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First Steps Taken to Implement Preventive Detention, Military Commissions
A task force appointed by President Obama to issue recommendations on how to close Guantanamo announced yesterday it will miss its deadline and instead needs a six-month extension, potentially jeopardizing Obama's promise to close Guantanamo within a year. The announcement was made in a briefing given by four leading Obama officials, where the condition of the briefing was that none of the officials could be named (why not?) and all media outlets agreed to this condition (why?).
Though the Task Force's final recommendations were delayed, it did release an interim report (.pdf) which -- true to Obama's prior pledges -- envisions an optional, three-tiered "system of justice" for imprisoning accused Terrorists, to be determined by the Obama administration in each case: (1) real trials in real courts for some; (2) military commissions for others; and (3) indefinite detention with no charges for the rest. This memo is the first step towards institutionalizing both a new scheme of preventive detention and Obama's version of military commissions.
From this interim report, it's more apparent than ever that the central excuse made by Obama defenders to justify preventive detention and military commissions -- there are dangerous Terrorists who cannot be released but also cannot be tried because Bush obtained the evidence against them via torture -- is an absolute myth. That's clear for multiple reasons:
First, the Task Force is formulating detention policy not only for detainees already at Guantanamo, but also for future, not-yet-abducted detainees as well. From the first paragraph of the memo (click image to enlarge):
The memo goes on to state that they are examining "what the rules and boundaries should be for any future detentions under the law of war." The anonymous Obama officials emphasized in the briefing that "the goal . . . is to build a 'durable and effective' framework for dealing with the detainees at Guantánamo and future detainees captured in the fight against terrorists."
Nobody is talking about confining the power of preventive detention or military commissions to current Guantanamo detainees who were tortured. The opposite is true: this is to be a permanent, institutionalized detention scheme with the power vested in the President going forward to imprison people with no charges. Claiming this is necessary because of what Bush did to the 230 remaining Guantanamo detainees is a total nonsequitur. If, as Obama defenders claim, that is really the justification, why will these powers apply well beyond that? And relatedly, as I've asked dozens of times with no answer: how can Obama's military commissions be a solution to the problem of torture-obtained evidence when, according to Obama, those commissions -- exactly like federal courts -- also allegedly won't allow evidence obtained by torture?
Second, as a result of breathtakingly broad criminal laws in the U.S. defining "material support for terrorism," there are few things easier than obtaining a criminal conviction in federal court against people accused of being Terrorists. Even if the only thing someone has done is joined a group decreed to be a Terrorist organization, without even engaging in (or even planning) any violent acts, federal prosecutors are well-armed to convict them. In May, the DOJ obtained a conviction in a federal court of a Somalian-Canadian on "material support" charges for doing little more than expressing loyalty to Al Qaeda. Two other Americans of Somalian descent were just indicted on the same charge as a result of their alleged membership in a "militant Islamic group," Shabaab. The FBI website even boasts:
Since the 1990s, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) has investigated and successfully prosecuted a wide range of international and domestic terrorism cases—including the bombings of the World Trade Center and U.S. Embassies in East Africa in the 1990s. More recent cases include those against individuals who provided material support to al Qaeda and other terrorist groups, as well as against international arms trafficker Monzer al Kassar and the Somalian pirate charged in the hijacking of the Maersk Alabama.
To convict accused Terrorists in court, they need not engage in any violent acts; any involvement with Al Qaeda or other Terrorist groups will suffice. The Task Force's interim report released yesterday itself recognized that the Federal Government is already equipped with extremely broad powers to obtain convictions of Terrorists in federal court:
If we can't even prove in a real court that someone has such minimal involvement with a Terrorist group, then should we be imprisoning them indefinitely? And if the only evidence we have against them was obtained by torture -- evidence which, one should recall, Democrats and progressives insist is unreliable -- then should we really seek to imprison them indefinitely based on such evidence?
