After a high-stakes negotiation, Bush got much of what he wanted in the bill to continue the once-secret CIA program of detention and aggressive interrogations of suspects that critics said amounted to torture.
I can clearly remember the day - back when Reagan was in office - when I thought the USSR, North Korea or some other "third-world shithole country" were places that routinely tortured people. But back then never once did I think the US would be a country that not only tortured people, but bragged about it and made it legal.
At the same time, the bill would generally deprive federal judges of the power to review the legality of many such detentions. This is true even in the case of a lawful permanent resident arrested and held in the United States, and even if that person happens to be completely innocent.
The Framers of our Constitution understood the need for checks and balances, but this bill discards them.
Many of the worst provisions were not in the Committee-reported bill, and were not in the compromise announced last Friday. They were added over the weekend after backroom meetings with White House lawyers.
We have tried to improve this legislation. Senator Levin proposed to substitute the bipartisan bill that was reported by the Armed Services Committee. That amendment was rejected.
Senators Specter and Leahy offered an amendment to restore the right to judicial review – that amendment was rejected.
Senator Rockefeller offered an amendment to improve congressional oversight of CIA programs – that amendment was rejected.
Senator Kennedy offered an amendment to clarify that inhumane interrogation tactics prohibited by the Army Field manual could not be used on Americans or on others – that amendment was rejected.
And Senator Byrd offered an amendment to sunset military commissions so that Congress would simply be required to reconsider this far-reaching authority after five years of experience. Even that amendment was rejected.
During the debate on his amendment, Arlen Specter said that the bill sends us back 900 years because it denies habeas corpus rights and allows the President to detain people indefinitely. He also said the bill violates core Constitutional protections. Then he voted for it.
While it's painfully obvious that not all Americans agree with this change of laws, it shows that they are powerless to do anything about it.
America...Land of Torture, home of the disenfranchised.
What I find most ironic about that article is that the photographs shown above were taken at the Tuol Sleng Prison in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The prison is now a museum that documents Khymer Rouge atrocities.
Hmmmmmm....they show a museum that documents ATROCITIES yet nobody calls them ATROCITIES when Bush says he wants to do it.
“The power of the executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious, and the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist.”
- Winston Churchill
i didn't read any of this thread but u know the real reason behinf this bill has nothing to do with anything cept for retroactively keeping bush admin officials from being tried on war crimes...that is all...ass soon as these cunts r out of office the bill will be killed...
a defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence...
Freakaloin wrote:i didn't read any of this thread but u know the real reason behinf this bill has nothing to do with anything cept for retroactively keeping bush admin officials from being tried on war crimes...that is all...ass soon as these cunts r out of office the bill will be killed...
This is a dumb theory.
What happens if the bill is killed and the World Court attempts to - retroactively - charge those in the Bush Administration with war crimes? They won't have the law to protect them.
Last time I checked there wasn't a statute of limitations on war crimes.
Freakaloin wrote:i didn't read any of this thread but u know the real reason behinf this bill has nothing to do with anything cept for retroactively keeping bush admin officials from being tried on war crimes...that is all...ass soon as these cunts r out of office the bill will be killed...
This is a dumb theory.
What happens if the bill is killed and the World Court attempts to - retroactively - charge those in the Bush Administration with war crimes? They won't have the law to protect them.
Last time I checked there wasn't a statute of limitations on war crimes.
Quit being a fag.
i'm such a fag that many law scholars have been saying this for weeks now...its buried deep in the bill and thats th only real reason for the bill...that and when and if they declare martial law to arrest olbermann types...
a defining attribute of a government is that it has a monopoly on the legitimate exercise of violence...
Anticipating court challenges, the administration attempted to make the bill bulletproof by including provisions that would sharply restrict judicial review and limit the application of international treaties - signed by Washington - that govern the rights of wartime detainees.
The bill also contains blunt assertions that it complies with U.S. treaty obligations.
University of Texas constitutional law professor Sanford V. Levinson described the bill in an Internet posting as the mark of a "banana republic." Yale Law School Dean Harold Koh said that "the image of Congress rushing to strip jurisdiction from the courts in response to a politically created emergency is really quite shocking, and it's not clear that most of the members understand what they've done."
In contrast, Douglas W. Kmiec, a professor of constitutional law at Pepperdine University, said Congress "did reasonably well in terms of fashioning a fair" set of procedures. But Kmiec and many others say they cannot predict how the Supreme Court will respond to the provision barring habeas corpus rights, which he said will leave "a large body of detainees with no conceivable basis to challenge their detentions."
There are other likely flashpoints. In the Supreme Court's June decision overturning previous administration policies, four members of the court who joined the majority opinion said conspiracy is not a war crime. The new bill says it is.
Georgetown University law professor Neal Katyal said the bill's creation of two systems of justice - military commissions for foreign nationals and regular criminal trials for U.S. citizens - may violate the Constitution's 14th Amendment, which requires equal protection of the laws to anyone under U.S. jurisdiction.
"If you're an American citizen, you get the Cadillac system of justice. If you're a foreigner or a green-card holder, you get this beat-up-Chevy version," he said.
I agree that the whole purpose of this bill is to protect Bush and Co. from prosecution. They've been doing this shit for 5 years now, and never needed legislation for it before. The legislation never came up until the Supreme Court ruled that what they were doing was illegal.
However, I disagree that the bill will be killed as soon as the gang leaves office. These kinds of things have a way of hanging around and being abused repeatedly. Remember, once power is gained, it is hardly ever relinquished again volutarily.
a sad day for humanity
