In a major rebuke to the Bush administration's theories of presidential power -- and in an equally stinging rebuke to the bipartisan political class which has supported the Bush detention policies -- the U.S. Supreme Court today, in a 5-4 decision (.pdf), declared Section 7 of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 unconstitutional. The Court struck down that section of the MCA because it purported to abolish the writ of habeas corpus -- the means by which a detainee challenges his detention in a court -- despite the fact that Constitution permits suspension of that writ only "in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion."
As a result, Guantanamo detainees accused of being "enemy combatants" have the right to challenge the validity of their detention in a full-fledged U.S. federal court proceeding. The ruling today is the first time in U.S. history that the Court has ruled that detainees held by the U.S. Government in a place where the U.S. does not exercise formal sovereignty (Cuba technically is sovereign over Guantanamo) are nonetheless entitled to the Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus whenever they are held in a place where the U.S. exercises effective control.
One of my first thoughts when I read of the decisions was about who voted yes, and who nay. %-4, well, I had a good idea of who the nays were. Greenwald on the matter (and with concerns I share):Three of the five Justices in the majority -- John Paul Stevens (age 88), Ruth Bader Ginsburg (age 75) and David Souter (age 68) -- are widely expected by court observers to retire or otherwise leave the Court in the first term of the next President. By contrast, the four judges who dissented -- Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts and Sam Alito -- are expected to stay right where they are for many years to come.
John McCain has identified Roberts and Alito as ideal justices of the type he would nominate, while Barack Obama has identified Stephen Breyer, David Souter and Ginsberg (all in the majority today). It's not hyperbole to say that, from Supreme Court appointments alone, our core constitutional protections could easily depend upon the outcome of the 2008 election.
That justice should depend on partisanship is a concern but there are examples of how it has infected the US system, the Florida recount decision of 2000 might well be the prime example - and look what has resulted from that.
Such as:
In its decision, the Court emphasized (and revived) some of the most vital principles of our system of Government which have been trampled upon and degraded over the last seven years (emphasis added):The Framers' inherent distrust of government power was the driving force behind the constitutional plan that allocated powers among three independent branches. This design serves not only to make Government accountable but also to secure individual liberty. . . .In ruling that the CSRTs woefully fail to provide the constitutionally guaranteed safeguards, the Court quoted Alexander Hamilton's Federalist No. 84: "The practice of arbitrary imprisonments, in all ages, is the favorite and most formidable instruments of tyranny." It is that deeply tyrannical practice -- implemented by the Bush administration and authorized by a bipartisan act of Congress -- which the U.S. Supreme Court, today, struck down.Where a person is detained by executive order rather than, say, after being tried and convicted in a court, the need for collateral review is most pressing. . . . The habeas court must have sufficient authority to conduct a meaningful review of both the cause of detention and the Executive's power to detain. . . .
Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to separation of powers. . . .
The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system, they are reconciled within the framework of law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, part of that law.
"... designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times" is point that needs emphasis as the Bush administration has torn away chunks of the Constitution (that "scrap of paper") under the cover of the :"war on terror". Of course, they are not the only ones who have so attacked their systems. he opportunity arose and some governments have been only too willing to exploit it.
For now, we can savour the moment when principle once again stood up. The hope is that it is more than a moment and that others will be inspired to restore and protect the fabric of their systems.
14 comments:
G'day Phil, and a Tory MP in the UK stands up.
David Davis became an unlikely hero of liberal Britain yesterday by sacrificing his political career to launch a one-man crusade against the Government's plan for suspected terrorists to be detained for 42 days without charge.
The former SAS reservist, who supports the death penalty for premeditated murder, shook Britain's political establishment to its roots by announcing he would stand down as an MP to fight a by-election to stop the "slow strangulation of fundamental British freedoms".
The former shadow home secretary's bombshell left David Cameron and many Tory colleagues seething. But outside the Westminster village, the reaction was very different. Mr Davis's Commons office was flooded with telephone calls and emails from members of the public praising him for putting his principles before his career.
