Military Enabling Act of 2006
As commentator jj pointed out, the Cheney administration is now implementing the military justice enabling act. This law will finally make ALL terrorist supporters likely defendants at military commissions. This without those over-boarding rights they think they deserve.
The issue in itself is not really that important, the Washington Post puts it on A4, but for the fun of it, lets us take a look at their outragious liberal interpretation:
A draft Bush administration plan for special military courts seeks to expand the reach and authority of such "commissions" to include trials, for the first time, of people who are not members of al-Qaeda or the Taliban and are not directly involved in acts of international terrorism, according to officials familiar with the proposal.
The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction. The two provisions would be likely to put more individuals than previously expected before military juries, officials and independent experts said.
Hey, we all know there are many more terrorists than just supporters of Al Qaida and the Taliban. So it is obvious that the scope of these commissions has to be extended in several dimensions.
With this plan, such terrorist supporters will be brought to justice, the real justice, the Rummy kind. All their crimes will be prosecuted successfully - despite their never ending lies. If these subhumans did not pay their parking ticket, there will now be an insturment to let them feel justice.
Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.
Detainees would also not be guaranteed the right to be present at their own trials, if their absence is deemed necessary to protect national security or individuals.
Finally Cheney is getting it. There can not be guarantees to terrorist supporters but prosecution to death. But then, this is still some waste of all those taxes I am supposed to pay. These terrorists certainly should have no right to be indicted at all. Why anybody would give terrorist supporters the right to waste the precious time of any government employee for longer than a two seconds trigger move is beyond me.
The plan calls for commissions of five military officers appointed by the defense secretary to try defendants for any of 25 listed crimes. It gives the secretary the unilateral right to "specify other violations of the laws of war that may be tried by military commission."
Well, at least no wimpy Congress will get another say on this. Rumsfeld, the Real Man, will make the right decisions.
The U.S. official countered that a military judge "would look hard" at the origins of such evidence and that defendants would have to count on "the trustworthiness of the system."
Please be contained, before you comment on the above paragraph. Since yesterday evening, I was told confidetially, any challenge to the "trustworthiness of the system" is considered a serious crime and has been added to catalog of prosecutable crimes at military commissions by the Secretary of Defense. To avoid any unjust accusation of colaboration, I will therefore delete any inappropriate comment on this detail.
To secure a death penalty under the draft legislation, at least five jurors must agree, two fewer than under the administration's earlier plan. Courts-martial and federal civilian trials require that 12 jurors agree.
And Yes! To the last liberal out there who didn´t get this in 2004. 5 out of 12 IS a mandate.
Posted by b on August 2, 2006 at 20:49 UTC | Permalink
Welcome citizens to the New America: Here's your new flag.
Welcome to the Republic of Gilead
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 2 2006 21:18 utc | 2
b, there's another post from Billmon about the success on the war on terra'
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 2 2006 22:06 utc | 3
Thanks for the inspiration, Uncle.
Handmaid's Tale has been on my mind a lot lately.
Posted by: Michael Hawkins | Aug 2 2006 22:42 utc | 4
And you know who will actually start the rebellion against this tyranny?
By God's own sense of humor, it will be a Republican from Texas.
Posted by: citizen | Aug 2 2006 22:50 utc | 5
"I guess because Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson haven't put in an appearance."
Yep.
Posted by: beq | Aug 3 2006 0:47 utc | 7
Ron Paul is one of a small handful of public servants that I can get behind.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 4:08 utc | 9
If I recall correctly, Ron Paul was also against the war in Yugoslavia. One of the handful, besides Kucinich. (Somebody correct me if I'm not remembering correctly.)
I certainly like his independence.
Posted by: 2nd anonymous poster | Aug 3 2006 4:11 utc | 10
Yes, Ron Paul. I think you are right, 2nd.
I'll take that symbolically, Uncle. (My friend always gets confused and calls him Ru Paul)
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 3 2006 4:30 utc | 11
Hey if it would stop this mad slide into the gullet of insanity, I'd do my part for my country. And not think twice about it..lol
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 5:08 utc | 12
The plan, which would replace a military trial system ruled illegal by the Supreme Court in June, would also allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to those under the military court's jurisdiction.And who wants to be that the first crime to be added will be criticizing the President?
I actually think that they want to try ELF members under these commissions. Remember that the FBI believe that ELF is the No. 1 domestic terrorist threat to the U.S.
Posted by: Bubb Rubb | Aug 3 2006 5:39 utc | 13
BTW - Anyone remember the declaration of independence?
The signers listed a whole series of greivances against King George. You want to know what the first one is?
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
Sound like a signing statement to anyone?
Or what about this one?
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
Hmmm... looks like military tribunals to me.
Just for fun, lets do a few more:
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the consent of our legislatures.
War On Terror anyone? Or:
For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
Hmm... looks like Gitmo to me.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
Bush's record on the environment, perhaps even more precient, Global Warming.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty and perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Sounds like the War In Iraq, can you say Blackwater?
And the finale:
A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
If the shoe fits.
