Are you a potential terror suspect? How would you know if you were? Would attending anti-war rallies be a black mark against you in the Fed’s eyes? Would making nasty references to the administration on your blog qualify? We generally assume that the answer would be a resounding “NO!” to those questions, but can you be sure?
For example, we know that innocent people can be put on the government’s terror watch list for “acting suspiciously” during a domestic or international flight, merely so some US Air Marshals can meet their monthly quotas. We know that local police and government intelligence agencies are actively engaged in widespread surveillance, and even infiltration by undercover police officers of groups that oppose the war in Iraq.
And now we learn that the Bush administration is proposing legislation that would allow the government to discard the protections under the Bill of Rights to which you are entitled should someone in federal law enforcement determine you are a terror threat:
WASHINGTON — U.S. citizens suspected of terrorism ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill. […]
According to the draft, the military would be allowed to detain all “enemy combatants” until hostilities cease. The bill defines enemy combatants as anyone “engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners who has committed an act that violates the law of war and this statute.”
Legal experts said Friday that such language is dangerously broad and could authorize the military to detain indefinitely U.S. citizens who had only tenuous ties to terrorism networks.
“That’s the big question … the definition of who can be detained,” said Martin Lederman, a law professor at Georgetown University who posted a copy of the bill to a Web log.
Scott L. Silliman, a retired Air Force judge advocate, said the broad definition of enemy combatants is alarming because a U.S. citizen loosely suspected of terrorism ties would lose access to a civilian court — and all the rights that come with it.
Cont.
What constitutes “terrorist ties?” In other words, what specific acts or “associations” could land you in a cell at Guantanamo Bay, with no access to your family, friends or legal representation. With no official policy to prevent “coercive interrogation techniques” just short of death or major organ failure to be used against you. The proposed legislation doesn’t say, so I imagine it would be up to whomever is in charge of the Department of Justice to decide. Now who could that be? Oh yes. This guy:
Gonzales authored a controversial memo in January of 2002 that explored whether Article III of the Geneva Convention even applied to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters captured in Afghanistan and held in concentration facilities around the world, including Camp X-Ray in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The memo made several arguments both for and against providing Article III protection to Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He concluded that Article III was outdated and ill-suited for dealing with captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters. He described as “quaint” the provisions that require providing captured Al Qaeda and Taliban fighters “commissary privileges, scrip, athletic uniforms, and scientific instruments”. He also argued that existing military regulations and instructions from the President were more than adequate to ensure that the principles of the Geneva Convention would be applied. He also argued that undefined language in the Geneva Convention, such as “outrages upon personal dignity” and “inhuman treatment”, could make officials and military leaders subject to the War Crimes Act of 1996 if mistreatment was discovered.
A secret 2002 Justice Department memorandum cleared by Gonzales argued that laws prohibiting torture do “not apply to the president’s detention and interrogation of enemy combatants”, and that the pain caused by interrogation must include “injury such as death, organ failure, or serious impairment of body functions — in order to constitute torture”. […]
Gonzales faced further controversy when he authored the Presidential Order which authorized the use of military tribunals to try terrorist suspects. He fought with Congress to keep vice-president Dick Cheney’s Energy task force documents from being reviewed. Gonzales was also an early advocate of the controversial USA PATRIOT Act. He is also accused of being involved in the decision to allow foreign combatants in U.S. custody to be deported to nations that allow torture, in order to extract further information from them; despite the mounting evidence, he denies that he has ever supported this measure. […]
Need I remind you, Abu Gonzales has also been the administration’s point mean in defense of the federal government’s secret and unprecendent warrantless electronic surveillance of American citizens by the NSA and your local telecom providers? We still don’t know the full extent of those programs, but we do know he has been their most avid defender. Indeed, he is responsible for the grand jury investigations into the whistleblowers who provided the information to the New York Times, and has even threatened prosecutions of the reporters involved in these stories.
So. Not exactly someone who is overly concerned with protecting the rights of American citizens, is he? Yet, he would be responsible for determining the standards to be used for the arrest and detention of “terror suspects” should this bill, as presently constituted, pass Congress and be signed into law by the President. A rather chilling prospect, if I do say so.
I can see the right wing spin already. You have to trust your President in a time of war. Or maybe something along this line: You don’t have any civil liberties if you’re dead. In other words, they will argue that we should abandon our Constitution, and our precious “freedoms” (which we are supposedly fighting for in Iraq and Afghanistan) and put our trust and faith in George Bush to do the right thing.
Well I’m sorry, my conservative friends but I don’t belong to the Church of Dubya. I don’t worship at the shrine of all things Bush. And I certainly don’t trust him to act responsibly when my civil liberties are on the line.
Frankly, anyone who defends this legislation is committing treason in my eyes. Treason to our Constitution and to each and every American whose hopes and dreams are tied into the very rights and liberties that document insures. And that is precisely the message I am going to send to my representatives in Congress. Because we don’t need to sell our birthright for a false sense of security.
For the day we do is the day America dies.
Proposed Legislation for War on Terror