsession with body counts as a misleading measure of the progress of a war and, worse still, an inducement to use lethal force to get the numbers up. Despite these hard lessons, a similar body count culture has taken hold under Mr. Ashcroft at the Justice Department, where prosecutors are being pressured to rack up national security indictments for annual reports showing success in the war on terrorism.

As in the Vietnam War, the Ashcroft body count policy has produced an indiscriminate targeting of anyone who can be remotely classified as a terrorist or national security threat. Where soldiers would sometimes shoot water buffalo and civilians in rice paddies for body count reports, prosecutors are pursuing artists, protesters and academics.

Prosecutors are faced with an undefined quota system - an expectation that each district will contribute cases to show, as suggested by Mr. Ashcroft, a nation rife with terrorism threats. For example, in New Jersey, prosecutors had only two cases to offer to Mr. Ashcroft in their annual body count, so they included 65 Middle Eastern men prosecuted for lying on visa applications as terrorism cases.

Using new antiterror laws and resources after 9/11, state prosecutors have followed Mr. Ashcroft's lead and brought terrorism charges against such felons as New York street gang members accused of "terrorizing" a park by their presence.

The most bizarre example was Mr. Ashcroft's prosecution of the organization Greenpeace under a 19th century law designed to punish "sailor-mongers," the luring of sailors from their ships with women and spirits. Mr. Ashcroft wanted Greenpeace criminally convicted for boarding a ship allegedly carrying illegal mahogany. The Justice Department insisted that this was a national security case protecting our ports, but a federal judge dismissed it.

The most recent "terrorism case" speaks volumes about Mr. Ashcroft's campaign. The crime? Using common bacteria as part of an artistic exhibit protesting bioresearch.

A Buffalo, N.Y., group of performance artists called the Critical Art Ensemble (CAE) does art pieces for the Internet and museums highlighting the dangers of biotechnology and genetic engineering.

The case began when CAE's co-founder, Steven Kurtz, called 911 after his wife collapsed. When the authorities arrived, however, they quickly pushed beyond Mr. Kurtz's wife (who died of a heart attack) and focused on equipment and books in the house that appeared to deal with biotechnology. The FBI was called in, and agents quickly confiscated everything in Mr. Kurtz's house, from his wife's body to term papers of his college students.

College professor Robert Ferrell was indicted for simply ordering the organisms for Mr. Kurtz.

While the case was billed as a bioterrorism investigation, the Justice Department was ridiculed by experts, given the low danger of the organisms. Unable to prove its case, the Justice Department has indicted the men on wire and mail fraud charges in an effort to secure a conviction.

Not all of these cases have resulted in failure. In one case, Mr. Ashcroft secured the curious victory of convicting three nuns who staged a protest by writing on the cap of a nuclear silo and praying until they were arrested. They were sent to prison for years and added to the pile of "national security threats" brought to justice under Mr. Ashcroft.

Ironically, the problem may not be Mr. Ashcroft's use of arbitrary indictments but that he is not nearly arbitrary enough. At the moment, the Justice Department seems to naturally gravitate to political critics, protesters and Muslims as the usual suspects for its body counts.

While they all may be certifiably suspect in Mr. Ashcroft's America, they seem more of an indictment than evidence of Mr. Ashcroft's vaulted campaign on terror.


Jonathan Turley is the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University Law School.”

“WASHINGTON -- With barely a word about it, workers at the Justice Department Friday removed the blue drapes that have famously covered two scantily clad statues for the past 3 1/2 years.

Spirit of Justice, with her one breast exposed and her arms raised, and the bare-chested male Majesty of Law basked in the late afternoon light of Justice's ceremonial Great Hall.

The drapes, installed in 2002 at a cost of $8,000, allowed then-Attorney General John Ashcroft to speak in the Great Hall without fear of a breast showing up behind him in television or newspaper pictures. They also provoked jokes about and criticism of the deeply religious Ashcroft.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/24/AR2005062401373_pf.html”

“They could have saved us tax payers $7,999.02 and done this...


”