The Cost of the War on Terror: Orwellian Inspired Torture, Extrajudicial Rendition, Racial/Religious Profiling, Warrantless Wiretaps, Investigations without Reasonable Cause…
By: Houston Criminal Lawyer John Floyd and Paralegal Billy Sinclair
Osama bin Laden is dead. Many peoples in the world, especially in the United States, are celebrating the death of the world’s most notorious terrorist. The nature and circumstances of his demise were fitting in light of the life of hate, vengeance, and violence he led. The old adage, “live by the sword, die by the sword,” is appropriate in this case.
While we feel that bin Laden got this “just deserts,” we cannot in good conscience celebrate his death as a “crowning achievement” for our justice system. On September 11, 2001, bin Laden did more than bring down New York’s famed Twin Towers and cause the death of nearly 3,000 innocent people. The four terrorist attacks he masterminded and orchestrated that day set our nation on a course of action, called the “war on terror,” which has done, perhaps, irreparable damage to our criminal justice system and our historical concepts of justice.
In pursuit of the “war on terror,” officially declared by former President George W. Bush, and our efforts to track down and kill bin Laden, our intelligence and military assets kidnapped innocent people off the streets in foreign countries; took them to secret “black site” prisons operated by the CIA where they were tortured beyond human comprehension; established a special “detainee” prison on foreign soil called Guantanamo Bay where “suspected terrorists” are held for years without any meaningful rights or privileges and without any finding of guilt; and resurrected the ancient and infamous method of torture called “water boarding” to extract information from these “suspected terrorists.”
No less than the President and the Attorney General of these United States instructed law enforcement agencies, especially the FBI, CIA and other intelligence gathering agencies like the National Security Agency, to target innocent and unsuspecting American citizens and subject them to racial/religious profiling, telephone wiretaps, surveillance of their emails, political activities, and data mining through their financial records. This Orwellian-type scrutiny was even more heightened against the American-Muslim community who instantly and continuously became “suspected terrorists” for no other reason than their religion and country of origin.