Manifestly, this isn't about anything other than institutionalizing what has clearly emerged as the central premise of the Obama Justice System: picking and choosing what level of due process each individual accused Terrorist is accorded, to be determined exclusively by what process ensures that the state will always win. If they know they'll convict you in a real court proceeding, they'll give you one; if they think they might lose there, they'll put you in a military commission; if they're still not sure they will win, they'll just indefinitely imprison you without any charges [a document accompanying the interim report (.pdf) states: "if the prosecution team concludes that prosecution is not feasible in any forum, it may recommend that the case be returned to the Executive Order 13492 Review for other appropriate disposition"]. It's Kafkaesque show trials in their most perverse form: the outcome is pre-determined (guilty and imprisoned) and only the process changes. That's especially true since, even where a miscalculation causes someone to be tried but then acquitted, the power to detain them could still be asserted.
Just look at this intrinsically absurd declaration from the Memo:
For "enemy terrorists" who "have violated our criminal laws," the Obama administration will give people trials "where feasible" -- meaning where it's definite that the Government will win. If everyone the President wants to imprison is going to end up in a cage no matter what -- remember: we're not going to release anyone the President decrees dangerous under any circumstances -- then, other than creating a mirage of due process, what's the point of giving some of them trials? By definition, it's just all for show. I quoted this once before, but it's so apropos; this approach is exactly what is hauntingly described as the Queen's justice in Chapter 12 of Alice in Wonderland:
"Let the jury consider their verdict," the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.
"No, no!” said the Queen. "Sentence first -- verdict afterward."
"Stuff and nonsense!" said Alice loudly. "The idea of having the sentence first!"
"Hold your tongue!" said the Queen, turning purple.
"I won’t!" said Alice.
"Off with her head!" the Queen shouted at the top of her voice.
The Queen's pronouncement -- "Sentence first -- verdict afterward" -- is a fine expression of Obama's approach here: these prisoners are decreed to be Dangerous and Guilty and are sentenced to prolonged, indefinite imprisonment and must not be released; now let's tailor a process for each of them to ensure that this verdict is produced. It's far better to dispense with the ludicrous facade, simply imprison everyone the President wants with no charges, and let the world and the citizenry see what we're really doing.
Third, equally false is the Task Force's claim that Obama's military commissions are nothing more than a continuation of longstanding military tradition and, worse, that Obama's commissions resolve the objections long raised by Democrats to Bush's military commissions. Here's what the Task Force asserts in order to make it seem like Obama's military commissions are perfectly normal and consistent with past Democratic objections:
These claims are demonstrably false. While it's true that the Bush/Cheney military commissions were initiated with no Congressional authorization, the commissions were eventually authorized by Congress when it passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006 -- with the opposition of most Democrats, including then-Sen. Obama. As I documented at length here, Democratic objections to Bush's military commissions -- including from key Obama officials -- were not dependent upon any specific procedures, but were opposed to the entire idea of military commissions themselves. If anyone has any doubts about that, just go read the excerpts I posted there from progressives, Democrats and leading newspapers objecting to military commissions themselves, not to the specific Bush/Cheney incarnation of them. What happened to all of that?
The principal argument that was made in the Bush era was that military commissions may be appropriate for standard wars between uniformed armies, but not for the abduction of accused Terrorists far away from battlefields, which -- in terms of the potential both for error and abuse -- far more resemble the apprehension of accused criminals. A November, 2001 New York Times Editorial said the "plan to use secret military tribunals to try terrorists is a dangerous idea" because "by ruling that terrorists fall outside the norms of civilian and military justice . . . . Mr. Bush has essentially discarded the rulebook of American justice painstakingly assembled over the course of more than two centuries." The NYT argued: "American civilian courts have proved themselves perfectly capable of handling terrorist cases." During the 2004 campaign, Obama's current Deputy Solicitor General Neal Katyal vowed that "a John Kerry administration would scrap the military commissions now being used at Guantanamo Bay and replace them with a system patterned on military courts-martial" and he concluded:
The danger with these commissions comes not only in their threat to our Constitution, and our standing in the world as a beacon of fairness, but also in their challenge to the perception of military justice. Our nation—whomever the next president may turn out to be—should admit it made a mistake and return to using our powerful and fair system of courts martial—a system that would generate swifter convictions of terrorists. As our nation's great Chief Justice John Marshall put it in 1803, ours is a "government of laws, and not of men."
