Comments on: Uh, Which Civil Liberties Groups Pushed For A ‘Prolonged Detention’ Executive Order?

By: ondelette

ondelette — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 22:00:54 +0000

Please, people. Be very careful and read the whole Wittes/Peppard document through, and treat this very, very seriously. Peppard is an advisor to Senator Lieberman and can cash in on credibility from being a former ICRC legal person. Wittes is Brookings when he floats these things and Hoover when he thinks them up. This is a very serious threat to civil liberties and human rights, and it has the ability to become law while people are still laughing at it.

OBTW, the end of the war in Afghanistan was December 5, 2001. The fact that the AUMF is being enshrined in perpetuity is a huge travesty. The fact that they hold people indefinitely on that basis is a slap in the face to humanitarian law, which considers holding people after the end of conflict to be a grave breach (Article 85 section 4(b) 1st Additional Protocol of 1977).

By: ralphbon

ralphbon — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:50:30 +0000

Also, if Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley can instantaneously relabel themselves as bank holding companies, what’s to stop the American Enterprise Institute from a quick rebranding as a civil liberties group?

By: bilejones

bilejones — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:50:18 +0000

Just last Wednesday, there was a story about the NAACP pleading with Rendell to implement Martial Law in Harrisburg.
We live in interesting times.

By: hackworth1

hackworth1 — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:48:38 +0000

Yes, “the battlefield in Afghanistan” is often a goat herder’s bedroom or the interior of a vehicle.

By: Twain

Twain — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:48:23 +0000

Glenn is upstairs.

By: eCAHNomics

eCAHNomics — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:41:38 +0000

BBL when I need to load another audiobook disc on my ipod.

By: eCAHNomics

eCAHNomics — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:39:42 +0000

Good point.

By: Peterr

Peterr — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:37:37 +0000

The big difference, of course, is that to be declared a “sex offender” or a “recidivist felon” there was some kind of meaningful trial wherein the accused could question witnesses, contest the evidence presented, and in various other ways demand that the government prove its case against them in a neutral setting according to well-established rules and procedures.

The Gitmo detainees, however, lack any meaningful process like this.

ANY detention without due process is abhorrent to the Constitution, whether for a day, a week, a year, or an indefinite period.

By: Blub

Blub — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:34:58 +0000

also, the right has groups like the Orwellian ACLJ (American Center for Law and Justice), set up to challenge groups like the ACLU with reactionary, conservative interpretations of rights: effectively ‘civil rights’ groups whose job it is to destroy civil liberties. People like Starr, Ashcroft and Jay Sekulowitz have litigated for the ACLJ in the past. They could very well be the group that backed the indefinite detention proposal.

By: earlofhuntingdon

earlofhuntingdon — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 16:30:13 +0000

“Major victory?” Few or none of these detainees was captured on or near the “battlefield” - so long as it’s described as something less than the entire earth.

Further, Ms. Martin’s argument misses the obvious. Prior cases of battlefield detention - as opposed to POW camp detention - assumed an immediate need to contend with prisoners acquired in the midst of rapidly evolving conditions on an active field of battle.

None of those conditions excusing due process and fair treatment for detainees exists in the case of most of these prisoners. Some have been held for seven years, without a properly documented file, without properly documented “interrogations”, and without properly documented, much less credible due process for determining their status, their purported crimes and their fate. They are simply being held in often appalling conditions at the whim of the executive. They might as well be in the Bastille.

The discussion itself is a victory only for an Ueber Secret Government, like a debate over what kind of torture to use. It is no victory for the rule of law or constitutional government. That we have it is a fact that will continue to harm us at home and abroad, which means that it’s not a debate about safety or expediency, it continues to be about the exercise of raw, unchecked power.