Posted by: Bubb Rubb | Aug 3 2006 5:52 utc | 14
Brilliant! You should work this up into an article and get it all over the internet, Bubb Rubb.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 3 2006 6:46 utc | 15
I concur, excellent Bubb Rubb! And I agree with malooga, that looks like a draft of a knock out essay.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 7:40 utc | 16
Yes Bubb Rubb. Do it. I remember in 2004 on the 4th of July iirc, npr had readers taking turns reading the Declaration and I was in my car listening and struck by so much of it (like a slap in the face, really). When I got to work I looked it up and was simply amazed. This should be done again as the similarities are even more evident than back then. DO IT!
Posted by: beq | Aug 3 2006 12:41 utc | 17
Fabulous, b!
We barflies will finally meet!
Maybe we should decide on the sekrit handshake now (starts soft whistling of Show me the way to the next Whiskey Bar...)
Posted by: Dismal Science | Aug 3 2006 16:08 utc | 18
Bush is also our nation's third president named GEORGE.
DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE:
DETHRONE KING GEORGE III.
Posted by: gylangirl | Aug 3 2006 16:22 utc | 19
Through the bleary eyes of my hangover...
So, is the right happy to have their Daddy State back now? Sho was a bitch having a "mommy state".
"Terrorists" include those who signed petitions opposing S.A. Apartheid. And one can be sure that AIPAC will push to include anyone who doesn't support Israel's suicidal policies.
Filibustering isn't sufficient for this. Any democrats left in Congress should chain themselves together to the doors of Congress, trailing down the steps. Perhaps Christo should consult on how to get this right for the cameras.
Posted by: jj | Aug 3 2006 17:50 utc | 20
Nah, jj we'll have a slice of 'Happiness initiatives', i.e. cohersed happiness after the Dems lose again. Bush's mental heatlh program to teach us to love our captors. Hell, they have even made it against the law to feed people.
On a simular note, has anyone else caught on the the shadow project with regards to the Britsh/uk? It seems to me these nefarious programs always seem to be started in the queens empire as if the Brits were a pilot project with which to try out these oilwellian paternal themes, controlled subjects, as if the UK was some kind of giant "pavolian" test lab and if successful there, it is reworked with an American theme and tried here.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 18:16 utc | 21
Uncle, I didn't say anything about Democrats. I said democrats, as in those valuing a democracy - could begin w/Ron Paul. Wonder what kos' favorite Republican Aristocrat has to say about this? Time to swing by kos to see if he even took a moment out to note it on the Front Page....
Time for someone to write new words to the Doors "The End". Speaking of which do all barflies know that he set Brecht's Whiskey Bar to music?
Posted by: jj | Aug 3 2006 18:30 utc | 23
kos...hahaha
Interesting to note, according to dictionary dot com, kos is "An island of southeast Greece in the northern Dodecanese Islands at the entrance to the Gulf of Kos, an inlet of the Aegean Sea on the southwest coast of Turkey. Hippocrates founded a medical school on the island in the fifth century B.C. Kos became part of modern Greece in 1947."
test lab anyone?
I don't know the his-story behind this, however i'd be interesting to know.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 19:01 utc | 24
Bubb Rubb,
Yes excellent comparison with our new King George! Good Work.
Posted by: Rick Happ | Aug 3 2006 19:31 utc | 25
Also, I am just as alarmed as Monolycus's conveys, with regards these matters, I feel the control grid tightening and the grim meat hook reality of which I have submitted before, in that what I intuitively feel happening is the symptoms of JJ's #54 from the other thread. The effects of the panopticon of the Repressive State Apparatus (RSA) and it's variables under Tsarism. I need not remind some MOA's of the Consequences of the Panopticon
as Foucault puts it:
the major effect of the Panopticon: to induce in the inmate a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power. So to arrange things that the surveillance is permanent in its effects, even if it is discontinuous in its action; that the perfection of power should tend to render its actual exercise unnecessary; that this architectural apparatus should be a machine for creating and sustaining a power relation independent of the person who exercises it...
I fear the it may be to late, for the trap is set, both mentally and quite literally as well as physically. And to scare the bejesus out of you there's the much discussed and circulated report, the Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program, has recently been updated and the revision details a "template for developing agreements" between the Army and corrections facilities for the use of civilian inmate labor on Army installations." I posted a link recently that I can't seem to find now that was on offical US gov letterhead with regards to Pentagon's Civilian Inmate Labor Program.
Aside from what you might think, IT'S THAT BAD PEOPLE!
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 3 2006 19:44 utc | 26
Jim Morrison, you mean.
His dad is from Greece, perhaps Kos.
*****************
I know I have ridiculed the Kos site, too, as not being a leftist site, and Democrats today as having no affiliation to the left, but rather standing slightly to the right of cental right on the belief scale. I stand by that statement.
However, that does not mean that there are never good journals on KOS. Or that they don't, on occasion, advocate for good causes.
Let's take Net Neutrality, for example. A good cause. But not a leftist cause. That doesn't mean that leftists can't support it, it just means that it has nothing to do with the left, nothing to do with economic justice. Far-right Libertarians, anyone who runs a business on the web -- including Kos, Instapundit, and porn sites, white militia sites and artists -- might all band together and support web neutrality.