Obama State Department counsel Harold Hongju Koh wrote in 2003 that creating military commissions and/or using a new tribunal "are wrong because both rest on the same faulty assumption: that our own federal courts cannot give full, fair and swift justice in such a case," and argued: "No country with a well functioning judicial system should hide its justice behind military commissions." Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat Leahy condemned all military commissions, arguing: "it sends a terrible message to the world that, when confronted with a serious challenge, we lack confidence in the very institutions we are fighting for- beginning with a justice system that is the envy of the world." And current Obama State Department official Anne-Marie Slaughter said that, in the past, military commissions had "been used to try spies that we find behind enemy lines" where "you can't ship them to national court, so you provide a kind of rough battlefield justice in a commission," but with the "War on Terror": "That's not this situation. It's not remotely like it."
In fact, the entire 2004 campaign the Democrats ran was based on the argument that Terrorism should be treated far more like a law enforcement problem than a "war." John Kerry famously said: "The war on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering law-enforcement operation." After a series of Terrorist plots were disrupted using normal law-enforcement means, even George Will wrote a column declaring that Kerry was right about this. That the extant system of American justice was perfectly adequate to try accused Terrorists -- and that whole new systems of "justice" need not be created in the name of so-called "war powers" -- was long a central plank of Democratic and progressive objections to the Bush/Cheney approach to Terrorism.
What happened to all of that? As of January 20, 2009, it seems to have disappeared in a cloud of obfuscating smoke, replaced by chest-beating "war"-rhetoric used to justify the creation of whole new "systems of justice" and, worse, locking people up with no trial. Like all new powers vested in the President, once this system is institutionalized, it will be virtually impossible ever to abolish it, or even to prevent its continued expansion.
UPDATE: I was on The Young Turks last night and was interviewed by Cenk Uygur regarding the media's role in investigations and towards the government generally and the Chuck Todd interview specifically. It was roughly 15 minutes long; those interested can listen to it here.
- Posted in
29 Comments so far
Show AllIf we let the men represent the ruling class, ten to one they had bacon for breakfast next morning.
RichM ,Happened to me once,a Sheriff was beating me up in a sub-station bathroom.He weighed about 300 lbs and I was peaking.I wondered where that image came from,but I had read "Animal Farm" ,the guy was a real pig though!
Well I guess we will all have to come up with some preventitive conspiracy theories! peace
"Animal Farm" is very similar to trying to tell the difference between the rightwing hicks and the Obama cultists. In "Animal Farm", both are bad but with the humans the animals knew what was coming to them but when the pigs took over, the animals couldn't tell that the same thing was happening to them. Same here with two sides of the same coin. With the rightwing hicks, I'd know that they were gonna shoot me from a mile away but with the Obama cultists they backstab before I'd know it. Maybe that's what George Orwell was trying to tell us.
Technically, you're correct that there's no difference in terms of their actions but the strategies just differ. The ones who were looking at both the man and the pig were already smart enough to know that both will stab. The rest of the animals were put in ignorance or were slaughtered for trying to tell the truth with few to escape and live long enough to tell it all.
Bennett Miller
Shreveport, LA
Under current law one can be convicted of terrorism for tithing to a charity that later on is designated as supporting terrorism.
camus13
Now let's see. The Taliban is holding an American soldier. Are they allowed to hold him until the War on Terror is over.
Last night on TV Rachel did a piece on the guy and never, not once mention how we handle those we capture.
What happens if they start water boarding him to find out about his unit or any thing else he knows.
Remeber a majority of Americans said it O.K. to torture these terrorists............
Now I'm sure my head is going to explode.
The Alice in Wonderland quote is great and true.
I read Juan Cole today, and he was writing crap like:
"The problems facing the Obama administration in closing Guantanamo Bay appear mainly to center on finding a place for the prisoners to go. Very few of them are ever going to be tried. There is a handful of the truly murderous among them-- the big al-Qaeda leaders caught mainly by Pakistan security forces, and those none of us would like to see free."