More of the same, please.
Note that the tools of oppression include a progression of denigration, dehumanisation, and demonisation.
That sequence is used to generate scapegoating, which in turn is used to justify aggression against those targeted.
So watch for that progression in the propaganda that'll be pumped through the MSM in coming days and weeks.
I've little doubt, we'll get 'new and improved' campaigns to retail the "Worst of the Worst" meme again.
We do not as yet know anything about the identity of, let alone the specific accusations levelled against most of the "detainees."
So before their stories can be seen, we'll most likely be subjected to repeated reminders of the "Worst of the Worst."
Watch, for example, how almost every televised newsclip on this move by the US Supreme Court will include footage of KSM. I've seen the first this evening on 'our' ABC.
The purpose of that footage? To strengthen the effect of stereotypes, play to prejudices, generate guilt by association, etc?
G'day Phil and Craig. the processes you write of Craig are all too predictable and all to obvious. Unfortunately there are people who will still fall for the spin. It is hoped that the decision by the Court and the stands being made by others will help wake up more people.
Some responses to the decision:
The Bush Administration.
Matthew Rothschild.
Andy Worthington.
And from Glenn Greenwald - another Tory takes a stand and a comparison.
The official position of the British Conservative Party is to oppose the legislation, and former Tory Prime Minister John Major -- who himself was the target of a 1991 bombing-assassination plot by the IRA -- wrote an Op-Ed in the Times Online emphatically opposing these increased detention powers and also opposing new DNA and other domestic surveillance programs. Headlined "42-day detention: the threat to our liberty -- The Government's plan is simply part of an assault on our ancient rights," the conservative former Prime Minister wrote:
[T]he case for war was embellished by linking the Iraqi regime to the 9/11 attacks on New York -- for which there is not one shred of evidence. As we moved towards war, that misinformation was compounded by the implication that Saddam's Iraq was a clear and present danger to the United Kingdom, which plainly it was not.
These actions damaged our reputation overseas. And, at home -- on the back of the threat of terror and two serious incidents in London -- they foreshadowed a political climate in which civil liberties are slowly being sacrificed.
We now know that, despite repeated denials, our Government was complicit in rendition, or -- to put it in plain terms -- the transfer of suspects out of civilised jurisdiction to a place where they could be held without charge for a lengthy period.
Although the intention was presumably to garner information, such action is hardly in the spirit of the nation that gave the world Magna Carta, or the Parliament that gave it habeas corpus.
I don't believe that sacrifice of due process can be justified. If we are seen to defend our own values in a manner that does violence to them, then we run the risk of losing those values. Even worse, if our own standards fall, it will serve to recruit terrorists more effectively than their own propaganda could ever hope to. . . .
The Government has introduced measures to protect against terrorism. These go beyond anything contemplated when Britain faced far more regular -- and no less violent -- assaults from the IRA. The justification of these has sometimes come close to scaremongering. . . .
The Government has been saying, in a catchy, misleading piece of spin: "If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." This is a demagogue's trick. We do have something to fear -- the total loss of privacy to an intrusive state with authoritarian tendencies. . .
So is a society in which the right to personal privacy is downgraded. These days a police superintendent can authorise bugging in public places. A chief constable can authorise bugging our homes or cars.
The Home Secretary can approve telephone tapping and the interception of our letters and e-mails. All of this is legal under an Act passed by the Labour Government. None of this requires -- as it should -- the sanction of a High Court Judge. . .
No one can rule out the possibility of another atrocity -- but a free and open society is worth a certain amount of risk. A siege society is alien to our core instincts and -- once in place - will be difficult to dismantle. It is a road down which we should not go.
Can't say fairer than that.
G'day Phil, some more reactions to the court decision. Glenn Greenwald and some very ugly people (amongst other matters) and Scott
Horton.
