Find your Senator and Congressperson and give them a call. I don’t care if your Senator is Rick Santorum, Trent Lott, or Christopher Dodd. Call them. Tell them that you fervently expect them to oppose the detainee bill because it contains elements that are inconsistent with traditional American values. For example:
In one change, the original language said that a suspect had the right to “examine and respond to” all evidence used against him. Mr. Graham and his colleagues in resisting the White House, Senators John W. Warner of Virginia and John McCain of Arizona, had insisted that the provision was necessary to prevent so-called secret trials. The bill submitted late Monday dropped the word “examine” and left only “respond to,” reviving complaints about secret trials, this time from Democrats.
In another, the original compromise said that evidence seized “outside the United States” could be admitted in court even if it had been obtained without a search warrant, a provision Republicans and Democrats agreed was necessary to deal with the unusual circumstances of seizing evidence on the battlefield.
The bill introduced Monday dropped the words “outside the United States,” which Democrats said meant that prosecutors could ignore American legal standards on search warrants within the country. The bill also broadened the definition of an unlawful enemy combatant, from anyone “engaged in hostilities against the United States” to include anyone who “has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.”
Therefore, no Senator should vote aye on this bill. To do so is an act of cowardice by Democrats and trechery by Republicans.
The President should have thought about the law before he compromised the possible prosecution of dozens of captured jihadists by authorizing cruel and unusual punishment against them. Their confessions are useless. Poor Bushie doesn’t want to let them go and the Supreme Court says he can’t detain them indefinitely. What’s a man to do?
Tell your Senator that they can craft some kind of band-aid legislation that will make it possible to try these folks. But they don’t need to retroactively legalize torture and give the President the right to interpret the Geneva Conventions as he or she sees fit. They don’t have to eviscerate people’s human rights just because President Bush unilaterally decided to do that for the last five years.
This is a big vote. This vote is as big as the vote authorizing force in Iraq. Any Democrat that votes yes to this bill in anything like its present form is going to be looking at a primary challenge. There isn’t a district in America that doesn’t have a qualified Democrat that can be recruited and who opposes torturing people.