So Greenwald's column was a welcome taste of lucidity and honesty (and no cheerleading for Obama).
Preventive detention? What a euphemism! You don't have to have done anything, just associate with the wrong crowd, or read the wrong books, or insist on the crazy notion that nobody can be held in custody more than 24 hours without being charged with a crime.
Even worse, after having spent years in prison without being charged with any crime it would just be too embarrassing to our sense of fair play, a black eye for our system of jurisprudence, to finally admit that this prisoner was innocent all along.
So we make sure he gets convicted. Trial by ordeal was more enlightened than this. At least the verdict was not a foregone conclusion.
This sucks. We attacked Iraq for the most transparent trumped up lying reasons imaginable. How are our soldiers supposed to act when they know they have been sent to kill and die on a whim of somebody in power.
What happened to checks and balances? Isn't declaring war supposed to be reserved for congress alone? And most egregious of all every branch of government went along with a war based on lies and for the sole purpose of profit.
If your government wants to put you in prison it can. If your elected government wants to torture you for national security purposes, it can. If your life, liberty or property can be confiscated without the system having to give you or your family or friends a reason, nothing now stands in their way.
In the book ANIMAL FARM all the animals gathered to read what was written on the side of the barn:
No animal shall drink alcohol TO EXCESS
All animals are equal BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS
Four legs good TWO LEGS BETTER
I don't remember the rest of the revised commandments, but at this point I can't see what difference it makes anyway.
As ye sow, so shall ye reap.
Whatever made Americans believe that they would forever be immune to USA Incorporated's disregard for human rights elsewhere is beyond comprehension. Your masters have discovered that your will to resist is at least as impotent as any of their foreign targets and you're much easier to round up. Cheaper too.
As for those cherished second amendment rights that the gun lobby keeps bragging about as the citizen's last line of defence against government tyranny, good luck. I think Northcom may be slightly better armed.
Sooner or later, the chickens always come home to roost.
I agree USAans are not resisting very vigorously, but the foreigners are giving the imperialists a run for our borrowed money.
Glenn's repeated questioning "What happened to all of that?" drives home the basic, dreary point: despite the earlier criticism of some Democrats of the Bush/Cheney global war on terror policies, once the Dems took over control of the executive branch of government, all those previously-voiced concerns about the evils of detention in military custody without formal charges, without access to legal counsel, and/or a without a day in court appear to have receded into the void.
The legislative and executive branches of the federal government can go to the well once too often with the tactic of passing the Bill of Rights buck to the judges. There was only a one vote margin at the Supreme Court level on several of the key habeas corpus cases that arose out of Gitmo. If the Obama DOJ continues to revisit and legitimize many of the Bush regime's worst insults to human rights law, you only have to lose once on an issue like suspension of habeas corpus for the loss to prove fatal.
On a related, far lighter note, I simply must pass along to CDr's this anecdote from the annals of unintentionally hilarious mainstream journalism. I swear what follows is true.
On Sunday, July 19, 2009, the Grand Rapids Press (out of Gerald Ford's old home town of Grand Rapids, Michigan) ran an Associated Press article with a byline from Devlin Barrett on its front page. The text of the news story described plans under consideration by an Obama administration task force to change future detainee interrogation policies.
There, in stark black and white above the fold, was a bold face headline with a short subcaption beneath it. The turn of phrase and editorial juxtaposition instantly captured this reader's riveted attention:
"Elite unit would grill terror suspects"
"Harsh questioning methods still would be unacceptable"
I am not making this up.
This was not The Onion or Mad magazine, but the highly respectable Grand Rapids Press.
Would you prefer that rare, medium, or well?
Anybody want a little Torquemada on the side?
Could I trade in my old Weber towards a new, top of the line Cheney model?
Bill from Saginaw
"... once the Dems took over control ... all those previously-voiced concerns ... appear to have receded into the void."
Perhaps some Daily Kos adherents and other "change you can believe in" disciples have simply been overwhelmed by reality.
