ALL WE CAN SAY IS, "IT'S ABOUT TIME!" that official Washington - the Senate, the House, the corrupt, servile DC press corps, the movers and shakers inside and outside of government - called this disgusting pig of a "MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT" for what it is - a NOT EVEN thinly disguised attempt to set up the US presidency as a PEACETIME KGB or GESTAPO here in America.
Actually, the PRECEDENT for this atrocious bill long predates either the Nazi Party in Germany, or the Stalinist regime in Russia; that would be the chattel SLAVERY SYSTEM here in America, which of course AUTOMATICALLY DENIED _any_ human rights to slaves, escaped slaves, or even free men in other states who, once they were KIDNAPPED by pro-slavery authorities, immediately VANISHED from the eyes of the law, except in those rare cases where public indignation in the non-slave states demanded a kidnap victim's release.
UNLIMITED god-like powers of ARREST, DETENTION, ENSLAVEMENT, TORTURE, and MURDER.... they are all there, both in the draconian GESTAPO-esque "MILITARY COMMISSIONS ACT," and in America's long, sordid history of the CHATTEL SLAVE TRADE, which used (in today's terms) BILLION DOLLAR PROFITS, BIBLE-THUMPING, and "MORAL VALUES!" rhetoric to JUSTIFY CRUELTY, WARS, SADISM, TORTURE, and MURDER.
(Note: The US Marine Corps hym sings of "fighting for right AND FREEDOM... from the halls of Montezuma to the SHORES OF TRIPOLI." That would be Tripoli, North Africa (current Libya), where President Thomas Jefferson sent the US Navy and Marines to fight against the ENSLAVEMENT of American sailors by the Barbary pirates fighting out of the fortress at Derna (Tripoli). But the FLIP-SIDE of that valorous history is, that at the SAME TIME America's Navy was "FIGHTING FOR RIGHT AND FREEDOM" in NORTH Africa, the US Navy and Merchant Marine were engaged in, and ACCELERATING, THE SLAVE TRADE from WEST AFRICAN PORTS. The slave trade, of course, DEMANDED A CONSTANT SUPPLY OF FRESH SLAVES - which were PRODUCED BY SLAVE RAIDS, i.e. a CONSTANT STATE OF WAR by the slave-exporting Kings of the coast against their WEAKER, DEFENSELESS NEIGHBORS in the interior. It has been estimated that for every ONE SLAVE DELIVERED to New World ports, THREE Africans DIED in transit, in captivity, or in the initial slave raids. IF the transatlantic slave raid delivered over three million slaves to the Americas, that would mean as many as ten, eleven, or TWELVE MILLION AFRICANS PERISHED at the hands of New World EUROPEAN and AMERICAN slavers - WITH THE FULL COOPERATION and COMPLICITY of the "fight for right and FREEDOM" United States Navy and Marine corps.)
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Bill Would Restore Detainees' Rights, Define 'Combatant'
By Josh White
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, February 14, 2007; Page A08
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/13/AR2007021301163.html?nav=rss_politics
A group of Senate Democrats introduced legislation yesterday that would restore habeas corpus rights to all detainees in U.S. custody and would narrowly define what it means to be an "enemy combatant" against the United States, a measure designed to challenge laws ushered in by the Republican-controlled Congress last year.
The bill, titled the "Restoring the Constitution Act of 2007," strikes at the core of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 by giving detainees access to U.S. courts. It was introduced by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.), a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.
Detainee Policy
Bush acknowledged the existence of secret CIA prisons abroad Sept. 6, 2006, as he called for the authority to try prisoners by military commissions. On Jan. 18, 2007, the Pentagon released its rules for trying detainees.
• Analysis: President Shifts Argument
CIA'S SECRET PRISONS
Washington Post reporter Dana Priest reported on Nov. 2 that the CIA operates a network of secret prisons where it holds terror suspects. Priest was awarded a Pulitzer Prize on April 17 for her beat reporting on the CIA and the War on Terror.
• From the Office of the Director of National Intelligence: Summary of the High Value Terrorist Detainee Program (pdf)
GUANTANAMO DETAINEES
Detainee Database
View the largest list of names at Guantanamo prison made public thus far.
TRANSCRIPTS
President Bush delivers remarks on terrorism, Sept. 6, 2006.
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The bill would also prevent the executive branch from making blanket determinations about who is an enemy combatant and would restrict the president's authority to interpret when certain human rights standards apply to detainees. The legislation would limit the label "enemy combatant" to a person "who directly participates in hostilities in a zone of active combat against the United States" or who took part in the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.
Should such language become law, it could change the status of numerous detainees who were picked up in U.S. counterterrorism efforts.
The bill would also restore to the detainees numerous rights they lost under the Military Commissions Act, including the right, under a habeas corpus petition, to challenge their detention in federal court.
"I take a backseat to no one when it comes to protecting the country from terrorists," Dodd said in an e-mail statement yesterday. "But there is a right way to do this and a wrong way to do this. . . . In taking away their legal rights, the rights first codified in our country's Constitution, we're taking away our own moral compass, as well."
The Military Commissions Act was originally designed to fix problems in the wartime trial process for detainees in U.S. custody after the Supreme Court struck down the Bush administration's first set of rules. But the act also denied access to U.S. courts to those accused of being foreign enemy combatants.
In a panel discussion Monday night after the screening of an HBO movie about the Abu Ghraib prison abuse, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a leading proponent of the Military Commissions Act, said he stands behind the existing law and believes that it will stand up to Supreme Court scrutiny.
The newly proposed legislation, however, has the potential to undercut last year's law before challenges reach the Supreme Court. There is bipartisan support in Congress for restoring the habeas corpus rights of detainees, many of whom have filed court cases with the help of civilian lawyers.
Elisa Massimino, Washington director of Human Rights First, said the new bill would remedy several legal problems her organization has identified in the Military Commissions Act, particularly in the area of habeas corpus rights. She said the definition of "enemy combatant" is "hugely important" because it would draw a line between actual combat and the Bush administration's ambiguous "global war on terror."
"It would go to the question of whether the whole of our counterterrorism effort is going to be considered an actual and legal war," Massimino said. "Congress hasn't taken that issue head-on."
