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The
End of Habeas Corpus and the Belligerent Despot-in-Chief
By RALPH NADER
On October 17th, George W. Bush, signed
into law a bill he bulldozed through Congress that, in Senator
Patrick Leahy's prophetic words, would suspend "the writ
of habeas corpus, a core value in American law, in order to avoid
judicial review that prevents government abuse." This law,
whose constitutionality is in doubt and will be reviewed by the
Supreme Court in due time, puts so much arbitrary and secret
unilateral power in the hands of the Presidency that the ghost
of King George III must be wondering what all the fuss was about
in 1776.
If you want more evidence of
how obsessively-compulsed George W. Bush is about his wars, their
fabrications, budgets and cover-ups, consider his cue card statement
on the legislation at the White House signing ceremony. "It
is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill he knows
will save American lives," he declared.
Hello! He has rejected all kinds of occasions to save
American lives here at home. He has refused to do anything about
the widespread and preventable mayhem known as medical and hospital
malpractice, while fanatically pushing for restrictions on the
right of such victims or their next of kin to have their full
day in court. At least 80,000 Americans die from malpractice
just in hospitals every year, according to the Harvard School
of Public Health.
The same Presidential pen could
have saved thousands of more lives and prevented many more injuries
were it to alight on safety legislation and larger budgets for
reducing job-related sickness and trauma (58,000 lost lives a
year) and air pollution (65,000 lives a year)--to name a few
categories of preventable violence. But he signaled from the
onset of his Presidency that such bills would be opposed from
the getgo.
And once again remember his
incompetence in letting U.S. soldiers--hundreds of them die in
Iraq from the lack of adequate body armor.
At the signing event, Mr. Bush
called the legislation "a way to deliver justice to the
terrorists we have captured." To him all captured subjects
are ipso facto convicted terrorists. It is not as if his record
gives any credence to such fantasies. But he persists in his
deception none the less. Out of nearly 700 prisoners in Guantánamo
Bay, he has charged only ten after over four years of detention.
Ten! Why? Mostly, as military, civilian lawyers and other monitors
have said, because the vast majority of these abused or beaten
prisoners were innocent from the day of their apprehension--victims
of bounty hunters in Afghanistan and surroundings.
It served Bush political purposes
to say to the American people that Guantánamo Bay contained
among the most evil of all people, so long as he could deny the
innocents any opportunity to challenge their incarceration (habeas
corpus) in an impartial tribunal. Until the Supreme Court ordered
him to stop denying the "detainees" due process.
Here in the U.S. Bush has imprisoned
without charges over 5000 people, as terror suspects. Ninety
nine percent turned out to be innocent of accusations that they
were engaged in terrorist activities. Given this batting average,
it is troubling that Mr. Bush has the unchecked power to deprive
those he imprisons, with or without charges and without attorneys,
of habeas corpus. In these tribunals established by the new law,
the defendants' have no right to review evidence against them
and cannot challenge Bush's unbridled power to determine the
definition of torture.
So vague are the law's words
that what constitutes "terrorist activity" and whether
it can be used against U.S. citizens remain with the monarchical
power of George W. Bush to decide.
Anyone who doubts the assertion
that the new law will be used to remove any boundaries--constitutional,
statutory or treaty--from restraining Mr. Bush and his subordinates
should read the celebratory article by a former Bush Administration
official, law professor John Yoo, in the Wall Street Journal.
He reads the law as removing the courts--including the Supreme
Court--from any judicial review of Bush's "war on terror".
Mr. Yoo left out the obvious conclusion, which is that Mr. Bush
is now, in this area, the legislative and the judicial authority--the
dominator of checks and balances.
To Bush allies, such as Mr.
Yoo, the boundless inherent power of the Presidency, does not
ever include any recommendation that these poor, innocent souls,
swept up by wasteful, boomeranging dragnet practices, be compensated
for their brutalization and confinement.
Bush's belligerent policies
after 9/11, which caught him napping in Crawford, have served
to provide recruitment grounds for more and more trained terrorists.
Look at Iraq and Afghanistan. Pursuing policies against terrorism
that create more terrorists have been noted by Bush's own officials,
not to mention scores of ex-military, diplomatic and intelligence
officials who served in past Republican and Democratic administrations.
One would think, with such
backing, the Congressional Democrats would have moved to block
his rampages which have so lowered his public approval to below
40 percent.
None of this fazes or affects
the messianic militarist in the White House. He continues his
ways of endangering our nation, weakening its moral and political
influence abroad, turning off more and more of the American people
disgusted with the huge costs in lives and money, and deep-sixing
his Republican Party. Even the latter achievement cannot rescue
history's description as an all-purpose, self-inflicted Wrecker-in-Chief.
Now
Available
from CounterPunch Books!
The Case
Against Israel
By Michael Neumann
CounterPunch
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