It Can Happen Here

In a grotesque display of irony, White House Press Secretary Dana Perino recently condemned actions by the Junta against citizens in Myanmar.

The administration is "distressed…about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without representation or charges.”[AG1]

Yes, quite "distressing" indeed.

Surely, that type of thing could never happened here, right? Wrong. It already has, to a US citizen no less.

With the passage of the Military Commissions Act in October of 2006, this administration claimed it could deny the right to trial to whomever the president declares ‘an enemy combatant.’

That means President Bush, or Clinton, or Giuliani can decide the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to you whenever he or she says so.

In existence from the days of the Magna Carta 800 years ago, the writ of habeas corpus was guaranteed even under the King of England.

Then came the case of José Padilla, an US citizen branded by the administration as the ‘dirty bomber.’

Apprehended in 2002 with no charges filed against him, Padilla was dragged away to a Navy brig where he would be stripped of all human dignity and methodically tortured to the point of "irreversible psychological damage."

For three and a half years, Padilla’s completely isolated detention consisted of a 7 x 9 foot windowless cell, bright lights on for days, no mattress on his steel bed, no pillows, sheets, clocks, calendars, radio, television, telephone calls, and no visitors -- including a lawyer -- or human contact other than his interrogators for almost 2 years, according to the Christian Science Monitor.

He was regularly assaulted, hooded while held in extreme stress positions, threatened with imminent executions, subjected to extreme temperatures, and even given LSD and PCP during some of his interrogations.

Experts agree the prolonged periods of isolation and sensory deprivation will drive a prisoner insane.

"What the government [was] attempting to do,” says Dr. Stuart Grassian, nationally recognized expert on solitary confinement, “[was] create an atmosphere of dependency and terror."

Ironically, techniques like these are banned under the US Army Field Manual primarily because their efficacy is questionable, to say nothing of their morality.

These methods are adapted from the same ones the Soviets used on political dissidents and the North Koreans on US POWs, methods that the US once condemned, according to the Monitor.

Some officials say however, these methods are vital and do not go far enough.

“Anything that threatens the perceived dependency and trust between the subject and interrogator directly threatens the value of interrogation as an intelligence-gathering tool,” said Vice Admiral Lowell Jacoby, head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Jacoby goes on to claim that the introduction of legal counsel "may substantially harm our national security interests.” [AG2]

Legal counsel a threat to national security[AG3] ? “Anything that threatens” the trust and dependency? Like the Bill of Rights and Due Process?

Those chilling remarks are literally straight from George Orwell's 1984. In fact José Padilla is eerily similar to Winston Smith in that in the end they both deeply sympathize with and are terrified of the government that destroyed them.

While it may be true that Padilla was no Boy Scout, even psychopath's like Ted Bundy and Green River killer weren't treated so inhumanely.

The moment that the he declared Padilla an ‘enemy combatant,’ Bush had essentially repealed the foundation of constitution and the Bill of Rights as he saw fit, assuming powers that surpassed the King of England.

“[The administration argued that] the President always knows best...,” says Yale law professor Jack Balkan, continuing that these powers are that "of a dictator in an authoritarian regime. They are the powers of the old Soviet Union.”

Padilla was finally convicted in what can only be described as a show trial based on dubious evidence and vague charges of conspiracy. They had nothing to do with the original sensational accusations.

It is shocking that there is little outcry from our leaders that a US citizen was held for 3 1/2 years without Due Process, denied habeas corpus and his constitutional rights, and tortured to the point of brain damage, all before being charged with the crime.

The Padilla conviction was a pyrrhic victory for this administration but ultimately is a shameful and ominous day for our constitution, our republic, and the sacred principles of our nation.

It must never happen again.

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Military Interrogators Pose as "Lawyers" in Gitmo to Gather Information

Sherwood Ross at the Smirking Chimp reports,

Military interrogators posing as "lawyers" are attempting to trick Guantanamo prisoners into providing them with information, "The Catholic Worker" (TCW) reports.

As "Newsday," the Long Island, N.Y. daily, reported: "The military has set up a system that delays legal correspondence for weeks and requires lawyers from around the country to write motions at a single secure facility in Virginia. Detainees have alleged that interrogators have tried to turn them against their lawyers."

Gore Vidal interview

Part 1

Part 2

Learn from the fall of Rome, US warned

via Finincial Times, h/t Larisa w/ more,

The US government is on a ‘burning platform’ of unsustainable policies and practices with fiscal deficits, chronic healthcare underfunding, immigration and overseas military commitments threatening a crisis if action is not taken soon, the country’s top government inspector has warned.

David Walker, comptroller general of the US, issued the unusually downbeat assessment of his country’s future in a report that lays out what he called “chilling long-term simulations”.

These include “dramatic” tax rises, slashed government services and the large-scale dumping by foreign governments of holdings of US debt.

Drawing parallels with the end of the Roman empire, Mr Walker warned there were “striking similarities” between America’s current situation and the factors that brought down Rome, including “declining moral values and political civility at home, an over-confident and over-extended military in foreign lands and fiscal irresponsibility by the central government”.

“Sound familiar?” Mr Walker said. “In my view, it’s time to learn from history and take steps to ensure the American Republic is the first to stand the test of time.”

Mr Walker’s views carry weight because he is a non-partisan figure in charge of the Government Accountability Office, often described as the investigative arm of the US Congress.

