Opposition to detainee bill -- including Ken Starr!

NYT/AP: Detainee Legislation Deal Draws Protests
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 25, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration's deal with Senate Republicans over detainee treatment drew protests Monday from former diplomats, lawyers and a GOP committee chairman.

They oppose a provision that would strip federal courts of jurisdiction over cases in which detainees have not been charged with war crimes. The effect, said those opposed, would be to deny terrorism suspects the ability to challenge their detainment, a right afforded defendants in military and criminal courts.

Leading the charge was Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, R-Pa., who is planning an effort to delete that provision from the bill, expected to be considered in both the Senate and the House this week....Specter had much support. Thirty-three former diplomats, New York-area lawyers and even Kenneth Starr, the special prosecutor in President Clinton's impeachment trial, said in letters to lawmakers that the bill as written would undermine the United States' credibility as it wages war on terrorists....

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Specter's position was echoed by a chorus of former diplomats who wrote to senators and House members that denying detainees the ability to challenge their imprisonment would boomerang on Americans representing the United States overseas by implying that ''arbitrary arrest is the acceptable norm of the day.''...

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In their own letter to members of Congress, several hundred New York lawyers and judges warned that the legislation would afford only those detainees the government is able to charge with full due process while the others, uncharged, would be denied a fair hearing....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Congress-Terrorism.html