George Soros
Billionaire challenges case for war
Sat Jul 26 18:32:34 2003
208.152.73.135

Billionaire challenges case for war

08:29, Jul 26 2003
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/24by7panews/page.cfm?objectid=13220565&method=full&siteid=50143

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Billionaire philanthropist George Soros is running full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers challenging the honesty of the Bush administration's case for waging war in Iraq.

The ads in The New York Times, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, and the Houston Chronicle, are titled, "When the nation goes to war, the people deserve the truth."

A dozen statements made by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell and Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld making the case for war are reprinted and described as either exaggerated or false.

The statements centre on claims about Iraq having weapons of mass destruction and large quantities of poison gasses.

The Hungarian-born Soros, 72, emigrated to the United States from Britain in 1956 and built a fortune as a financier. He is founder of a network of philanthropic organisations active in more than 50 countries that focus on education, public health, human rights and economic reform.

The ads, estimated to cost about $185,000 (114,000 pounds), were co-sponsored by U.S. philanthropists Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman.

"Both George Soros and Lewis Cullman have been deeply concerned about the deception used to justify the war in Iraq," said Michael Vachon, a spokesman for Soros.

"They believe their fellow citizens should also be concerned and took out these ads to move them to action."

Bush has defended the case for war, saying he is confident that weapons of mass destruction will eventually be found in Iraq and that criticism of intelligence about Iraq's military capabilities amounts to quibbling.

Public opinion on the issue is closely divided, according to a Quinnipiac University Poll released this week. It showed U.S. voters believed the administration did not intentionally exaggerate evidence that Iraq was developing nuclear weapons by 50 to 44 percent with a 3 percent margin of error.
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http://www.soros.org/

The USA Patriot Act and its effects on national security, immigrant rights, and civil liberties in general were the focus of a forum at OSI's New York office on June 11, 2003. Panelists included Steven Brill, a Newsweek columnist who recently published After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era (Simon & Schuster); Kate Martin, executive director of the Center for National Security Studies; and Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute and former commissioner of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). The panel was moderated by Antonio Maciel, the director of grantmaking and program development for U.S. Programs at OSI and the former director of the Emma Lazarus Fund, a now-closed OSI program that focused on immigrants' rights.

The Patriot (“Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism”) Act was approved by Congress and signed into law by President Bush less than two months after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, D.C. The law gives law enforcement authorities greater latitude to develop and implement antiterrorism policies, including the ability to monitor and detain citizens suspected of sympathizing with or having links to organizations or individuals that authorities believe have direct ties to terrorist activities. In a lively discussion, Brill defended some of the Patriot Act's provisions and other developments that have appeared to restrict the rights of certain immigrants; Meissner and Martin, meanwhile, were more critical of the law and subsequent Justice Department policies, arguing that they have unfairly targeted innocent people and had an overall chilling effect on civil rights in the United States.

The forum was convened nine days after the Justice Department’s inspector general released a report highlighting harsh conditions faced by the more than 700 illegal immigrants detained without charges by the federal government since September 11. On the day after the forum, June 12, 2003, federal law enforcement authorities announced that in response to the report they would implement policy changes designed to improve conditions at the facilities and place unspecified restrictions on interrogation methods.

Summary of Participants' Remarks

I. Doris Meissner

A) USA Patriot Act

Meissner said she believes that the country is more secure, but not necessarily because of the Patriot Act. She attributed a safer climate instead to other steps taken by the Bush administration after September 11, including:

* more effective focus on overseas intelligence;
* closer attention to international law enforcement, which has helped dismantle some terrorist networks;
* better use of the U.S. military overseas in places such as in Afghanistan, where debriefings of detained prisoners led to the collection of information; and
* greater cooperation among the FBI, CIA, and other government intelligence agencies.

B) Bush Administration Policies

Meissner acknowledged the difficulty of maintaining democratic values given the current threat of terrorism and said that an administration of any ideological bent would have reacted aggressively in response to September 11. However, she criticized some of the Bush administration's actions thus far as both ineffective and inappropriately secretive. She questioned the necessity of continuing to detain, without due process, some 1,200 individuals—only two of whom, she said, have provided any relevant terrorism-related information. Rather than detaining individuals, she suggested that federal agencies focus on standard law enforcement tactics such as diligently following leads abroad and analyzing information obtained from other nations' intelligence communities.

C) Immigration

Meissner argued that policy makers should be resist automatically linking terrorism and immigration. The vast majority of Muslim immigrants are not terrorists, she said, and treating them as such is not only problematic from a civil rights perspective but short-sighted as well. She said that immigrants are more likely to cooperate with authorities—and perhaps provide valuable information in the fight against terrorism—if they are asked to participate in voluntary interviews and are not threatened with deportation.

