I'm just throwing this out there before class ... I'll go back later and track down the appropriate links.

George Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. There is a huge amount of talk about it - Keith Olbermann did one of his "special comments" on it - the Rude Pundit is going off about it - and I think rightfully so. It's legalizing torture, legalizing detention without review, and pretty much stripping our country's commitment to the Geneva Convention to NOTHING.

However.

A lot of these pundits are saying that George Bush has suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus, that he has made it so ANY ONE OF US (us meaning U.S. Citizens) can be locked up and the key can be thrown away.

I was troubled. So I did this odd thing -- I looked up the text of the law. Library of Congress has it on line, and I read it.

So it's true that "Unlawful Enemy Combatant" is defined in such a way so as to not preclude U.S. Citizens from being labeled as such.

However!!!!

All the provisions people are worried about? The application of military tribunals, the lack of habeas corpus - all of it? It only applies to "alien unlawful enemy combatants."

I do not know squat about how the rights of non-citizens are protected in this country. I should, I know. But I do not. So I do not know what kind of changes are brought to non-citizens by this law.

But it looks to me like none of it affects citizens.

Please, oh great internet participants, enlighten me. Share with me exactly how this new law makes it so that citizens can be locked up with the key thrown away.

I consider myself a very good liberal. I do not consider myself, however, a blind person who is unable to read the text of a law before I start frothing at the mouth over it. Like I said about - it's a sad day when we pass laws that allow torture and give the finger to international agreements that have been in place for over 50 years, and that we are condoning practices we have prosecuted others for in the past -

but isn't that bad enough? do we have to make up MORE bad?

:::::: open to new info that proves me wrong :::::::

posted by Zuska @ 3:01 PM

1 Comments:

At Thursday, October 19, 2006 4:05:00 PM, david elzey said…

my understanding is that the president (or the VP in his stead) can, on his own and without the necessity or burden of proof, determine any person an unlawful enemy combatant and have them treated accordingly.

and, if i understood the document correctly, it can be applied to any person after, on or before 9/11, essentially saying that at any point in the future the president can decide someone was an enemy combatant in the past and, again, without anything more than the president's say-so, be detained and charged as an enemy combatant.

how is that possible under the constitution?