I've often wondered: how do you "grill" someone with water . . . ?
curiouser and curiouser indeed.
(upon reconsideration - I suppose you could use "fire water" . . . )
The Democrats and Republicans in Washington are interchangeable parts. How can we tell elected Republicans apart from Democrats? Gay rights rhetoric? Lip service to abortion issues? Proposed flag-burning laws?
Everyone wake up. Our two-party system is a one party system.
Nader told you so.
does Habeas Corpus apply to itself?
No way. It's a terrorist tool and, as such, must be locked up indefinitely with all the other "worst of the worst" threats to U.S. security.
That is the correct answer.
It is nothing but a "get out of jail free" card.
It has been withdrawn from the game.
Along with "bank error in your favour".
How about Preventive Impeachment?
The 'final' solutions of indefinate 'preventative' detention are called death camps.
Cicero: "Freedom is participation in power."
You are forgetting the Arbeitslager--work camps where they were worked to death as slave labor. I suspect the Amurkan version will offer some of them a pittance and others nothing.
I can't help but wonder what has been planned for those whose federal and state unemployment runs out next year about this time. The first big wave of job losses that hit last November will run out of benefits at that time (the ones living in states that supply an unemployment benefit tier to supplement the two federal tiers) and then every month another roughly half a million will run out of benefits, month on month, for who knows how long. About 8 million already. How many of these and their successors being quietly herded into homelessness will be labeled "terrorists?" What "justice" will they receive?
Real unemployment is bumping 19% and reached a 27% peak in the Great Depression. Several states are already "officially" in double digits. It takes time for any jobs programs to ramp up and Team Obama have already admitted the job losses have exceeded their earlier happy talk estimates. But they say they have no plans for more stimulus and the fawning corporate media have all nodded their heads in smug agreement as they have to the targeting of the poor, elderly and public schools in the California budget agreement. The irony in California is the tens of thousands of early furloughs for non-violent prisoners. Nationally our fascist government is creating the perfect conditions to HAVE to imprison more people--I suspect whether they turn violent or not. Perhaps their "battle lines" for this class war are already demarcated by zip code.
All those Halliburton camps were built around the country for something. $380 million dollars worth of them as I recall. Not a lot even for a no-frills national camp system--so most of them will probably be outdoor tent cities where disease, heat and cold will claim lives faster. Sheriff Arpaio in Maricopa County seems to be the national model--only our fascist masters no doubt plan to extract more of a profit from prison slave labor than he so far has.
thanks Glen for doing a great job.
Many many people have been warning us about the extremely slippery slope cheneybush put us on after thinking up twisted notions like war on terror (by definition endless) and "unlawful enemy combatants" and the militry commissions act. All of this stuff was accepted and approved and signed into law with little opposition. It was also encouraged by our ever slavish media, which sold it to a too gullible public. so this is where it's got us. the new guy we elected to get rid of the old guys is building on this foundation a real monster- he wants to destroy due process forever.
see, part of the MCA said that
1) the u.s. can do anything it wants to any person who has been pronounced an "enemy combatant" and
2) an "enemy combatant" is any person so defined by president bush or anyone he designates
is that clear enough yet? we are all eligible. Any of us can become members of this new category of (non) human. because you don't have to do anything at all. our gulag is full of totally inocent people who went to Pakistan or Afghanistan or went through an airport anywhere while being Muslim. Because they engaged in this risky behavior they are now being cruelly imprisoned and tortured forever- never found gulty of anything, not even charged.
Right now you probably need to be Muslim to achieve this distinction. But that's just now. Tomorrow it could be the sympathizers. The day after, people who don't think all of this is wonderful, or who harbor secret wishes for Habeas to come back.
i am posting this - third time - because it is relevant to each separate topic in commondreams. it is central to the way the USA has SUNK to the gutter by making Lawlessness, Immorality and Cruelty "lawful" according to its dictates....
and "blowback" has already followed it.
