If this even makes it to Obama’s desk, he will have found himself in the cross-hairs that were once reserved for George W. Bush. I’m getting pretty tired of making these comparisons, and would be relieved to see Obama craft his own brand of totalitarianism instead of piggybacking on the foundations of a dictatorship that were laid by the cowboy from Crawford.
This disturbing tidbit that’s getting zero talk from either team is a Senate bill that would allow the government to indefinitely detain persons (be they U.S. citizens, immigrants, “terrorists,” - anyone) without charging them with a crime, and while denying them the right to a trial. Oh, and they can hold you for as long as they want - that’s what the word indefinite means.
The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act of 2010, introduced by Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Joseph Lieberman (I-CT), would also create an entirely new system of interrogation by requiring intelligence officials to be consulted about how to handle terrorism suspects after their capture. The legislation would have a “high value detainee” team, made up of members of different intelligence agencies, interrogate and determine whether alleged terrorist suspects are “unprivileged enemy belligerents.” If so, and if the suspect is then charged, the legislation would mandate the use of the discredited and unconstitutional military commissions.
Indefinite detention is the reason we still pay for tens of no-name Afghans and Iraqis to be interrogated and imprisoned in Cuba, something Bush deemed necessary (and for which he was excoriated) but which Obama is happy to sanction and receive a pass on.
Wake up. The Patriot Act and the draconian legislation that came out of the Bush administration that “incidentally” is not being reversed by Barack Obama is not meant for bearded men in a cave on the other side of the world. It was put in place with the likely-existing foresight that the shit is going to hit the fan pretty soon, a realization that has already prompted some who saw their chance to fold their hand (financially or emotionally) go out in a blaze of glory.
This is America, where the the only “ruler” is the rule of law. If you read last year you might remember the story of Ashton Lundeby, the 16-year-old who someone accused of calling in a bomb threat from his home. Two weeks later, police broke into the house of Lundeby’s mother, searching for her son, who was handcuffed and detained, but not before government agents took his computer, a cell phone, a video game console, bank statements, and school records.
There were no bomb-making materials in the house. In fact, the house was quoted as being “nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags [were] everywhere - on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.” A defense attorney had this to say:
“They’re saying that ‘We feel this individual is a terrorist or an enemy combatant against the United States, and we’re going to suspend all of those due process rights because this person is an enemy of the United States,” said Dan Boyce… “There’s nothing a matter of public record… All those normal rights are just suspended in the air.”
In the event of suspected “belligerent” activity gives the government the permission (as if they needed it) to come into your home, arrest you, lock you up forever, all while charging you with no crime, and denying you any ability to defend yourself by granting you a trial in which you may prove your innocence. Forgetting about the fact that you were supposed to be presumed innocent from the start, how many Constitutionally protected rights do you find stripped away from you in that sentence alone?
Where is the liberal outrage? Where is it? I’m getting fed up at this point. How can you morons on both sides not understand that when Bush supports Nazi-style gestapo roundups, warrantless spying, and torture, the left is righteously outraged, but is dismissed by the right as being “soft on terrorism, but while Obama does the same things, and the right is righteously outraged, they are dismissed by the left as paranoid over-anxious powder-kegs who think every government action is leading to “big brother.”
Obama said this about the “high value” terrorists being detained “until further notice” by our government under the same policies the establishment wishes to use in order to jail you on a whim:
“We are going to exhaust every avenue that we have to prosecute those at Guantanamo who pose a danger to our country,” Obama said. “But even when this process is complete, there may be a number of people who cannot be prosecuted for past crimes, but who nonetheless pose a threat to the security of the United States.”
Call them domestic extremists. Call them homegrown terrorists. Call them belligerent. Hell, call them ignorant or mentally insane or racist. But you must understand the paradox we have allowed to exist in the so-called Land of the Free for far too long - that there is a subcategory of offenders for whom there is insufficient evidence to charge them with a crime, but who simultaneously are defined as too dangerous to release. To quote Laura W. Murphy of the ACLU: “If evidence is too unreliable to prosecute someone, it is certainly too flimsy to detain them for the rest of their lives without an opportunity to defend themselves.”