Is Any One Out There Paying Attention to the Madness?!?

I've been hesitant to post about such a heavy topic for fear of being too alarmist...but the time for inaction has long past. There are those who would consider these posts too much, overwhelming and proposing unlikely events. I hope, I sincerely deeply pray that they are incorrect, and I hope I am wrong in the worst possible way about all of these issues. But if I'm not, if even 10% of what seems to be developing turns out to be true then I think it's one's duty to speak up. Ignoring the problem will not make it go away. As Dr. King jr. said, "silence is betryal."

These people are going to detonate a nuclear device inside the United States ... and we're going to have no one to blame but ourselves." -- Michael Scheuer, former head of the C.I.A.'s bin Laden unit, to MSNBC's Keith Olbermann, February 19, 2007

Paul Slansky shows why the alarm bells are ringing like the summer of 2001 and asks where the hell everyone's outrage is.

Remember how you watched Richard Clarke testifying before Congress in 2004 and wished his warnings had been taken seriously in 2001?

Once you have digested that little bundle of joy, try to tackle this, seemingly pulled out of 1984 , describing a prelude for a police state.

Bush is now free to declare martial law in response to a natural disaster, a pandemic or a terrorist attack. The congress is powerless to stop him.

Also, Bush recently signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, which allows the president to arbitrarily declare citizens and non citizens “enemy combatants” and imprison them indefinitely without charge. The new law gives Bush the authority to disregard the Geneva Conventions and the 8th amendment’s ban on “cruel and unusual” punishment and apply “harsh interrogation” which may include torture. The act effectively repeals habeas corpus, the cornerstone of American jurisprudence and the Bill of Rights.

The Military Commissions Act cannot coexist with the US Constitution; the two are mutually exclusive.

I should add that tucked into the abomination known as Military Commissions Act is a provision that pardons Bush and anyone in his administration of war crimes under the Geneva Convention, crimes which he is likely guilty of.

Don't think it could happend here? Maybe, maybe not, but this fellow seems to think it could.

Gen. Tommy Franks says that if the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Is this that far-fetched? There were untold abuses during WWII and Bush considers his perpetual "War on Terra" WWIII.

The NYT documents how he has already implented the legal justification for such changes, as I noted in my previous post.

A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night. So it was with a provision quietly tucked into the enormous defense budget bill at the Bush administration’s behest that makes it easier for a president to override local control of law enforcement and declare martial law

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Larry Beinhart explains what this silly little habeas corpus thing is all about anyway.


Arthur Silber explains what has already been lost right under our very own noses.

Now, I know that conservatives get upset when libertarians bring up Adolf Hitler in the context of the post-9/11 U.S. government assaults on civil liberties (Have you ever noticed that they never get upset when U.S. officials compare recalcitrant foreign rulers to Hitler?), but as I pointed out in my article "A Democratic Dictatorship," when the U.S. government is doing something that Hitler did, while that doesn’t automatically make it bad, it at least should raise some red flags.

As I pointed out in my article "How Hitler Became a Dictator," after the terrorist strike on the Reichstag, which enabled Hitler to secure the Enabling Act that temporarily suspended civil liberties in Germany, a German judge, while convicting one of the defendants, acquitted others, much to Hitler’s chagrin and disapproval. After all, they were obviously "terrorists." How dare that German judge find them not guilty?

So, Hitler decided to implement a new "independent" judicial system within Germany to try terrorists and traitors. Known as the "People’s Court," it became nothing more than a judicial lapdog to carry out prosecutions, convictions, and punishments in accordance with Hitler’s will. In fact, it was the infamous People’s Court that convicted German college students Hans and Sophie Scholl and their friends in the White Rose organization and quickly tried and executed them (3 days after their arrest) for treason for distributing antiwar and anti-government pamphlets.

The military tribunals that Bush and the Congress are setting up will supposedly be used only on foreigners, not on Americans accused of terrorism. The reason for that differentiation in treatment is political — the feds know that Americans are less likely to object to this new judicial system if Americans think that will be applied only to "other people," not to them.

How can such a system be reconciled with the legal principle of equal application of the law and the political principle of the rule of law? Answer: It cannot be.

Now back to the other elephant in the room, Iran. For anyone who is still uncertain that there is the possibility of a "preventive" strike on Iran, read the majority of posts I have put up, starting from the very first one.

Silber then asks what you have done to prevent the next war.

He gives advice on what you can do.

Leading Experts Say Congress Must Stop An Attack on Iran: Is That Constitutionally Possible?

John Dean offers detailed analysis of Senator Kennedy's exchange with constitutional scholars vis-à-vis the administration's power to attack Iran.

In sum, as I read both the general statements of these experts, and their specific answers to Senator Kennedy's question about Iran, everyone agrees that Congress has the power to prevent a president from going to war.

The only question that is doubtful, then, is whether the members of Congress actually have the will to do so. This, I suspect, is what James Fallows concluded, when he said that, at best, they might draw a line.

Of course, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney know this too, so they will do whatever they wish to do - and Congress may or may not catch up. But there is no real question as to whether Congress could legally stop Bush and Cheney from going to war in Iran without coming to Congress to fully explain what they are doing and why. Congress has that power; the only question is whether it will dare to use it.