For the dwindling but stout-hearted band of Bush loyalists, the creation of concentration camps and introduction of torture techniques never presented much of a problem—morally or legally. On the legal side, they reasoned, the president exercised commander-in-chief powers, and in wartime that let him do pretty much whatever he wanted. There were some limits, of course. One might be that his freedom of action had to be outside of the United States. Another that it couldn’t involve U.S. citizens. But with those two points resolved, Torquemada had better get out of the way.
For the critics, that was never right. The president was an actor in a constitutional system, they argued. He was constrained by the law, for that limitation—rule by law and not by a king—was the essence of the nation’s self-identification. In times of war, the constraints were certainly relaxed, but that didn’t mean there were no constraints.
And a heads up for as coming article.
McClatchy Newspapers is scheduled on Sunday to release a major investigation of the facts behind the detention of some 66 people in Guantanamo Bay and in Afghanistan by the U.S. government. It will bolster one inescapable conclusion: President Bush, by sanctioning a policy that not only denies due process to people it deems terrorist suspects but has also led to the torture of many of these suspects, has aided the terrorists.
G'day Phil, Glenn Greenwald has more on the comparison between the UK and US and responses to the winding back of civil liberties.
The intense and escalating political dispute in Britain over civil liberties is interesting in its own right, but it also vividly illustrates how craven and barren our own political system -- and the U.S. Democratic Party -- have become. The sacrifices now being made by British politicians of all parties in opposition to expanded government detention and surveillance powers is, with a few noble exceptions, exactly what our political elite in the Bush era have been -- and still are -- too afraid or too craven to undertake. As the Democratic Party prepares this week to endorse the Bush administration's illegal spying program and immunize telecoms which deliberately broke our surveillance laws for years, these contrasts become even more acute.
Far too much of that cravenness going on.
Latest examples of people making a stand:
Gordon Brown faced a fresh challenge to his authority last night after a leading Labour rebel promised to campaign for David Davis in the renegade Tory's forthcoming by-election.
Bob Marshall-Andrews yesterday defied the Prime Minister to sack him, adding that he hoped other Labour MPs would join the former shadow home secretary's one-man crusade for civil liberties.
"They can't muzzle the whole of the party, and it seems to me foolish in the extreme in the present climate to start describing civil liberties as a stunt," he told The Observer. "I have had emails asking, 'Why does it take a Tory to say this'?"
Under party rules, Labour MPs risk expulsion for campaigning for opposition parties. However, the maverick MP for Medway said that, since Labour appeared unlikely to put up a candidate against Davis, he considered himself free to speak so that 'the voice of a substantial part of the Labour party may be heard'.
Even more strikingly, Nick Clegg, the leader of the Liberal Democrats, has announced that his party will not even contest Davis' re-election, preferring instead to support the Tory MP's defense of civil liberties even though it means sacrificing an opportunity to have his party take over Davis' seat. From today's BBC:
Defending his decision not to stand a Lib Dem candidate against Mr Davis -- whose Haltemprice and Howden constituency was 7th on the list of target seats for Lib Dems' -- Mr Clegg said it was "a one-off" in exceptional circumstances.
Mr Clegg said Mr Davis had told him the night before he announced his resignation about his intentions.
"I thought about it overnight, spoke to some people in the party, and we decided that from time to time it's not a bad thing to say look, there are certain issues which go beyond party politics."
He said while he disagreed with Mr Davis on many issues, he was known to feel "extremely strongly" about the issue of pre-charge detention and ID cards -- and without him the Conservatives may not have opposed those policies so strongly.
Examples for others to follow. But I fear too few will as there are ways to rationalise unconscionable behaviour.
G'day Phil and Craig, pieces today from Chris Floyd and Glenn Greenwald.