Meissner added that aggressive tactics could cause resentment in certain communities, engendering hostility and creating a breeding ground for further terrorist activity, both in the United States and abroad. She cited the increase in visa denials among applicants from Muslim nations and the overall decrease in international students at U.S. universities as examples of how current policies could harm long-term national interests by limiting exposure to U.S. values.

II. Steven Brill

A) USA Patriot Act

Brill first criticized the ideological rhetoric used to frame most discussions of the Patriot Act, noting that provisions of the law have been criticized both by conservatives (from a libertarian perspective) and liberals (for alleged human rights violations). The law has not only created unusual alliances among opponents, he said, but also exposed contradictions among various organizations. For instance, he said, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has urged the government to do a better job at finding terrorists yet resists the implementation of national databases that would enable law enforcement agencies to more easily find suspects.

The Patriot Act is not perfect, he said, but it has improved security conditions in the country. He provided examples of certain provisions, such as removing the stipulation that a person must be identified as a "foreign agent" for a warrant to be issued, that he claims have helped make the country safer by giving law enforcement authorities greater leeway to pursue suspected terrorists.

B) Bush Administration Policies

Brill maintained that one of the difficulties facing law enforcement today is that authorities are charged with identifying terrorists who studiously attempt to avoid attracting attention before they commit a crime. This makes the Justice Department’s work much harder, he said, and has forced Attorney General John Ashcroft to effectively flip the criminal justice system on its head. According to Brill, Ashcroft now believes that the Justice Department's goal "is no longer to prosecute crime, but rather to prevent it."

Brill said that Ashcroft has no specific authority to detain hundreds of people; instead, the attorney general proceeded to authorize the post-9/11 detentions as a preventive measure. Brill said he believes that locking up Muslims, abhorrent as it was, did make society safer. He emphasized that the vast majority of the detainees were breaking civil law (usually because they were in the country illegally), and that although such relatively minor violations may not justify the harsh conditions, they may have prevented further terrorist attacks.

C) Immigration

Brill argued that the lack of interaction between the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) and the FBI, coupled with Congress' failure to provide adequate funding for the INS, led to negligent oversights regarding who was entering and leaving the country prior to September 11.

He disagreed with Meissner, however, arguing that immigration enforcement and terrorism are directly related. The terrorists who blew up the World Trade Center were in the United States legally, he pointed out, and it appeared as though there had been little effort to screen out potential terrorists prior to the attacks even though intelligence officials were aware of the domestic terrorism threat.

III. Kate Martin

A) USA Patriot Act

Martin said that it is crucial to differentiate between what the Patriot Act authorizes and what the government has done independently of it. According to Martin, the law restricts the government’s ability to detain immigrants without charges; therefore, she said, the Justice Department's decision to detain more than 1,000 people without charges is illegal. She criticized the Justice Department for "secretly" seizing and exercising that authority and suggested that this "claimed authority" be challenged in the courts.

Martin said she was leery of the fact that the Patriot Act allows for more secret surveillance without a check on that power. For instance, she said, neither citizens nor non-citizens need be notified that their homes have been searched or their phones tapped unless they are actually convicted of a crime.

B) Bush Administration Policies

Martin said she was also concerned about the government's methods—few of which have been made public—of seeking out possible terrorists. An appropriate strategy, she said, would be to focusing on tracking al Qaeda members, following leads such as monetary transactions or where members have traveled. According to Martin, an example of an ineffective and seriously intrusive method would be the creation of a Justice Department database that flags "who looks like a terrorist" and thus casts automatic and unwarranted suspicion on many people.

Similarly, she questioned the appropriateness from a human rights and security perspective of targeting immigrants from specific communities. "Rounding up innocent Muslims, infringing upon their rights, and making them suffer is undercutting our values," she said. "Locking up 800 innocent Muslims doesn't make us safer." She highlighted the need to differentiate between immigrants who have been in training camps in Afghanistan and those who happen to reside in immigrant communities, legally and peacefully.

Martin concluded that current U.S. antiterrorism policy fails to give enough weight to the influence of international relations. "In the long run locking people up won't prevent terrorism," she said. "We are going to defeat terrorism by showing that the United States supports hopes for democracy, civil rights, human rights, equal rights, and the rule of law."

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* A grant Inquiry may be submitted to any program.
* The grants list tool (Research) currently services Open Society Institute - New York exclusively (U.S.-based and selected international programs).
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