‘I’m a Complete Intellectual Fraud’ (author of Patriat Act)

[donsu]

http://www.ocweekly.com/ink/05/20/news-schou.php


Viet Dinh, the Bush-appointed former assistant attorney general and main author of the USA Patriot Act, began his Jan. 11 speech at UC Irvine’s Beckman Center Auditorium by admitting, "I am a complete intellectual fraud."

It was supposed to be a joke. But it wasn’t funny, because, as his speech would soon reveal, Dinh is, in fact, an intellectual fraud. So his confession of cerebral incompetence turned out to be both factual and devoid of irony—the latter being key to humor. But Dinh’s non-funniness didn’t inhibit his spectacular success in revealing the complete idiocy behind the thinking that governs our nation’s War on Terror.

-snip-

Thanks to activists with ACLU of Orange County and UC Irvine Students for Peace who formed a gauntlet in front of the auditorium, everyone in the standing-room-only crowd was holding anti-Patriot Act leaflets. But Dinh didn’t mention the Patriot Act until halfway through his speech. Instead, he tortured his audience with a lengthy, rambling history lesson about how the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, ended the monopoly of nation-states exercising "absolute sovereignty."

-snip-

Having simultaneously revealed himself as a fear monger and an ass-kisser, Dinh then went on to demonstrate that he also possesses an appalling lack of tact. "It is a simple strategy," he said of the Patriot Act, grinning expectantly at the half-Asian crowd. "If you are a terrorist suspect, we will stick to you like white on rice."

(in question and answer time he answered a question thus):

When another speaker asked Dinh if he felt complicit in the abuses of power and suspension of due process that the Patriot Act entailed, he sought to shift the blame for those abuses on civil libertarians. "Nothing in your question has anything to do with the Patriot Act," he said, "so you might as well ask Senator Barbara Boxer if she feels complicit. I don’t feel responsibility for the confusion over the Patriot Act, but blame the ACLU for sowing it."

-snip-

By then, he was stuttering mercilessly, often raising his voice and emitting a high-pitched laugh whenever he disagreed with a question. But when one woman drew the biggest applause of the evening by asking him why the Bush administration wasn’t trying harder to understand why so many people throughout the world hate America, Dinh was momentarily speechless.

"I don’t have anything intelligent to add to that," he finally said.
------------------------------------