From Floyd:
The recent Supreme Court decision restoring habeas corpus rights for Terror War captives in Guantanamo Bay is a welcome development, of course. It is a stern rebuke to a key provision of the odious Military Commissions Act (MCA), which officially surrendered American liberty to presidential tyranny. But this sinister and shameful law still remains in force; what's more, the Supreme Court ruling does not address the Act's core principle: the president's arbitrary power to declare anyone an "enemy combatant" and dispose of them as he pleases – even killing them. Thus the most likely effect of this carefully circumscribed ruling will be that the gulag's darkest operations are merely moved deeper into the shadows.
A SOTU moment that shows the mentality at work:
I ended the 2005 piece on Bush's global death squad with a passage that I've quoted a few times since then. But I want to reference it again here, because I think it captures what is perhaps the quintessence of our times: the bipartisan Establishment rising to applaud an open admission of murder by a lawless leader conducting an endless war of terror, aggression and torture. It was
one of the most revolting scenes in recent American history: Bush's State of the Union address in January 2003, delivered to Congress and televised nationwide during the final frenzy of war-drum beating before the assault on Iraq. Trumpeting his successes in the Terror War, Bush claimed that "more than 3,000 suspected terrorists" had been arrested worldwide – "and many others have met a different fate." His face then took on the characteristic leer, the strange, sickly half-smile it acquires whenever he speaks of killing people: "Let's put it this way. They are no longer a problem."
In other words, the suspects – and even Bush acknowledged they were only suspects – had been murdered. Lynched. Killed by agents operating unsupervised in that shadow world where intelligence, terrorism, politics, finance and organized crime meld together in one amorphous, impenetrable mass. Killed on the word of a dubious informer, perhaps: a tortured captive willing to say anything to end his torment, a business rival, a personal foe, a bureaucrat looking to impress his superiors, a paid snitch in need of cash, a zealous crank pursuing ethnic, tribal or religious hatreds – or any other purveyor of the garbage data that is coin of the realm in the shadow world.
Bush proudly held up this hideous system as an example of what he called "the meaning of American justice." And the assembled legislators…applauded. Oh, how they applauded! They roared with glee at the leering little man's bloodthirsty, B-movie machismo. They shared his sneering contempt for law – our only shield, however imperfect, against the blind, brute, ignorant, ape-like force of raw power. Not a single voice among them was raised in protest against this tyrannical machtpolitik: not that night, not the next day, not ever.
And there is still no voice in the corridors of power crying out against this abomination. Not one.
But some try to justify stern and unConstitutional measures, such as Newt Gingrich, who from the Greenwald piece, sees US cities disappearing with such frequency that there would be few left.
Even when set against all the reckless fear-mongering being spewed in response to last week's Supreme Court ruling -- which merely held that our Government can't abolish the constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus and must provide minimum due process to people before locking them in cages for life -- this comment by Newt Gingrich on Face the Nation this weekend is in a class all by itself:
On the other hand, I will say, the recent Supreme Court decision to turn over to a local district judge decisions of national security and life and death that should be made by the president and the Congress is the most extraordinarily arrogant and destructive decision the Supreme Court has made in its history. . . . . Worse than Dred Scott, worse than–because–for this following reason: . . .
This court decision is a disaster which could cost us a city. And the debate ought to be over whether or not you're prepared to risk losing an American city on behalf of five lawyers . . . .
We better not allow people we seek to imprison for life to have access to a court -- or require our Government to show evidence before it encages people for decades -- otherwise . . . we'll "lose a city."
Just one?
From The New York Sun, November 29, 2006, here's Gingrich arguing that we also need to give up First Amendment rights:
A former House speaker, Newt Gingrich, is causing a stir by proposing that free speech may have to be curtailed in order to fight terrorism. . . .
"We need to get ahead of the curve rather than wait until we actually literally lose a city, which I think could literally happen in the next decade if we're unfortunate," Mr. Gingrich said Monday night during a speech in New Hampshire. . . . "Either before we lose a city or, if we are truly stupid, after we lose a city, we will adopt rules of engagement that use every technology we can find to break up their capacity to use the Internet, to break up their capacity to use free speech, and to go after people who want to kill us to stop them from recruiting people."
