"The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism"

^ Exactly and excellent point.

 

Bush signed it.

(Curious photo, I might add.)

 

Kafka anyone?
___________

The bottom line is simple: The MCA preserves rights against torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, but it severs these rights from any practical remedy.

This means that the President can have his "alternative sets of procedures"-- i.e., torture lite-- if he can persuade CIA personnel to violate the law with the promise that they will never be prosecuted or punished for doing so. When Rickard suggests that someday CIA officials will have to answer to judges and juries, he assumes precisely what the new bill acts to forestall-- judicial inquiries into the conduct of CIA interrogations.

This is the great irony (and chutzpah) of the President's repeated claim that he only wanted to clarify the law so that the CIA and other officials wouldn't have to break it. The CIA will still be violating the law if it does what the President wants it to do. However, because the Military Commissions Act severs rights from remedies, the Executive branch has the sole power of enforcement. The President decides whether he thinks people in the Executive branch are violating the law, and even if he believes they are violating the law, the President also decides whether he will order them to stop. By now we know the answer to this question. He will not order them to stop. Quite the contrary: the President has made clear in his repeated endorsement of these "alternative" techniques (techniques that he will not name in public) that he will push CIA officials to break the law. Because the Executive branch holds all enforcement powers within itself, the only thing that prevents cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment is the conscience of CIA personnel and executive branch lawyers.

And we know from the fiasco over the torture memo that the conscience of executive branch lawyers has not always been sufficient.

There are many things that are deeply distressing about the Military Commissions Act of 2006. One of the most distressing is its deeply cynical attitude about law. The President has created a new regime in which he is a law unto himself on issues of prisoner interrogations. He decides whether he has violated the laws, and he decides whether to prosecute the people he in turn urges to break the law. And all the while he insists that everything he does is perfectly legal, because, the way the law is designed, there is no one with authority to disagree.

It is a travesty of law under the forms of law. It is the accumulation of executive, judicial, and legislative powers in a single branch and under a single individual.

It is the very essence of tyranny.

http://balkin.blogspot.com/2006/10/rights-against-torture-without.html

 

Oh, the irony...

 

Is this an admission that the terrorists DO hate our freedoms?

 

Whether the terrorists hate our freedoms or not shouldn't matter. What should matter is if we love our freedoms. The problem with the argument that terrorists torture kill and have no respect for human rights so therefore we should too is that we aren't terrorists. We are better than they are as long as we live by our own standards. Of course this makes things more dangerous for us. Democracy, liberty and respecting human rights is always going to be more dangerous than the converse but once again the in the words of Benjamin Franklin "those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither."

 

Thank you so much Senate... you've made America proud.
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Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases

By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 20, 2006; A18

Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future.

Beyond those already imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or elsewhere, the law applies to all non-U.S. citizens, including permanent U.S. residents.

The new law already has been challenged as unconstitutional by lawyers representing the petitioners. The issue of detainee rights is likely to reach the Supreme Court for a third time.

Habeas corpus, a Latin term meaning "you have the body," is one of the oldest principles of English and American law. It requires the government to show a legal basis for holding a prisoner. A series of unresolved federal court cases brought against the administration over the last several years by lawyers representing the detainees had left the question in limbo.

Two years ago, in Rasul v. Bush, which gave Guantanamo detainees the right to challenge their detention before a U.S. court, and in this year's Hamdan v. Rumsfeld , the Supreme Court appeared to settle the issue in favor of the detainees. But the new legislation approved by Congress last month, which gives Bush the authority to try detainees before military commissions, included a provision removing judicial review for all habeas claims.

Immediately after Bush signed the act into law Tuesday, the Justice Department sent a letter to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit asserting the new authorities and informing the court that it no longer had jurisdiction over a combined habeas case that had been under consideration since 2004. The U.S. District Court cases, which had been stayed pending the appeals court decision, were similarly invalid, the administration informed that court on Wednesday.

A number of legal scholars and members of Congress, including Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), have said that the habeas provision of the new law violates a clause of the Constitution that says the right to challenge detention "shall not be suspended" except in cases of "rebellion or invasion." Historically, the Constitution has been interpreted to apply equally to citizens and noncitizens under U.S. jurisdiction.

The administration's persistence on the issue "demonstrates how difficult it is for the courts to enforce [the clause] in the face of a resolute executive branch that is bound and determined to resist it," said Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor involved in the detainee cases.

On Tuesday, the appeals court granted a petition by lawyers for the detainees to argue against the new law. Vincent Warren, the executive director of the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the detainees, said yesterday that he expected the administration to file a motion for dismissal of all the cases before the defense challenge is heard.

