S3930 - Detainee bill

[Flint]

Originally Posted by rkzenrage

It makes me a patriot.
Neither a combatant nor an enemy.

But, if I printed that post and handed it out as a flyer, would it be "material support" to "the enemy" ???

[BigV]

Originally Posted by MaggieL

In fact, since they're not a a nation, it's not possible to declare war on them, as such.

Well, that inconvenient truth didn't stop what's his name.

Originally Posted by President Bush

September 5, 2006

President Discusses Global War on Terror

Originally Posted by President Bush

Your presence here reminds us that we're engaged in a global war against an enemy that threatens all civilized nations.

Originally Posted by President Bush

We're a nation at war

Originally Posted by President Bush

we've also learned a great deal about the enemy we face in this war

Originally Posted by President Bush

Despite these strategic setbacks, the enemy will continue to fight freedom's advance in Iraq, because they understand the stakes in this war.

Originally Posted by President Bush

Afghanistan and Iraq have been transformed from terrorist states into allies in the war on terror.

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by BigV

Well, that inconvenient truth didn't stop what's his name.

Yes, unfortunately his rhetorical attempts to convey the severity of the situation are lost on some people., who think all we should really do is call the cops to read them their Miranda rights and hook them up with an ACLU lawyer. No Mace or Tasers, now...that would be torture.

[Pie]

Good thing we have Maggie; otherwise we might all :gasp: agree!

[Flint]

Originally Posted by Pie

...otherwise we might all :gasp: agree!

In that case, I'd take the Devil's Advocate.

[BigV]

MaggieL, you, and GWB, for that matter, pick and choose when precise speech is important, and when it is not. That makes "arguing" your point of view easier, but not more effective.

What's going on here is A Big Lie (tm), an enormous bait-and-switch. Bait and Switch? Yeah, the signing statements are a very popular example of these lies. We've been told and sold "WAR". But it's not, it cannot be, as you correctly pointed out. But "WAR" is nonetheless repeated endlessly for favorable the emotional and behavioral responses it elicits. We (the American people, including Congress, plus the mouse in my pocket) were fucking stampeded into "WAR" and now we're kept moving at this stupid killing pace (economically and emotionally, to say nothing of the squandered lives of our soldiers and citizens and the pissing away of our credibility as a world leader) by the incessant drumbeat of Fear! Terrorists! 9/11!

But we're a nation of laws, and those laws are broken with impunity by this administration. It makes me SICK. If there was some evidence of competence or credibility, there *could* be a place for the administration to
found my trust. but lacking any such foundation, there is *no* place to start. Show me the damn money, no more of this "Trust me" bullshit. Where is the balance in Checks and Balances?! GWB went "all in" and Congress folded. SCOTUS has called them, but that may/will change as the new players tag up and enter the ring. In every fair game I've ever played, that kind of collusion is most politely called cheating.

The sheer hubris of this administration is staggering. It is so vast, that the fall will shake the world and George W Bush's reign will live in infamy.

[BigV]

Picking and choosing when the laws can be followed without impeding one's progress toward's the mission's objective is bull shit. And simply re-writing them to retroactively make actions previously illegal "immune" isn't bullshit, it's chicken shit.

[BigV]

And the methods deemed permissible for these actions? The administration gets to pick. But they have to say what they pick and record the choices in the Federal Register, so we'll all know what's legal today. Since when does this administration demonstrate it's devotion to revealing it's methods? Do you seriously contend we'll see this happen?

Show me.

[Undertoad]

"Nobody expects a Spanish Inquisition". Why do you think that phrase has been reposted so many years in The Cellar.

Do you know where the phrase comes from? Or is this the most unintentionally funny post from you in ages?

[glatt]

Originally Posted by Undertoad

Do you know where the phrase comes from? Or is this the most unintentionally funny post from you in ages?

I've been snickering each time it's posted.

[Shawnee123]

Pirates of the Mediterranean

By ROBERT HARRIS

Kintbury, England

September 30, 2006

IN the autumn of 68 B.C. the worlds only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Romes port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.

The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But history is mutable. An event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.

Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: no nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. They were, rather, the disaffected of the earth: The ruined men of all nations, in the words of the great 19th-century German historian Theodor Mommsen, a piratical state with a peculiar esprit de corps.

Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack. To quote Mommsen again: The Latin husbandman, the traveler on the Appian highway, the genteel bathing visitor at the terrestrial paradise of Baiae were no longer secure of their property or their life for a single moment.

What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Military commands were of limited duration and subject to regular renewal. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of Civis Romanus sum I am a Roman citizen was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.

But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year-old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law.

Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone, the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits.

Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury 144 million sesterces to pay for his war on terror, which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented, and there was literally a riot in the Senate when the bill was debated.

Nevertheless, at a tumultuous mass meeting in the center of Rome, Pompeys opponents were cowed into submission, the Lex Gabinia passed (illegally), and he was given his power. In the end, once he put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompeys genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.

But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as soft or even traitorous powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.

Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of serious physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the admissibility of evidence obtained in the United States without a search warrant; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.

An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.

In truth, however, the Lex Gabinia was the beginning of the end of the Roman republic. It set a precedent. Less than a decade later, Julius Caesar the only man, according to Plutarch, who spoke out in favor of Pompeys special command during the Senate debate was awarded similar, extended military sovereignty in Gaul. Previously, the state, through the Senate, largely had direction of its armed forces; now the armed forces began to assume direction of the state.

It also brought a flood of money into an electoral system that had been designed for a simpler, non-imperial era. Caesar, like Pompey, with all the resources of Gaul at his disposal, became immensely wealthy, and used his treasure to fund his own political faction. Henceforth, the result of elections was determined largely by which candidate had the most money to bribe the electorate. In 49 B.C., the system collapsed completely, Caesar crossed the Rubicon and the rest, as they say, is ancient history.

It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid onOstia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Romes democracy imperfect though it was rose again.

The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: it fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.

Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome.

[headsplice]

Someone who's supporting Bush and his right to do whatever the fuck he wants, explain this and then explain to me how this isn't violating the Constitution.
This isn't about some hypothetical terrorist anymore. This is about the government getting the okay to come after YOU for whatever the fuck reason they want.

[Spexxvet]

Originally Posted by headsplice

Someone who's supporting Bush and his right to do whatever the fuck he wants, explain this and then explain to me how this isn't violating the Constitution.
This isn't about some hypothetical terrorist anymore. This is about the government getting the okay to come after YOU for whatever the fuck reason they want.

My favorite part:

The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.

This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops "during an armed conflict," it also allows him to seize anybody who has "purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States." This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison.

List of American Citizen enemy combatants, by GWB:

1. John Kerry
2. Edward Kennedy
3. Barbara Boxer
4. Dan Rather
5. Al Gore
6. Al Frankin
7. .......

[Flint]

@headsplice: "trust us"

[headsplice]

@Flint: I'll trust 'them' when I'm dead and burned.