Senate Kills Habeas Amendment on Torture Bill

The Senate just killed an amendment to ensure federal courts could review the legitimacy of individual’ imprisonment on suspicion of involvement in terrorism. The amendment had been proposed by Sen. Arlen Specter (R-PA), chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It is a fundamental protection woven into the fabric of our Nation,” said Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), who supported the measure. It was defeated 48-51, largely along party lines.
Former torture victim Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), portrayed as a “maverick” by earlier bucking the White House on the issue of detainee treatment, voted against the amendment. The White House also opposes the changes the amendment would make to the bill. Sens. John Warner (R-VA) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), who had also challenged the White House over the bill, joined McCain in voting against the amendment.
The Senate is expected to vote on — and pass — the entire bill later today.

W stays out of Jail, RIP America: July 4, 1776 – September 29, 2006 The US Constitution was tortured to death today. May it rest in peace.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 28 2006 16:40 utc | 4

yep, we are losing our country.

Posted by: Susan | Sep 28 2006 16:42 utc | 6

Can’t someone file a legal challenge to these odious laws with the Supreme Court? I simply cannot believe this is happening…

Posted by: Bea | Sep 28 2006 17:44 utc | 8

Well, they sure as hell don’t hate us for our freedoms now.

Posted by: mats | Sep 28 2006 18:12 utc | 10

fuck

Posted by: annie | Sep 28 2006 18:29 utc | 12

today rendered it all meaningless. the phone calls mean nothing. this country has been set on a course that i no longer believe is stoppable. how could we possibly have elected representatives who could so easily sign away basic human decency? meteor blades in a moving diary on dkos suggests an explanation, citing the results of a Discovery Channel-Time magazine poll:

Of the 1001 respondents, 47% said Arab-Americans should have their ethnic origin stamped on their identity cards. With a margin of error at 3.3%, that’s half of Americans. And 25% agreed that it would be a good idea to put Arab-Americans in camps until their loyalty can be appraised. The pollsters didn’t inquire if respondents thought torture should be used for this determination. Nor if Arab-Americans should be required sew a red crescent on their clothes. Nor whether the government should be allowed to grab suspects off the street and disappear them into secret prisons outside the reach of attorneys.
But one can imagine how they might have responded had they been asked.

what now? can we realistically trust the election process? and even if we can, what will we do – elect more dems like the 11 who voted aye today? what now?
as i stand back from my despair i realize that rove has done it yet again – exposed the spineless dems and split the democratic party. and it allowed itself to be split because it is not the party of opposition. i fear the people of this country have lost the future because they were too lazy to question and foolish enough to squander their trust and give in to irrational fear. when 9/11 happened i knew it would never be the same again, but i don’t know that i dreamed it could reach this point so quickly where we have forfeited the right of habeas corpus.
is is very dark indeed.

Posted by: conchita | Sep 29 2006 1:18 utc | 14

@annie:

I have a suspicion that there will be a revolution of sorts soon. Global warming is getting too insistent to be ignored. Broadly speaking, the choices are:

1. We continue as we have been going for another few years, global warming suddenly kicks into high gear, most of humanity dies — regardless of evasive actions — within a decade or two. (It will be interesting, if this occurs, to see if the secular right, which controls most of the money and moveable assets, takes the opportunity to abandon the religious right, which is less lucky.)

2. Some major disaster, other than global warming, kills off a major chunk of humanity, thus alleviating carbon usage and possibly restoring partial balance. (This would only be a temporary fix, unless major lifestyle changes are made by the survivors.) The front-runner for causing such a die-off is, of course, disease. Bird flu, however, is unlikely to do enough to help much; in fact, by skewing societies at such a critical juncture, it would probably make things even worse. What would be necessary would be something like a worldwide ebola outbreak.

3. Major lifestyle changes take place immediately among us heavy carbon users. Probably including massive transfers to nuclear energy on the principle that a long-term problem with nuclear waste is more manageable than an immediate holocaust. Also probably including artifical albedo of some sort. (And won’t THAT be an interesting trick!) This will not be a soft landing, but would be soft by comparison.