From The Associated Press, September 7, 2006, here's Gingrich arguing for a harder-line against Iran:
Speaking before a conservative public policy group Wednesday, Gingrich said Americans should take Iranian leaders' threats seriously, before they acquire nuclear weapons.
"You don't appease your enemies you defeat them," Gingrich said. "We have to take this seriously because the next time we won't just lose a building or an airplane we will potentially lose a city."
There's more. So much so that one can a vast expanse uncluttered by cities. Perhaps he should try another scare tactic.
G'day Phil and Craig, Francis Boyle on Kangaroo courts and the fall from grace of Harvard Law School.
Not surprisingly, the January 2007 issue of the American Journal of Imperial Law--otherwise known as the self-styled American Journal of International Law but founded and still operated by U. S. State and War Departments’ apparatchiks and their professorial fellow-travelers-- published an article by Harvard Law School’s recently retired Bemis Professor of International Law Detlev Vagts (who only taught me the required course on Legal Accounting) arguing in favor of the Pentagon’s Kangaroo Courts System on Guantanamo despite the fact that they have been soundly condemned by every human rights organization and every human rights official and leader in the entire world as well as by the United States Supreme Court itself in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).
I am not going to bother to recite here all the grievous deficiencies of the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts under International Law and U.S. Constitutional Law. But suffice it to say that the Gitmo Kangaroo Courts constitute war crimes under the Laws of War, the Four Geneva Conventions of 1949, and even the U. S. Army’s own Field Manual 27-10, The Law of Land Warfare (1956). Field Manual 27-10 was drafted for the Pentagon by my Laws of War teacher the late, great Richard R. Baxter, who was generally recognized as the world’s leading expert on that subject, which is precisely why I voluntarily chose to study International Law with him and his long-time collaborator Louis B. Sohn, and not with the bean-counter Vagts. For the entire post-World War II generation of international law students at Harvard Law School, Louis Sohn shall always be our real Bemis Professor of International Law and never the False Pretender to that Throne known as Detlev Vagts.
That's a lively start.
Now to Congress and investigations there ... and a return to a matter I spent a wee bit of time on ...
Oversight and Government Reform Committee chair issues subpoena to A-G over Plamegate.
As Scott McClellan's book has renewed interest ...
Five years ago this month, an extraordinary battle was taking shape in the shadows of official Washington: a former U.S. ambassador was preparing to go public to challenge a central deception used by the White House to justify invading Iraq – and the Bush administration was readying a fierce counterattack against him.
Now, after many nasty clashes – which led to the exposure of a covert CIA officer, a criminal White House cover-up, a special prosecutor investigation, the conviction of a senior aide to Vice President Dick Cheney and a subsequent presidential commutation – one key administration insider finally has agreed to testify before Congress.
Ex-White House press secretary Scott McClellan is scheduled to appear before the House Judiciary Committee on June 20 to answer questions about President George W. Bush’s false claim that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq bought 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger -- and about the later cover-up of this deception.
A lengthy read. Will keep an eye on developments.
G'day Phil, a game of hide-and-seek, ie., if the Red Cross comes looking, hide the victims ...
WASHINGTON — The U.S. military hid the locations of suspected terrorist detainees and concealed harsh treatment to avoid the scrutiny of the International Committee of the Red Cross, according to documents that a Senate committee released Tuesday.
"We may need to curb the harsher operations while ICRC is around. It is better not to expose them to any controversial techniques," Lt. Col. Diane Beaver, a military lawyer who's since retired, said during an October 2002 meeting at the Guantanamo Bay prison to discuss employing interrogation techniques that some have equated with torture. Her comments were recorded in minutes of the meeting that were made public Tuesday. At that same meeting, Beaver also appeared to confirm that U.S. officials at another detention facility — Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan — were using sleep deprivation to "break" detainees well before then-Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld approved that technique. "True, but officially it is not happening," she is quoted as having said.
