Playing With Fire (NYT on torture and the Geneva Conventions)

Entire editorial is at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/opinion/12sat1.html?hp=&pagewanted=print


November 12, 2005
Editorial


Playing With Fire

It certainly is a relief that the Senate is finally getting around to doing the job it so shamefully refused to do four years ago, after the 9/11 attacks: requiring the administration to follow the law and the Geneva Conventions in dealing with prisoners taken by the military and intelligence operatives.

But what started as an admirable attempt by Senator John McCain to stop the torture and abuse of prisoners has become a tangle of amendments and back-room deals that pose a real danger of undermining the sacred rule that the government cannot just lock people up forever without saying why. On Thursday, the Senate passed a measure that would deny foreigners declared to be "unlawful enemy combatants" the right to a hearing under the principle known as habeas corpus, which dates to Magna Carta.

Instead, the measure would mandate an automatic review by a federal court of the status of the inmates now at Guantánamo Bay and any future prisoners of that kind. It would exclude coerced confessions from that review, and place important new controls over Guantánamo operations.

These safeguards, proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham, the South Carolina Republican who has shown real courage in condemning prisoner abuse, are long overdue. Mr. Graham, a former military lawyer, also proposed the exemption to habeas corpus, arguing that it had never been meant to apply to prisoners of war, let alone to foreign terrorists. He says Guantánamo inmates are clogging the courts with petitions that hamper efforts to get vital intelligence.

Mr. Graham is a careful and principled senator who argues eloquently for his measure. The Senate should adopt his proposal for a federal court review of detentions, preferably by a huge margin, and the House should follow suit. We'd love to see Congress then defy the inevitable veto threats from the White House, driven by Vice President Dick Cheney, who is still skulking around Capitol Hill trying to legalize torture at the C.I.A.'s secret prison camps around the world. But we cannot support Mr. Graham in trying to rewrite the habeas corpus law.

more...

exemptions...that's just plain F-ed up.

years to find out the ghastly details. Germans tortured by the British during and after WW2 have things like this to say:

"In one complaint lodged at the National Archives, a 27-year-old German journalist being held at this camp (an internment camp in the Occupied Zone: the main torture centre was in a fashionable part of west London) said he had spent two years as a prisoner of the Gestapo. And not once, he said, did they treat him as badly as the British."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/secondworldwar/story/0,14058,1640942,00.html

But I still want to know: Since the US public do know, why aren't they up in arms about it? Because watching the hero of 24 saw off people's heads has concussed their consciences?

Notice how the Dems get mentioned:

Democrats Provided Edge on Detainee Vote

"WASHINGTON, Nov. 11 - Democrats who had voted previously to prohibit abusive treatment of detainees in American custody provided the margin of victory on Thursday for a Republican-backed measure that would deny prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, the right to challenge their detention in federal courts.

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/12/national/nationalspecial3/12detain.html?pagewanted=print

IMO, the Dems have no one to blame but themselves. This kind of mixed message, cross party lines on a whim- with no consequences for their actions- just typifies why the Democrats have basically become irrelevant in national politics.

If the Democratix Party "leadership" lets 4 or 5 Senators bolt EVERY SINGLE TIME when they might make a stand on priciple- then they're doomed to keep losing over and over at the national level. And, it can be argued (and it will be perceived by many) -rightly so.

If they can't even enforce a little bit of discipline among their own- if they can't EVER muster enough political fortitude to put up a united front against the Republicans- ON ANY ISSUE- how can anyone trust them to run the country or keep it safe?

Better to go with "moderate" Republicans- that'll be what's said between the lines- and that'll be what a lot of people will be thinking.

And who can blame them?

I would like to think that the Dems would actually want to be percieved as something other than push-overs and cowards- but that's not how it's been playing out. And, if and when they roll over on Alito- that might just end whatever hopes anyone had for nationalizing the election in 2006- and possibly taking back one or both houses of congress.

If anyone was wondering why Dean is said to be having trouble raising money for the DNC- well- look no further for your answer.

No one wants to back a loser.