So, it is important to distinguish between worthy causes, and worthy leftist causes. If you don't support any leftist causes, that you probably aren't a member of the left, and you shouldn't get upset when someone confronts you about this.
Unless, you think that "leftism" is a style like "hippie."
"Hippie" -- in its mindless reduction to a style -- aspect of the word, meant long hair, folk/rock, sex, and pot. All things I approve of, but none of it having to do with the left.
Most middle class hippies were children of privilege, and were more likely to read Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic & Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers" (about Leonard Bernstein's interaction with Black Power & an essay on BP that focussed on intimidation and graft rather than social conditions), than listen to a speech by H. Rap Brown.
I guess "leftism," as a style, reduces to narrow designer glasses, shopping at Bread & Circus, reading liberal blogs, The New Yorker and The New York Review of Books, and discussing them with friends, griping about Bush and how dumb he is, doing yoga, taking "eco" vacations, thinking fundamental x-tians who take the bible literally are complete nuts but having absolute faith in the divine reincarnation of the Dalai Lama, living in a "cool" city, working in the arts -- even if it is for a major corporation, having an I-POD, cellphone, laptop, and listening to indie rock and NPR.
I can't even generate moderate enthusiasm for the value of this list of identity markers. Ho hum.
Anyway,I still don't have the energy for a major piece about what the left IS (which will get read by three people and be criticized for being too long), and I agree that the left does not have to be ALL about economic justice, but I submit to you for reflection, that if the left is not, at least, CENTERED on economic justice, then it is not the left.
Take one last example: The environment. We all love it. No one wants trees to be cut down. Neither do I. Its a laudable position. But it is not a leftist position. Most of the leaders and directors of major environmental organizations here in Boston are wealthy blue blood Republicans, and their positions on business issues are in line with that. No contradiction; no circle to painfully square.
You don't have to be a leftist to support environmental protection. Many sensible people of great wealth and privilege do. And you don't have to be a leftist to like KOS, because it takes very few leftist stands and certainly no radical ones.
But, if you find yourself getting upset and defensive when people tell you that you aren''t a leftist, then maybe you shold think about it. It isn't a slur. It doesn't mean you aren't a good person, or that you don't support and work hard on many vital issues.
It just means that you aren't a leftist.
The good new is that you don't have to give up the I-POD or designer glasses when you come to terms with this. The "style" package is always an option for anyone who can afford it.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 3 2006 20:16 utc | 27
Uncle $cam:
It IS that bad. But we should also monitor for signs of resistance and pushing back.
All societies fail well before the number of people inside prisons exceeds the number outside. Yeah, I don't wanna go there either.
Posted by: Malooga | Aug 3 2006 20:23 utc | 28
annie was kind enough in the other thread to provide a link to the Halliburton internment camp award. It's not the original financial disclosure statement, but her link provides the salient points about the no-bid contract to build these camps in the US. It properly belongs here in this thread just so we can have everything in one place.
As I said in that other thread (that Unca very graciously linked to), off-the-record executive dealings by this administration are made from the "Second White House" in Crawford, Texas. I also see from a brief scan of the headlines that Bush is at this time "going on vacation" again to the Second White House. This bodes extremely unwell for anyone who still cherishes life or liberty.
Things seem to be rapidly coming together. Watch your backs, guys.
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 3 2006 23:07 utc | 29
@gylangirl, Rick Happ, beq, Uncle $cam, Malooga:
Thanks for all of the kudos. I think that the idea of turning this into a more thoughtful written analysis is an interesting one, however I must say that comparisons of George W. Bush and King George III is not a particularly original idea. There is an abundance of this stuff already out there on the internets here, here, here, here, here and here.
Posted by: Bubb Rubb | Aug 4 2006 1:58 utc | 30
Yes, Bubb, but you're developing it very well. Pls. reconsider. You have a very valuable contribution to make that will deepen the understanding of all.
.I thght. that this bill will so end our legal rights that it required it's own thread. Happily, b- obliged. But taking off on Mono-'s 1st paragraph to some extent - w/things unravelling so rapidly - as in will there be fall elections or will it matter - I ask Everyone here to consider institutionalizing things. In addition to having our "Open Threads" where we usually note such things, I suggest that we have an ongoing thread, refreshed as needed like the O-T-'s, called for example: Death Watch on the American Republic. For the sake of history, she notes forlornly...LET US AT LEAST BEAR WITNESS... call it Bearing Witness to the Death of the Am. Republic then...or should that be Witness to the Annihilation of the Am. Republic, since... well, y'all know....
Agreed?
Posted by: jj | Aug 4 2006 2:25 utc | 31
@Michael Hawkins
Nice blog, welcome to da Moon! Can I get ya a scotch?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 4 2006 4:16 utc | 32
What kind of emergency do you think Bush foresees that requires bypassing the check and balance of consent of the governors... in essence, making the National Guard into Bush's own private army?
Posted by: Monolycus | Aug 6 2006 22:24 utc | 33
The comments to this entry are closed.
America: Freedom to Fascism
Article 58 (RSFSR Penal Code)
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Aug 2 2006 21:10 utc | 1