A third person at the meeting, Jonathan Fredman, the chief counsel for the CIA's Counterterrorism Center, disclosed that detainees were moved routinely to avoid the scrutiny of the ICRC, which keeps tabs on prisoners in conflicts around the world.
"In the past when the ICRC has made a big deal about certain detainees, the DOD (Defense Department) has 'moved' them away from the attention of the ICRC," Fredman said, according to the minutes.
G'day Phil, while some stand up, others cave in - Glenn Greenwald on the latest episode in re FISA and thge telecom amnesty.
The provision granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Section 802(a) provides:
[A] civil action may not lie or be maintained in a Federal or State court against any person for providing assistance to an element of the intelligence community, and shall be properly dismissed, if the Attorney General certifies to the district court of the United States in which such action is pending that . . . (4) the assistance alleged to have been provided . . . was --
(A) in connection with intelligence activity involving communications that was (i) authorized by the President during the period beginning on September 11, 2001, and ending on January 17, 2007 and (ii) designed to prevent or detect a terrorist attack, or activities in preparation of a terrorist attack, against the United States" and
(B) the subject of a written request or directive . . . indicating that the activity was (i) authorized by the President; and (ii) determined to be lawful.
So all the Attorney General has to do is recite those magic words -- the President requested this eavesdropping and did it in order to save us from the Terrorists -- and the minute he utters those words, the courts are required to dismiss the lawsuits against the telecoms, no matter how illegal their behavior was.
Far too much cravenness going on. People should follow the example of others featured in this thread.
Back to a more positve theme on a nasty subject, and some speaking out and an investigation ...
DemocracyNow!
And more.
And.
And.
From the Senate:
On Capitol Hill, the chair of the Senate Armed Forces Committee Carl Levin has accused top Bush administration officials of sanctioning the use of harsh interrogation techniques used at Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan.
During a hearing on Tuesday, Levin revealed a senior CIA lawyer told Pentagon staff at Guantanamo in 2002 that torture is “basically subject to perception.” CIA attorney Jonathan Freedman said in 2002, “If the detainee dies, you’re doing it wrong.” Levin also revealed military psychologists played a role in devising the military’s interrogation routines.
Sen. Carl Levin: “On October 2, 2002, a week after John Rizzo, the acting CIA general counsel visited Gtimo, a second senior CIA lawyer, Jonathan Freedman, who was chief counsel to the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, went to Guantanamo, attended a meeting of Gitmo staff and discussed a memo proposing the use of aggressive interrogation techniques. That memo had been drafted by a psychologist and psychiatrist from Gitmo who, a couple of weeks earlier, had attended that training given at Fort Bragg by instructors by the SERE school.”
During Tuesday’s hearing, the Pentagon’s former general counsel William Haynes was repeatedly questioned about his role in authorizing interrogation techniques that amount to torture according to many legal and human rights groups. During two hours of testimony, Haynes responded to dozens of questions by saying he could not recall or remember details about the process of approving the interrogation techniques. Democratic Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island blasted Haynes’ role in authorizing torture.
And this.
NADLER: Colonel Wilkerson, in your prepared testimony, you write that “as I compiled my dossier for Secretary Powell, and as I did further research, and as my views grew firmer and firmer I had to reread that memo (of February 7, 2002), “I needed to balance in my own mind the overwhelming evidence that my own government had sanctioned abuse and torture, which at its worse had led to the murder of 25 detainees and at least 100 detainee deaths. We have murder at least 25 people in detention. That was the clear low point [lower end of the range] of the evidence.” Your testimony said 100 detainees have died in detention; do you believe the 25 of those were in effect murdered?
