Let It Come Down: Forcing the Constitutional Crisis of Liberty
by Chris Floyd
by Chris Floyd
DIGG THIS
The line
it is drawn
The curse it is cast...
The order is rapidly fading
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin'
Nat Hentoff,
one of our great champions of civil liberties, uncovers the ugly
truths behind the Bush Regime's plans for a Nuremberg-in-reverse
at the American concentration camp in Guantanamo Bay: war crimes
show trials being conducted by war criminals. Hentoff also cites
the remarkable reports by the Seton Hall University School of Law
which – drawing solely on official Pentagon documents –
detail the shameful and criminal system that Bush and his lawless
gang of legal perverts have established. As the Seton Hall reports
note:
"Only
8 percent of the detainees were characterized as al Qaeda fighters.
Of the remaining detainees, 40 percent have no definitive connection
with al Qaeda at all and 18 percent have no definitive affiliation
with either al Qaeda or the Taliban...."The Government has
detained numerous persons based on mere affiliations with a large
number of groups that are, in fact, not on the Department of Homeland
Security terrorist watchlist . . . A large majority – 60
percent – are detained merely because they are 'associated
with' a group or groups the Government asserts are terrorist organizations.
(And members of almost 72 percent of those groups are allowed
into the U.S.)....
"Only
5 percent of the detainees were captured by United States forces.
Eighty-six percent of the detainees were arrested by either Pakistan
or the Northern Alliance and turned over to United States custody.
This 86 percent of the detainees captured by Pakistan or the Northern
Alliance were handed over to the United States at a time when
the United States offered large bounties for capture of suspected
enemies."
Hentoff adds:
"Remember, these findings are based entirely on Department
of Defense records. (Robert Gates can fact-check them.)...Remember,
too, that in the 2006 Military Commissions Act, Congress stripped
from all these prisoners any meaningful right to utilize our federal
courts, thereby defying our own Supreme Court."
(For more on
the MCA and Bush's larger web of arbitrary rule, see Presidential
Tyranny Untamed by Election Defeat and Fatal
Vision: The Deeper Evil Behind the Detainee Bill.)
This issue
must now be brought to the crisis. When the new Congress convenes,
it should pass a law repealing the Military Commissions Act and
firmly re-establishing Constitutional principles of jurisprudence
and civil liberties. Then let Bush veto it if he will, so that it
will be plain at last where we stand: Constitutionalists on one
side, Authoritarians on the other. These poles are fast becoming
the true political divide in this country, a split that runs through
all parties. To echo George Washington, "Let us have [a government]
by which our lives, liberties and properties will be secured; or
let us know the worst at once."
It is folly
to wait upon the Supreme Court to sort out the matter. There is
little indication that the current Court will strike down the MCA;
at best, it may seek to mitigate some of its most egregious excesses.
But allowing the law to stand in any form represents an acceptance
of the principle of unconstitutional presidential authority, of
arbitrary action by the executive. And of course the MCA is not
the sole building block of the vast edifice of tinpot tyranny that
Bush and his anti-American minions have constructed over the years.
That's why any move to repeal the Act must be accompanied by further
legislation to roll back all of Bush's encroachments on our Constitutional
system.
Will such a
law be vetoed? Yes. But let it be so. Let it come down. Force all
those who represent us in government declare which side they are
on. Let all the pundits and opinion-slingers declare which side
they are on. Let the people themselves see clearly and openly the
choice that is before them: Do you want a republic of free citizens,
or a bastardized autocracy?
Excerpts
from Our
Own Nuremberg Trials (Village Voice): During the mutual-admiration
hearing before the Senate Committee on Armed Services – which
led to the unanimous confirmation of former CIA chief Robert Gates
to be Donald Rumsfeld's successor – no senator asked Gates
if he approves of the Pentagon's "extreme . . . emergency"
insistence on a $125 million appropriation to construct a permanent
compound for a war-crimes court at Guantánamo. There, in
2007, war-crimes trials will be held for dozens of Guantánamo
"detainees." The facilities will accommodate simultaneous
proceedings.
Unlike the
Nuremberg war-crimes trials of the Nazis, there will be no government
officials in the dock, but rather – as detailed in my last
column – prisoners against whom the United States has itself
committed war crimes under the Geneva Conventions and our own
War Crimes act. These crimes include their conditions of confinement
and a total lack of the due process that the Supreme Court ordered
in Rasul v. Bush (2004) and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld (2006).
Each of the
defendants will have already been designated as an "enemy
combatant" by previous "administrative" Combatant
Status Review Tribunals at Guantánamo. At these sham hearings
they were presumed guilty before any of the "evidence"
against them (which they were not permitted to see) was aired.
That means the presumption of guilt will continue at the war-crimes
trials. The world will watch the total transmogrification of America's
much self-praised "rule of law."
...The Seton
Hall revelations have reached beyond the metropolitan press to,
for example, the Anniston Star in Alabama. A December 1
editorial, "The Gitmo Games," quotes from the Seton
Hall findings, and concludes:
"The
military is holding something less than a kangaroo court that
results in putting people away – without charging them with
any specific wrongdoing – for an indefinite period of time
. . . History will be very unkind to the rulers who constructed
this very unjust, un-American system. Those un-American rulers,
of course, include George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, John Ashcroft
and Alberto Gonzales, a coven of lawyers at the Defense Department
and the White House, and Donald Rumsfeld. Will Robert Gates take
his place among them?"
The Anniston
Star's indictment-editorial ends: "[History] also will
be unkind to people who tolerated [this un-American system.]"
That means us.
December
20, 2006
Chris
Floyd [send him mail]
is the author of Empire
Burlesque: The Secret History of the Bush Regime.
Copyright
© 2006 Chris Floyd
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