A final bit of legislation (H.R.6166 and S.3930) sailing through the Republican controlled 109th Congress appears to be the crowning glory of the Bush/Cheney administration. This treasonous unconstitutional legislation effectively legalizes torture, abrogates the Geneva Conventions, and authorizes the President to detain US Citizens inside the United States and hold them without charges and without trial *forever*. All the President has to do is assert that you are an ‘enemy combatant’ and your quaint Constitutional rights instantly evaporate and you can be locked away in a military prison like Guantanamo Bay forever and subject to Abu Ghraib-style torture. All on the whim of Der Führer, George W. Bush.
Over at Raw Story, John Steinberg rather aptly labels this, “The New Enabling Actâ€.
Over at Unclaimed Territory, Glenn Greenwald writes about it in “The legalization of torture and permanent detentionâ€. He’s also live blogging the “debate†(which is on C-SPAN 2).
Today’s New York Times editorial summarizes its major 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.
When coupled with illegal domestic surveilance, Patriot Act II (H.R.3199 and S.2271), and the continuing National Emergency brought about by an act of terrorism it now seems clear the Bush administration all but knew was coming, we would seem to have all the dominos in place for a full-on Nazi-style dictatorship with nothing but the word of Bush that he won’t abuse the system. We ought to recognize the evil built into this equation, for Hitler rose to power in much the same way.
Though they failed, credit to the brave few who had the courage to stand up for the Constitution or try to limit the damage. The Republican majority voted down all of the amendments, even the bi-partisan ones, on a straight party line. Today Senator Patrick Leahy (D-VT) asked this rhetorical question:
What has changed in the past five years that justifies not merely suspending, but abolishing the writ of habeas corpus for a broad category of people who have not been found guilty or even charged with any crime? What has changed in the last five years that our Government is so inept and our people so terrified that we must do what no bomb or attack could ever do by taking away the very freedoms that define America? Why would we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed? What has happened that the Senate is willing to turn America from a bastion of freedom into a caldron of suspicion ruled by a Government of unchecked power?
Feeling left out? You can join the new and improved SS, here. Though the icon isn’t as snazzy as it once was and the starting salary is only $45,193, you do get to carry a gun and arrest people without a warrant! Whereas in Nazi Germany you would have been reporting to Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler, this time you’ll be working for Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff. So enjoy the irony because the rest of the play looks pretty bleak.
“If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.†— James Madison
Update: Media Matters has a much more detained review of the enabling act.