"We and other habeas counsel are going to vigorously oppose dismissal of these cases," Warren said. "We are going to challenge that law as violating the Constitution on several grounds." Whichever side loses in the upcoming court battles, he said, will then appeal to the Supreme Court.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/19/AR2006101901692_pf.html

 

It matters in the context of what has become the tired joke of 'oh yeah, they hate our freedoms (insert rolleyes),' if they do, in fact, hate our freedoms.

 

Why on earth does anyone need to "admit" that the Osama bin-Laden's of this world hate our way of life? Of course they do. That is exactly the point. If you change our way of life, in a misguided attempt to fight them in that way, you are handing them a victory.

We can fight them, and we will, without turning into a different country. I love my country, and what is happening to it sickens me. The bin-Ladens of this world fill me with hatred for them. Why Bush pulled out of Afghanistan a huge amount of our forces there, putting seven times as many in his insane invasion and occupation of Iraq, is a travesty. We should have those troops in THAT theatre, killing the bastards. Instead, we see Afghanistan going down the tubes, a terrorist factory out of our control in Iraq, even more instability in the Middle East than before, a race by Iran and North Korea to build atomic weapons... I could go on.

Yes, the terrorists hate our way of life. George W. Bush is busy helping them **** it up. Happy? I'm certainly not.



Keep D&D Civil.

 

I explained my point already, Deckard. Many posters on this board have repeated the sarcastic utterance that 'oh yeah, the terrorists hate our freedoms ." If they do hate our way of life then posters should cease said sarcastic utterances.

 

Glenn Greenwald writes well... and he often writes well about stuff I think about but lack the talent to express...
_________________
Is protection from threats the highest political value?

When President Bush signed the so-called Military Commissions Act of 2006 into law this week, he dismissed away objections to its Draconian and tyrannical provisions with one very simple and straightforward argument:


Over the past few months the debate over this bill has been heated, and the questions raised can seem complex. Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat? Every member of Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us.


That paragraph from the President's remarks is an excellent summary of the philosophy of the Bush movement. Because the threat posed by The Terrorists is so grave and mortal, maximizing protections against it is the paramount, overriding goal. As a result, no other value really competes with that objective in importance, nor can any other objective or value limit our efforts to protect ourselves against The Terrorists. That's what the President is arguing when he said: "Yet, with the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat." All that matters is whether we did everything possible to protect ourselves.

That is the essence of virtually every argument made by Bush supporters on virtually every terrorism-related issue. No matter what objection is raised to the never-ending expansions of government power, no matter what competing values are touted (due process, the rule of law, the principles our country embodies, how we are perceived around the world), the response will always be that The Terrorists are waging War against us and we must protect ourselves. That is the only recognized value, the only objective that matters. By definition, there can never be any good reason to oppose vesting powers in the government to protect us from The Terrorists because that goal outweighs all others.

This form of thinking is also what explains the fact that anyone who opposes their policies is seen by them as allies of The Terrorists (rather than advocates of competing values). As the President said, the only real question will be: did "Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?" Given that this is the sole objective that is recognized, this means that every person can essentially be categorized as either (a) someone who does take the threat seriously and wants to do what is necessary to defeat it, or (b) someone who does not.

But our entire system of government, from its inception, has been based upon the precise opposite calculus -- that many things matter besides merely protecting ourselves against threats which might kill us, and beyond that, we are willing to accept an increased risk of death in order to pursue those other values. That worldview -- that maximizing physical safety to the exclusion of all else leads to a poor and empty way of life, and that limiting government power is so necessary that we do it even if it means accepting an increased risk of death when doing so -- is what lies at the very core of what America is.

The Bill of Rights contains all sorts of limitations on government power which make us more vulnerable to threats that can kill us. If there is a serial killer on the loose in a community, the police would be able to find and apprehend him much more easily if they could simply invade and search everyone's homes at will and without warning. But the Fourth Amendment expressly prohibits the police from doing that -- it requires both probable cause and a judicial warrant before they can do so -- even though that restriction makes it more likely that we will be victimized, even fatally, by criminals.

Imagine the Bush movement present during pre-founding debates over the Constitution. Is there any doubt that Bush followers would have argued against the Fourth Amendment restriction on police powers by stressing that violent criminals can kill our children, that we must do everything to protect ourselves against them, and that those who favor search warrant requirements for the police are pro-murderer? If you're not doing anything wrong in your home, what do you have to hide?

Our country is centrally based upon the principle that we are willing to risk death in order to limit government power. Numerous other amendments in the Bill of Rights are identically based on that same principle and, of course, that is the central belief that drove the founders to risk death by waging war against the most powerful empire on earth. We have never been a country that ignores other objectives and asks only, as the President put it, did "Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?" There have always been numerous other values beyond mere protection which are at least as important and that have to be fulfilled in order to be convinced that we acted properly.

