"The Senate's Sham Rebellion Against Tyranny and Torture"

Great comment from BradBlog guest. Senate should be embarrassed...what oversight? Vote them out.

Guest blogged by Chris Floyd

Below is an expanded version of my column in today's edition of The Moscow Times.

Four years ago, George W. Bush quietly assumed dictatorial powers with a secret executive order granting himself the right to imprison anyone on earth indefinitely, without charges or trial or indictment or evidence, simply by declaring them an "enemy combatant," on his say-so alone. This week, the assemblage of bootlickers and bagmen that now befoul the U.S. Senate voted to codify the core of this global autocracy under the pretense of curtailing it.

With great self-fluffing fanfare, the Senate passed two measures ostensibly designed to stem the flood of torture and tyranny issuing from the White House. But the twinned amendments to a military spending bill have the curious effect of cancelling each other out: the anti-torture measure leaves Bush's tyranny intact, while the anti-tyranny measure will allow torture to continue unabated. This switcheroo, we are told by one of the scam's sponsors, "will reestablish moral high ground for the United States," the Washington Post reports.

But what can we actually see from this lofty moral promontory? We see that all foreign captives in Bush's worldwide gulag have now been stripped of the ancient human right of habeas corpus. They will not be allowed to challenge "any aspect of their detention" in court -- until they have already been tried and convicted by a "military tribunal" constituted under rules concocted arbitrarily by Bush and his minions. Only then, after years of incarceration without rights or legal protection, will they be given access to a single federal appeals court which can review their conviction -- subject to the usual "national security" restrictions on challenging evidence gathered by secret means from secret sources in secret places. Remarkably, the Supreme Court is expressly prohibited from any jurisdiction whatsoever over any aspect of gulag captivity, the Washington Post reports. And of course, Bush can simply skip the tribunal and keep anyone he pleases chained in legal limbo until they rot. Neither of the ballyhooed amendments affects this raw despotism.

Meanwhile, American citizens can also be arbitrarily imprisoned indefinitely without charge or trial. But for now, any Homelanders caught in Bush's Terror War net can at least appear briefly in court prior to their conviction, where they will enjoy a "judicial process" that Stalin or Saddam would have loved: Bush officials present the judge with a piece of paper declaring that the prisoner is one bad hombre, but all the evidence against him is classified and nobody can see it -- especially the prisoner, the Washington Post reports. And that's it. The captive is then plunged back into the gulag, to be disposed of according to Bush's whim. Again, this medieval mechanism of tyranny was left untouched by the Senate actions.

More at link
http://www.bradblog.com/archives/00002036.htm


See annotations below:

Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2005
Senators Agree on Detainee Rights
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/14/AR2005111401508_pf.html

Washington Post, Nov. 15, 2005
Senate Rebukes Bush on Iraq Policy
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/11/15/AR2005111500145_pf.html

United States Senate, Nov. 11, 2005
McCain Amendment to 2006 Department of Defense Appropriations Bill
http://www.fcnl.org/issues/item.php?item_id=1567&issue_id=70

Washington Post, Nov. 14, 2005
Detainees Deserve Court Trials
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10994.htm

New York Times, Nov. 12, 2005
Democrats Provided Edge on Detainee Vote
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10967.htm

Agence France Presse, Nov. 9, 2005
Rumsfeld can authorize exceptions to new "humane" interrogation directive
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051109/pl_afp/usattacksprisoners_051109191424

The Observer, Nov. 13. 2005
Guantanamo Inmates to Lose All Rights
http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,1641703,00.html

Slate.com, Nov. 11, 2005
Who They Are: The Double Standard that Underlies our Torture Policies
http://www.slate.com/id/2130028/

Information Clearinghouse, Sept. 10, 2005
Jose Padilla and The Death of Liberty
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article10223.htm

Agence France Press, Nov. 13, 2005
White House declines to totally rule out torture
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20051113/pl_afp/usattackstorture

New York Times, Nov. 13, 2005
'We Do Not Torture' and Other Funny Stories
http://www.topplebush.com/oped2320.shtml

Wikepedia
Habeas Corpus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_corpus

Washington Post, July 16, 2005
Court Rules Military Panels to Try Detainees
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/15/AR2005071500757_pf.html

Deep Blade Journal, July 16, 2005
Domination by Detention
http://deepblade.net/journal/2005/07/domination-by-detention.html

Miami Herald, July 16, 2005
Ruling Lets U.S. Restart Trials at Guantanamo
http://www.centredaily.com/mld/dailytimes/news/nation/12146911.htm?template=contentModules/printstory.jsp

LA Weekly, Jan. 14-20, 2005
Alberto Gonzales' Tortured Arguments for Reigning Above the Law
http://www.laweekly.com/ink/printme.php?eid=60020

Knight-Ridder, Jan. 26, 2005
Torture Treaty Doesn't Bar `Cruel, Inhuman' Tactics, Gonzales Says
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0126-06.htm

New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002
Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists
http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence/bushwidened.html


Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003
Special Ops Get OK to Initiate Its Own Missions
http://foi.missouri.edu/terrorintelligence/bushwidened.html

Spiked, Nov. 11, 2002
Coward's War in Yemen
http://www.spiked-online.com/Articles/00000006DB1B.htm

The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2002
Drones of Death
http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,834290,00.html


New York Times, Jan. 20, 2005
Gonzales Excludes CIA from Rules on Prisoners
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article7765.htm


The Observer, June 13, 2004
The Secret World of US Jails
http://www.guardian.co.uk/alqaida/story/0,12469,1237650,00.html

CounterPunch, Feb. 2, 2005
The Torture Memos: A Legal Narrative
http://www.counterpunch.org/dratel02012005.html

Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 2002
CIA Takes on Major Military Role: 'We're Killing People!
http://www.rense.com/general19/kill.htm

Village Voice, Feb. 14, 2003
Our Designated Killers
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0308,hentoff,41940,6.html

Village Voice, Feb. 21, 2003
A U.S. License to Kill
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0309,hentoff,42100,6.html

Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2001
CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions
http://www.refuseandresist.org/big_brother/102801ciatargets.html

Human Rights Watch, June 23, 2003
US Again Uses Enemy Combatant Label to Deny Basic Rights
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2002/06/12/usdom4040.htm

New York Times, March 6, 2005
Lets CIA Freely Send Suspects to Foreign Jails
http://www.pej.org/html/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=2032&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

The New Statesman, March 7, 2005
Review: Torture and Truth and The Torture Papers
http://www.newstatesman.com/200503070041

San Diego Union-Tribune, Feb. 27, 2005
The Torture Papers: Full Faith and Credit of the U.S. Government
http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20050227/news_lz1v27torture.html