A few short years ago, our President said, “freedom from torture is an inalienable human right.” He was, of course, lying. He knew that men suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations were, at the very moment he said those words, being held in secret prisons around the globe and subjected to acts of torture by our own men and at the hands of our proxies. Bush knew that men, some of them no doubt innocent, were being tortured as he spoke and yet he said those words anyway. Torture, at least in the United States, is very much an alienable right.
Since the date that speech was given, we’ve learned a lot. We’ve seen the photos from Abu Ghraib and we’ve learned all about the techniques being used, like waterboarding. We’ve also, it seems, come to the conclusion that we as a people are alright with that — that a little bit of torture is justified in return for the illusion of security.
Right now, we’re in the process of codifying it, along with the further dilution of the Bill of Rights. We’re not pretending any longer – we’re openly embracing it. We’re making torture the law of the land… Here’s a clip from a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times:
…Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.
Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.
It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism….
These are some of the bill’s biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of “illegal enemy combatant” in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted.
The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret — there’s no requirement that this list be published.
Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence.
Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial.
Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable — already a contradiction in terms — and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses.
Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.
Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.
A professor of Law at Yale has read the legislation and he gives the following word of caution:
Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights…
Fortunately, there are some at the CIA and elsewhere who are pleading with Congress not to go any further down this slippery slope. Torture, as they point out, is not only immoral, but highly ineffective. Hopefully their voices are heard. (John McCain, who should be leading the charge against this legislation, given his personal experience with torture, unfortunately, has opted to toe the Bush line, in hopes that it will get him the nomination in ’08… “Straight Talk Express,” my ass.)
8 Comments
Re: Enemy Combatants … the bill distinguishes between citizens who are picked up and legal aliens who are picked up. Citizens would have the right of habeus corpus. This would be small consolation to some wrongly accused citizen who woke up one morning in a dark place in a CIA cellar in Kosovo.
Be nice to your neighbors. Don’t do or say anything to stimulate an anonymous “tip.” No more LaShish. No more party stores. Buy your gas from white guys. And, oh yah, thank the stars and stripes above that we STILL have a 2nd Ammendment: lock and load.
I’m cranky because “Liberal Debbie” Stabenow voted for this mess. I suppose I still have to vote for her, in hopes of breaking off the Senate from the Presidency, but I plan to remember this next time she’s in a primary.
Every time I feel like the Bush team is losing momentum, and that people are finally turning against them, something like this happens where the people on our end cave in, afraid of lookikng soft on terrorism. It’s pathetic… And McCain especially should be embarrassed for going along with this, given his history on the issue.
I anticipate many court challenges. But if they fail … and/or, if we do not succeed in turning Congress over to the Democrats this Fall … religitainment is one alternative (or perhaps it’s back to heavy drugs? … nah, I hated drugs). I know, I’ll join my neighborhood association’s gardening committeee and weed, while the country bleeds to death.
BTW … Trusty Getto had a laundry list of abused rights from the workers’ standpoint under the banner of Powerless-
ness for Labor (and most of the rest of us, as well.) Hence the Season on Discontent here in the US. Too bad the Dems have no coherent agenda that will create a broad agenda in November … still too split on social and international issues, including the Irag, Afghanistan and terrorism “wars.”
I love waterboarding, especially in summer when the seas are warm. It’s cool that the dudes down in Guantanamo get to take advantage of the warm waters on the Gulf of Mexica.
All this makes me sick…
From our friends at Think Progress. It’s long, but worth it.