[Peace-discuss] Congressional acrobatics

[Morton K. Brussel]

The horror, as decribed below. --mkb

Body Politics
Global Eye
By Chris Floyd
Published: November 18, 2005

Four years ago, President 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 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 canceling 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 re-establish 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 that 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, U.S. citizens can also be arbitrarily imprisoned indefinitely
without charge or trial. But for now, any Homelanders caught in  
Bush's 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's actions.

The Senate originally voted to cast Bush's captives into outer darkness
forever, without a single legal recourse. But then a few prissy hens and
bleeding hearts made the usual squawk about rights and law and all that
pinko jazz. So the compromise of allowing a post-conviction appeal --  
for
people who have been arbitrarily seized and held in isolation for years
without charges, who have often been tortured, humiliated and driven to
madness or attempted suicide before facing a kangaroo court -- was  
hastily
cobbled together and presented to the world as a triumph of the human
spirit and the American way.

Ah, but what about the anti-torture amendment, sponsored by the  
Republican
"maverick," Senator John McCain, and hailed by editorialists across the
land as a great leap forward in the evolution of political morality? The
effusions that have greeted this measure are puzzling. It does  
nothing more
than restate what is already the law of the land. American forces were
already forbidden from subjecting any captive "to cruel, inhuman or
degrading treatment or punishment" as prohibited by the Constitution and
the UN Convention Against Torture. This regurgitation of existing law is
the extent of the McCain amendment, along with an adjuration to
interrogators to follow written guidelines for rough stuff set down  
by the
Pentagon.

But the partisans of atrocity in the Bush White House knew these laws  
when
they set up the gulag's torture regimen in 2001. They simply redefined
"torture" to accommodate any brutal technique they cared to  
implement, then
declared that the commander in chief is beyond the reach of law in  
wartime
-- and that any underlings who commit crimes at his order are likewise
absolved of legal liability. This sinister sophistry is still very  
much in
operation and remains unchallenged by the toothless amendment of the
"maverick."

The dual amendments are a cynical PR ploy: Torture will be condemned in
public but quietly continued in the former KGB camps and other secret
hellholes that Bush has strung across the world like a barbed-wire
necklace. The Pentagon's own lawyers certainly understand the true  
nature
of the game. As one told The Guardian: "If detainees can't talk to  
lawyers
or file cases, how will anyone ever find out if they have been  
abused?" No
one ever will, of course; that's the point. With habeas corpus denied up
front, the worst cases of torture and false imprisonment can now be  
buried
forever in "indefinite detention"; the tribunals, with their access to
appeals, will be reserved for open-and-shut showpieces.

These draconian measures reach far beyond a handful of hard-core
terrorists. According to the Pentagon's own figures, more than 21,000
innocent people have been caged without due process in Iraq alone, The
Guardian reports. Hundreds more have been unjustly imprisoned around the
world. A regime that thrives on fear requires a steady stream of "enemy
combatants" to justify its unlimited "war powers." The belly of this  
beast
will never be full.