Every lefty blogger worth his salt will be jumping on this, but just for the record:

The Justice Department's round-up of hundreds of illegal immigrants after the Sept. 11 attacks was plagued with "significant problems" that forced many people with no connection to terrorism to languish in prison in unduly harsh conditions, according to an internal report released today.

The long-awaited report from the Justice Department's inspector general concluded that officials with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, particularly in New York City, "made little attempt to distinguish" between illegal residents who had possible ties to terrorism and those swept up "coincidentally" in the investigation.

This is so fucking frustrating. This was something lefties were going on and on about, and we got tarred as traitors or weaklings or naifs for it, but apparently we were making some sense, huh? And this isn't even some dumbass "we were right" thing--this is just a tragedy. Real people suffered because of this public policy; real people were held in jail for a month without any charges being filed, and then continued to be held, often without access to a lawyer, for nearly a year after that. And this is how the Justice Department responded:

"We make no apologies for finding every legal way possible to protect the American public from further terrorist attacks."

Yes, I'm sure they had the best of intentions. It would be nice if someone admitted that they fucked up here, but even nicer if we learned from it for the future.

UPDATE: Harm replies. I'd probably point him to this NYT article (even though it is lib'ral propaganda) and the report itself (PDF).
posted by Mike B. at 4:54 PM 0 comments