How to Read Government-Speak

Section 1.

(a) Except to the extent provided in section 203(b)(1), (3), and (4) of IEEPA (50 U.S.C. 1702(b)(1), (3), and (4)), or in regulations, orders, directives, or licenses that may be issued pursuant to this order, and notwithstanding any contract entered into or any license or permit granted prior to the date of this order, all property and interests in property of the following persons, that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of United States persons, are blocked and may not be transferred, paid, exported, withdrawn, or otherwise dealt in: any person determined by the Secretary of the Treasury, in consultation with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Defense,

(i) to have committed, or to pose a significant risk of committing, an act or acts of violence that have the purpose or effect of:

(A) threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or

(B) undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people;

(ii) to have materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence or any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order; or

(iii) to be owned or controlled by, or to have acted or purported to act for or on behalf of, directly or indirectly, any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order.

(b) The prohibitions in subsection (a) of this section include, but are not limited to, (i) the making of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services by, to, or for the benefit of any person whose property and interests in property are blocked pursuant to this order, and (ii) the receipt of any contribution or provision of funds, goods, or services from any such person.

As usual, the hysteria over Executive Order: Blocking Property of Certain Persons Who Threaten Stabilization Efforts in Iraq is spearheaded by folks on the left who, apparently, can't read.

George decided to authorize himself to freeze the assets of folks doing business with murderers. It's sort of like RICO, but for terrorists. Now, of course, RICO has been around for 37 years and folks whistle and cheer when the due process of mobsters gets trampled.

Now, of course, the new executive order does the same thing to folks who behead little kids and blow themselves up in marketplaces.

But, cry the Libr'ls, it freezes the assets of everyone who is threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq!

Nice to see an acknowledgment on the left, finally, that their agitation against winning in Iraq is also agitating in favor of the various terrorist groups to eventually gain control of Iraq and turn it into a Taliban-like state which produces terrorists en masse as a primary export. (Insert Rimshot here)

Sorry folks, couldn't resist the obvious cheap shot.

Nope. You all, ordinarily intelligent folks, have forgotten how to read Government writing. Sections have paragraphs which have subparagraphs, etc. That bit about threatening the peace or stability of Iraq is under the bit about "acts of violence."

Try not to blow any Iraqis up, and you shouldn't have much to worry about.

What's all the rest of the verbage for? "Islamic Charities". Organizations whose alleged charitable purpose is a smokescreen to raise money for terrorist activity. Muslims in the United States donate heavily to these organizations, with enough winking and nodding that they can claim to be unaware that these organizations use the money to buy weapons and make payments to terrorist fighters. Pardon me if I don't weep much more than I do for any other sort of mobster who falls under RICO.

"materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, logistical, or technical support for, or goods or services in support of, such an act or acts of violence"

I seem to recall a couple folks of the libr'l anti-war persuasion arguing in this blog that demonstrating in favor of terrorists and using one's speech to support those terrorists was not treason as treason required 'material aid' rather than a Smith Act sort of standard. So, using the same logic, as long as you are 'merely' using speech rather than actually buying LRCT base stations to use as IED detonators, you shouldn't fall under this executive order.

Folks, due process is fundamental right.

However, due process has long since been modified by the 'needs' of the situation. The perpetual "war on drugs", the RICO-led attacks on the Mafia in the 1970s and 1980s, all have pretty much created a large class of people whose due process rights can abrogated more or less at the discretion of the local District Attorney. The IRS, as near as I can tell, is not bound by the Constitution in any way and can seize assets of a person or business more or less on a whim and not release them for years. If these are all acceptable measures to control the population of a society, then where does anyone get off with saying the extension of this category of unprotected persons to those who try to kill American Soldiers in combat and provide the logistical tail enabling those attacks is the end of the World as We Know It?

It is one or the other. Either due process is a fundamental right and you decry the arbitrary confiscations of assets by the IRS and as part of the "war on drugs", or due process can be abrogated due to circumstance. If you agree that due process should be reduced in any circumstances, then extending those circumstances to terrorists is just plain common sense.