Reply #9: This isn't just about torturing the innocent [View All]

They are already torturing the innocent.

No, this does something much more frightening and insidious than legitimize the torture that the Congress knows about and that which they want to ignore. This legislation puts us, you and me, at risk to be taken from our beds and put in prison; designated as "enemy combatants" for anything the government might not like today. That is the most frightening aspect.

From http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/linkset/2005/04/11/LI2005041100879.html">Froomkin:

Here's just one example of what's in the bill that few people are aware of. Yale professor http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-ackerman28sep28,1,1031691.story?ctrack=1&cset=true">Bruce Ackerman writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

"This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops 'during an armed conflict,' it also allows him to seize anybody who has 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.' This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison."

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And that's America today.

Will it stand? No. Will it take a Constitutional Amendment to throw out the Writ? Yes. Do I know how long this will stand? Heavens no. Everyday it is exists is one day too long, but it's already been too long. For any of us to think that without this they weren't going to torture anymore is naive.

This is about chipping away at the foundation of what it means to be an American citizen, the rights we have been granted, and, mostly, for covering their own guilty asses.