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recruiting elite l awyers to defend the enemy combatants being interrogated at Gitmo. But R atner is a long-time leader of two pro-Communist and anti-American organ izations who have for decades have lent aid and comfort to America's ene mies in the Cold War and beyond.
Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR), which share' s the NLG's anti-American radicalism and was founded by pro-Castro lawye rs Arthur Kinoy and William Kunstler.
Since 9/11, Ratner and his comrades h ave attempted to extend undeserved civil rights on Islamist murderers wi th notable success. On this front, Ratner and the Legal Left have dealt America its few setbacks in the War on Terror. One year ago the US suffered its first major loss in this war, a strate gic and propaganda defeat, related to Americas abilities to imprison and interrogate enemies that it captures. Abu Ghraib was a huge propaganda victory, both for Islamists, who used it to justify their violent attack s, and for fifth column leftists, who made use of the medias saturation coverage to portray the US as the worlds biggest oppressor, the Bush a dministration as a cabal of Nazi thugs, and the Iraq as an immoral under taking.
emboldened Islamic terrorists, eroded US public suppo rt for the War on Terror, and damaged Americas credibility around the wo rld. Now, as our memories of 9/11 continue to fade into the past, Michael Ratn er has opened another battle against the War on Terror at Guantanamo Bay . Never mind that almost all of the prisoners at Guantanamo were picked up by US forces doing battle for the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanist an, or that many of them are, in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld words, the w orst of the worst. Never mind that al-Qaeda members and close associates of Osama bin Laden fill their ranks, or that theyre trained to fabricat e tales of abuse to erode their enemys morale. Although most of them are violent religious fanatics, and although theyve been treated better tha n any captured combatants in world history, Michael Ratner and his lawye rs want to provide them the chance to trumpet their grievances to a symp athetic press, exploit legal loopholes, and ultimately return to the bat tlefield. The fight to liberate Guantanamo prison As the wreckage of the Twin Towers was still smoldering, Michael Ratner b egan planning his attack on Americas post-9/11 defense strategy. Realizi ng that it would take major legal clout to seriously subvert the War on Terror, Ratner began taking steps to attract major US law firms to his cause. First, he adopted a high public profile against the Bush administ rations reaction to 9/11 by savaging every facet of its plan to protect the US from future attack. Working the civil liberties angle for all i ts worth, Ratner raged at the Patriot Act, railed against profiling tech niques designed to ferret out Islamic terrorists in our midst, and oppos ed invading Afghanistan to hunt down and capture Osama bin Laden and his Taliban henchmen. The mainstream press assisted Ratner by promoting him as a champion of ci vil rights while carefully hiding his lifelong radicalims from the Ameri can public (see below). When the Islamists battleground changed, Ratner took a prominent role in antiwar movement by opposing Operation Iraqi Fr eedom.
In April 2002, Ratner led the Center for Constitutional Rights in filing a class action suit, Turkmen v Ashcroft, on behalf of Muslim illegal al iens and non-citizens who were picked up for questioning shortly after t he 9/11 attacks. The suit alleges that the INS arrested this group on th e pretext of minor immigration violations and secretly detained them for the weeks and months the FBI took to clear them of terrorism, in violat ion of the US Constitution and international human rights law. Filed a gainst former Attorney General John Ashcroft, FBI Director Robert Muelle r, former INS Commissioner James Ziglar, and officials of the Metropolit an Detention Center in Brooklyn, the Turkmen case catapulted Ratner into the legal spotlight and according to him gained him valuable legal help from other firms once too nervous to touch cases involving 9/11 suspect s He set out to recruit pro bono help, and sympathetic leftist counselo rs now had fewer inhibitions to joining him.
major victory in Rasul v Bush, a suit he brought seeking to grant Islamist terror suspects access to US courts. That v ictory cleared the way for him to gain direct access to Guantanamos pris oners. With this, the trickle of queries from other law firms soon becam e a steady stream of volunteers to his cause.
does business with com panies involved in the US defense, national security, and government c ontracts sectors have teamed up with Michael Ratner and CCR to provide l egal services to terrorists and terrorist suspects. Obviously, there are many ethical lawyers and law firms that represent vi olent criminals and defend those with whom they may have deep moral and ideological disagreements but Ratner is not one of them. I don't usually take cases where I disagree with the politics of the people involved, h e said in a 2002 interview, clarifying where he stands on anti-American terrorism. Ratners odd view of justice stems from his decades in service to the radi cal cause. Ratners pro-Communist, pro-terrorist views are perhaps best i llustrated by his affinity for Cubas totalitarian regime and by his love of the man who set up Castros KGB-inspired prison system, Ch Guevara. Guevara who was known for taping his victims mouths shut to avoid hearin g their screams as he tortured and murdered his way through Cuba is, des pite his real life incompetence, a hero of mythical proportions to the L eft. Ratner chose to sing Ches praises in a1997 book: for many of us seeking to change our society, Cuba was a desirable model. And it was Ch Guevara, more than any other figure, who embodied both t hat revolution and solidarity with peoples fighting to be free from US hegemonyCh has remained my hero ever since. To be like Ch: To be selfless, to make a family of ones comrades, to give up comfort and material gain for the revolution, to risk and pr obably give ones life to free humanity. Though he fights to keep violent convicted criminals who flee to Cuba saf e from extradition back to America, civil rights champion Ratner has nev er spoken up for the civil rights of non-violent Cuban dissidents includ ing the journalists, artists, and activists who have been tossed into Ca stros horrific prisons after mock trials. Ironically, some of those hell holes are a short distance from the US run camp at Guantanamo Bay. The Soros Connection Ratners CCR has almost always received modest funding, most of it from fa r-Left organizations and leftist-run foundations. But funding of CCR inc reased by leaps and bounds after Ratner adopted his post-9/11 high profi le.
Tides Fou ndation, and other leftist support groups began heavily funding Ratner a nd CCRs anti-Bush, antiwar, anti-American agendas. Thanks to these forces, the proper relationship between prisoner and guar d, deemed vital for successful interrogation, has now been damaged and t he Department of Defense (DOD) faces a dilemma. Ratners suit has already somewhat undermined its effectiveness at Guantanamo Bay. If the DOD clo ses Gitmo, the prisoners are set free or are moved to the US where it will be nearly impossible to deny them access to US courts. If the dep artment moves the prisoners to another location outside of US jurisdic tion, Ratner and his fifth column legal army will simply begin another h igh-profile fight for the prisoners rights, and the propaganda battle be gins anew with continued erosion of popular and political support for th e War on Terror. Though the battle for Guantanamos prisoners is not yet over, but from the time the first plane-load of lawyers touched down in Cuba, two things b ecame abundantly clear: Islamist psychopaths had won a major victory aga inst Americas resolve to fight them. And Michael Ratner, George Soros, and a host of prestigious American law firms helped them.
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