===================
WEDNESDAY 22 JULY 2009
Truthout Original
Worst Case Scenario
Tuesday 21 July 2009
by: William Rivers Pitt, t r u t h o u t | Columnist
Frame grab of captive US soldier.
This screen grab from a video shows Private Bowe R. Bergdahl, who is being held captive by Taliban militants. (Photo: AFP / Getty Images)
The coward wretch whose hand and heart
Can bear to torture aught below,
Is ever first to quail and start
From the slightest pain or equal foe.
- Bertrand Russell
The torture debate in America got real three weeks ago.
Oh, the debate has been around for years now, of course, ever since the photos of what happened in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq came to light. Men covered in feces, bent double and lashed to bedframes, their faith humiliated by the menstrual blood smeared on their faces, their bodies savaged by dogs, and worse, reports of the rape of women and children.
Yes, the torture debate has been around for a while now, recently revisited by President Obama, who condemned and discontinued the practice, and by enablers of torture like Dick Cheney and John Yoo, who have labored mightily to defend it. It's been quite the hot topic among the chattering classes of American political discourse, a dialogue in three parts: one group condemning the practice, another group championing it, and a third group - the media professionals - taking no position and trying not to offend anyone, so they can get the big names back on the set for the Sunday shows.
Three weeks ago, however, the whole nature of the torture debate changed irrevocably when an American soldier from Idaho named Bowe Bergdahl somehow fell into the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan. They have him now, and God help him, because it was the United States government under the administration of George W. Bush that set the terms for how anyone captured can and should be treated.
If the Taliban decide Bergdahl has information they want, they can waterboard him until he talks. They can compress his body and cover him with insects, they can rob him of sleep and deny him food, they can beat him and slather his body with his own waste, they can shove sticks into his rectum, they can rape him, and they can murder him. They can hand him over to representatives of another government and have him whisked away to some far-flung dungeon where "enhanced interrogation" has an even darker and more savage definition. For sure, they can deny him due process of any kind and never, ever, ever, ever let him go home again.
They could do this whether or not the United States had engaged in similar practices, but because we did these things, they can do these things and still claim the moral high ground. Why not? It was the United States government under the administration of George W. Bush who plowed that high ground into the gutter. Everyone stands the same height when they're face-down in the sewer.
One thing the Taliban apparently cannot do, however, is videotape their prisoner. Several days ago, a tape of Bergdahl, with his head shaved, pleading to be sent home to his parents, was released by his captors. "I am scared," said Bergdahl in the video. "I'm scared I won't be able to go home. It is very unnerving to be a prisoner. I have my girlfriend who is hoping to marry. I have my grandma and grandpas. I have a very, very good family that I love back home in America. And I miss them every day that I'm gone. I miss them and I'm afraid that I might never see them again and that I'll never be able to tell them that I love them again. I'll never be able to hug them."
The US government reacted swiftly to the video of Bergdahl. "We condemn the use of this video and the public humiliation of prisoners," said US military spokesman Col. Greg Julian. "It is against international law. We are doing everything we can to return this soldier to safety."
How hard it must have been for the US military to release a statement like that without feeling sick at heart and scared to death. The terrible irony and hypocrisy of the statement they released about the Bergdahl video must have been searing; we have set the table in such a way that torture is a positive action that saves lives, but videotapes are right out? No, that doesn't scan, and we know it, and the Taliban know it, and dollars to donuts Bergdahl knows it, too. Is he waiting in terror for the torture to begin? Has it already started?
The torture debate in America got real three weeks ago, and every American so-called Christian who has defended the practice can appreciate the lesson: we reap what we sow.
Pray Bowe Bergdahl doesn't reap it for us.
»
William Rivers Pitt is a New York Times and internationally bestselling author of two books: "War on Iraq: What Team Bush Doesn't Want You to Know" and "The Greatest Sedition Is Silence." His newest book, "House of Ill Repute: Reflections on War, Lies, and America's Ravaged Reputation," is now available from PoliPointPress.
Teddy -
Thanks for the William Rivers Pitt article.