WILKERSON: Mr. Chairman, I think the number’s actually higher than that now. Last time I checked it was 108, and the total number that were declared homicides by the military services, or by the CIA, or others doing investigations, CID, and so forth — was 25, 26, 27.
NADLER: Were declared homicides?
WILKERSON: Right, starting as early as December 2001 in Afghanistan.
NADLER: And these were homicides committed by people engaged in interrogations?
WILKERSON: Or in guarding prisoners, or something like that. People who were in detention.
NADLER: They were in detention, not trying to escape or anything, declared homicides by our own authorities.
Those "values" have been getting a good workout.
G'day Phil, Chris Floyd has a look at quite a week in American politics ... and wonders if there will be any effect ... Grandma Jefferson's comment is worth noting, as usual.
G'day Phil, more from Chris Floyd - this time on Arthur Silber and FISA.
And a little get together ...
On September 13-14, 2008, Lawrence Velvel, the dean of the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover, plans to convene a 'convention' at the school's facilities; the attendees of which will plan strategies to prosecute members of the Bush administration for war crimes.
"This is not intended to be a mere discussion of violations of law that have occurred," stated Velvel in a press release. "It is, rather, intended to be a planning conference at which plans will be laid and necessary organizational structures set up, to pursue the guilty as long as necessary and, if need be, to the ends of the Earth.
Not before time ...
G'day Phil, a clarification of a claim by one of the dissenting judges:
To bolster his argument that the Guantánamo detainees should be denied the right to prove their innocence in federal courts, Justice Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent in Boumediene v. Bush: "At least 30 of those prisoners hitherto released from Guantánamo have returned to the battlefield." It turns out that statement is false.
According to a new report by Seton Hall Law Center for Policy and Research, "The statistic was endorsed by a Senate Minority Report issued June 26, 2007, which cites a media outlet, CNN. CNN, in turn, named the DoD as its source. The '30' number, however, was corrected in a DoD press release issued in July 2007, and a DoD document submitted to the House Foreign Relations Committee on May 20, 2008 abandons the claim entirely."
We all make mistakes, but when deciding a matter of such importance, one would think care would be taken to get the facts right. But this is Justice Scalia we are talking about.
G'day Phil and Craig, another court decision in defiance of the pollies, this from the US Court of Appeals.
In the history of legal challenges to the Bush administration’s assertion that it can hold “War on Terror” prisoners indefinitely without charge or trial, Parhat v. Gates has just joined a trio of Supreme Court verdicts -- Rasul v. Bush (2004), Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006) and Boumediene v. Bush (twelve days ago) -- as significant challenges to executive overreach.
In a one-page ruling in the case of Hufaiza Parhat, a Uighur (a Muslim from the oppressed Xinjiang province of China), the US Court of Appeals in Washington “held invalid a decision of a Combatant Status Review Tribunal that petitioner Hufaiza Parhat is an enemy combatant.” The court also “directed the government to release or transfer Parhat” (or, more worryingly, “to hold a new Tribunal consistent with the Court’s opinion”), and also “stated that its disposition was without prejudice to Parhat’s right to seek release immediately through a writ of habeas corpus in the district court, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s decision in Boumediene v. Bush.”
Meanwhile, Gitmo as a tourist resort ... Chris Floyd.
Flowers, fishies, frogs and dolphins, and the most precious, cutesy color printing you ever saw: "Someone who loved me got me this t-shirt in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba!"
You can pick up one of these sparkly items for the kids – along with stuffed iguanas, decorated coffee mugs ("Kisses from Guantanamo Bay!"), snazzy keyrings ("It don't GITMO better than this!") and all manner of bric-a-brac from the sun-drenched heaven that bills itself as "Taliban Towers, the Caribbean's Newest 5-star Resort." Yes, the Pentagon has turned the Terror War concentration camp at Guantanamo Bay into a luxurious vacation spot for military personnel and their families – and military contractors, too, of course!
Gotta get one of them T-shirts!
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