The President's comments are as historically inaccurate as they are contrary to core American principles. Historically, the worst mistakes made by America -- those instances in which it has most radically departed from its principles and aspirations -- have come not when Americans failed to take seriously enough some external threat, but to the contrary, when government leaders exaggerated the threat and induced overreactions among citizens. That is the question that will almost certainly be asked by historians. As History Professor Joseph Ellis wrote earlier this year in The New York Times:


My second question is this: What does history tell us about our earlier responses to traumatic events?

My list of precedents for the Patriot Act and government wiretapping of American citizens would include the Alien and Sedition Acts in 1798, which allowed the federal government to close newspapers and deport foreigners during the "quasi-war" with France; the denial of habeas corpus during the Civil War, which permitted the pre-emptive arrest of suspected Southern sympathizers; the Red Scare of 1919, which emboldened the attorney general to round up leftist critics in the wake of the Russian Revolution; the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, which was justified on the grounds that their ancestry made them potential threats to national security; the McCarthy scare of the early 1950's, which used cold war anxieties to pursue a witch hunt against putative Communists in government, universities and the film industry.

In retrospect, none of these domestic responses to perceived national security threats looks justifiable. Every history textbook I know describes them as lamentable, excessive, even embarrassing. . . . .

But it defies reason and experience to make Sept. 11 the defining influence on our foreign and domestic policy. History suggests that we have faced greater challenges and triumphed, and that overreaction is a greater danger than complacency.


Our history is not -- as the President's argument assumes -- composed of a failure to take seriously enough external threats, but is instead composed of external threats being exaggerated in order to justify grave excesses and an abandonment of our core values. The scare tactic of telling Americans that every desired expansion of government power is justified by the Terrorist Threat is effective because it has immediate rhetorical appeal. Most people, especially when placed in fear of potentially fatal threats, are receptive to the argument that maximizing protection is the only thing that matters, and that no abstract concept (like liberty, or freedom, or due process, or adhering to civilized norms) is worth risking one's life for or accepting heightened levels of vulnerability to fatal threats.

A couple of months ago, Dean Barnett, writing on Hugh Hewitt's Townhall blog, wrote a post (which I started to write about back then but never finished) which expressed the mindset that lies at the core of the Bush movement (emphasis added):


The most important thing any conservative writer can do today is convince people who think that we’re perfectly safe that we’re not. Personally, I desperately want to reach those who think once Bush leaves office, the republic will be safe. I badly want to communicate with the vast majority of Americans who are benignly indifferent to politics and convince them of the peril we face. I doubt there’s a way of knowing how successful I am at these things - I’m pretty sure progress in such matters is measured in inches, not miles. Anyway, I'm trying.


Barnett says that his goal is to "convince people who think that we’re perfectly safe that we’re not." But nobody thinks we're "perfectly safe." Nothing in life is "perfectly safe." Perfect safety is an illusion, something that is wasteful to pursue, and when pursued to the exclusion of all else, creates a tragically worthless, paralyzed way of life. On a political level, pursuit of "perfect safety" as the paramount goal is precisely what produces tyranny, since one will be motivated by that value system to vest as much power as possible in the government, without limits, in exchange for the promise of maximum protection.

That is the mindset being used to justify endless expansions of presidential power and a radical abandonment of our country's values. Eliminating all risk of the Terrorist Threat is what matters, and nothing else can stand in its way. Hence, torture, indefinite detention, warrantless eavesdropping -- the whole array of authoritarian powers sought by this administration -- are justified because none of the abstract principles and values that are destroyed by vesting such powers matter when placed next to the scary prospect that The Terrorists will kill us. That is the precise opposite of the American ethos, but -- as the President's remarks this week illustrate, appropriately voiced when our country legalized torture and indefinite detention -- it is the predominant mindset under which the country is being governed.

http://glenngreenwald.blogspot.com/

 

i think if anything it is proof that bush/cheney hate our freedoms.

they played right into bin ladens hands.

bush swore an oath of allegiance to uphold the constitution - he broke that oath and he should be arrested for it, as well as every member of the senate who voted for it.

"those who would trade liberty for safety deserve neither."
-benjamin franklin

 

What Bush/Cheney think is irrelevant to my point. Do you disagree with Deckard that the terrorists obviously hate our freedoms?

 

yes, bush and cheney (the terrorists) obviously hate our freedoms.

 

Bush and Cheney are not the subject of my query. If you want to wear a billboard and walk around calling Bush and Cheney terrorists, feel free. But chiming in nonsensically is just wasting our time.

 

ok - ill play along.

im sure there are some "terrorists" out there who hate our "freedoms", but that was not the overriding factor for 9/11, as bush likes to have us believe.

bin laden has stated that he hates america not for our freedoms, but for
1) presence of american troops in muslim holy lands
2) u.s. support of israel
3) u.s. support of saudi royal family

it has nothing to do with hating freedom.

however, the actions of the bush administration show that they are the freedom haters.