Despite its multitude of faults and monstrous sins, the career Pentagon warrior class does have one relevant virtue: professional soldiers are keenly aware of the critical importance of the fragile Geneva Convention POW protections, and the potential for barbarous reprisal that can be unleashed by today's victors upon enemy combatants who have been taken captive. Pvt. Bergdahl's tragic dilemma is Exhibit A of more bloody chickens coming home to roost.
Back when I was drafted during the Vietnam era and underwent US Army basic infantry training at Ft. Knox, Kentucky, among the things that required rote memorization was one that went sort of like this: "I will never surrender of my own free will. If ordered to lay down my arms and I am taken prisoner, I will keep faith with my fellow soldiers. I will reveal only my name, rank, serial number, and unit if I am questioned."
Note that the US Army taught the Geneva Conventions from the viewpoint of the rights of a prisoner of war, not as some sort of protocol prohibiting torture by military prison guards. The underlying assumption is that the military chain of command heirarchy would deter the commission of atrocities by lower echelon bad apples (since we didn't order it, you are not allow to do it). Also, the Geneva Conventions don't prohibit asking questions, or make it unlawful to try to gather intelligence information. What Geneva does declare is that you have a right to divulge no more information to your captors than name, rank, and serial number.
There were plenty of career JAG lawyers who would have thrown a shit fit if they had ever been privy to the Bush legal team's contorted efforts to gut Geneva protections and rebrand torture as enhanced interrogation techniques. That's why Bush/Cheney, Gonzales, Addington, John Yoo, and other right wing ideologue torture enablers routed their self-serving legalisms behind a veil of secrecy, outside the executive branch's proper legal establishment channels at the State Department, DOJ, and the Pentagon. Attorney General Eric Holder should be encouraged to call that conspiracy a federal crime.
Bill from Saginaw
I am resigned to torture and war crimes--they happen in war (I DO believe most of the Bush administration and many, many congresspersons should hang for those crimes). What BUGS me is preventive detention--so utterly un-american to my way of thinking, an absolutely alien concept. I am creeped out.
"a privilege that I in my own time have known the boldest people afraid to speak of in a whisper ...the privilege of filling up blank forms for the consignment of anyone to the oblivion of a prison for any length of time ..."
From "A Tale of Two Cities" by Charles Dickens.
The sad thing is, Americans don't seem to be afraid of allowing their rulers to claim such a privilege. Down the rabbit hole we go.
Great piece, Greenwald.
This is the Obama administration actively extending the Cheney-Bush war against 1st and 4th Amendment protections in order to engage in increasingly draconian population control.
Thank you, Obama voters,
for giving me the government you deserve.
Look Guys,
The Federal Government is just a trough for corporate pigs to feed at. Let's advocate paring it down by 90%. The NeoCons will love that. The gun nuts will love that. No matter how well intentioned a Federal program or department is, ONE NeoCon administration is all it takes to pervert it forever. About the only department that the bushmonkey didn't destroy was Social Security (although he tried to give it away to the Wall Street Casino; and it would be insolvent if he had succeeded.) Despite all the panic about SSA, it runs at a surplus, is extremely efficient and will still pay 70 cents on the dollar even after all the baby boomers go through it. Compared to the TARP banking system black hole, it's a perfect government program by comparison. But the rest of the Federal Government is nothing but paper-pushing turds working for the Fortune 500 Crime Family.
Let's all get on the same team here and demand by National Boycott and National Strike that the Federal Government is reduced in size by 90%. (Except for a new Anit-Trust Busting Department). It is our right, as voters and taxpayers to discuss and lobby for government function and reform. It is our right to withhold employment services (blue flu) and to decide as consumers to boycott all near monopolies. National Parks are allowing Corporate Mining. EPA is dishonest and the FDA lights are on, but nobody's home. The Pentagon is a cancer, the MIC a plague, and the banking industry a FED bank ponzi scheme.
We couldn't have things any worse if we got rid of 90% of this malignant mass.
The Anti-Federalists like Thomas Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe were right: You can't have liberty and a strong central government. Those two things just don't go together.
TJ
"All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." - Thomas Jefferson