If you try to imagine situation 3, you immediately have to explain how, precisely, the religious right wing in the U.S. is going to fit into this picture. It sure isn’t easy. (On the other hand, once the symptoms of global warming start becoming acute, option 1 will kick in to a greater or lesser extent, and they won’t last long against the executive authority they have been instrumental in creating. As long as the president of the time isn’t actually one of them, they’re going to be left hanging.)

So hey ho for death by starvation, thirst, heatstroke, and disease! Looks like that’s coming, so you may as well start to show some enthusiasm!

Posted by: The Truth Gets Vicious When You Corner It | Sep 29 2006 2:00 utc | 16

“or to support the rapid development of new programs”
don’t forget KBR’s spanking new DSH camps.
absinthe all around (I can’t stomach Victory gin)

Posted by: catlady | Sep 29 2006 2:35 utc | 18

jj, you will probably not like to hear this, but mcjoan on kos lead a charge in “Filibuster: Stand Up for Americans and Our Rights”

Senator Feingold, Senator Kerry, Senator Leahy, Senator Specter, Senator Chafee: put your colleagues on record. Filibuster this legislation, even if it fails. Make your colleagues register their vote of conscience on torture. Put them on record for posterity.

Posted by: conchita | Sep 29 2006 2:55 utc | 20

what is the point of blogging?
i have the luxury of imagining i have a tribe.

Posted by: annie | Sep 29 2006 3:10 utc | 22

Thanks Conchita. Was this front page stuff?
Here’s the deal – in order for xDems. to introduce any amendments, they had to renounce holding a filibuster. They should have gone public w/that info. & allow the outrage to force its over-turning.
Somebody from Int’l Human Rights Community, AI perhaps, called in Hartmann’s prog. & said that this does apply to xUS citizens as well. Doesn’t this give Israel carte-blanche to kidnap, torture & hold anywhere forever any xUS citizen who opposes their genocidal policies… if it applies to xUS citizens of the newly fascist states?

Posted by: jj | Sep 29 2006 3:49 utc | 24

not to put words into jj’s fingertips, but “what is the purpose of political blogging if not to win?” is an excellent question. after all, vigilance is only worthwhile if you’re going to try & find weaknesses to exploit. and if there haven’t been a shitload of opportunities to rally the rabble over the past six years, i have no idea what more people are waiting for, other than some fatalistic attraction to watching the mother-of-all trainwrecks as if it’s some type of spectator sport. at some point, you have to act if anything’s going to get done. saying this, of course, i understand that people aren’t just sitting around (well, if you’re reading this, chances are yer sitting down) – there have been actions to some degree, covering a broad range of organization, information dissemination, affinities, mitigation, etc – and that some sacrifices have been made. but we should be able to agree that it’s obviously not enough. this is war. literally. all of this is being done in our name, whether we refuse to play along or not. that’s not going to change until we change it. not our supposed representatives. not our children. not some superior blogger from another community. us. each one of us. and it will require sacrifices, one of them being not spending so much goddamn time on the computer, looking for the answer. the answer is in the streets. at the barricades. we could have started acting more radically 6 years ago when any pretense of democracy in this country symbolically died w/ the supreme court decision to place this regime into power. every moment we allow this situation to continue, more opportunities slip by & a tighter net of obstacles confront us. there’s no looking back now. it’s move forward, push back.

Posted by: b real | Sep 29 2006 4:11 utc | 26

Conchita, thx. I don’t know why you thght. I’d be unhappy to hear that, though I think kos should have done it. But then he grew up in a US elite imposed torture state, so he might not care that much…He’s barely american politically – unlike say Orlando Letelier’s sons, who came here @~12 & have a love of democratic traditions baked in their bones. How the hell can you grow up in such a state, come up here & join the damn millitary, then identify w/the elites that destroyed your country…he’s beneath contempt, even if some of those who post there have much more to recommend them.

Posted by: jj | Sep 29 2006 4:45 utc | 28

@b real, if uniting online to build a network to filibuster such a bill is too much, then I feel like spending time online is just sniffing an elephant’s shithole…That’s a sacrifice – calling your damn representatives in concert w/enough others to make a difference??? Then, it’s too much anguish for naught. And beyond that, I can’t find any way to have any respect for those guys. As far as I can see they’re just a bunch of guys into showing off how much they know, how much better they are than whoever the object of their derision is, how clever they are. I have nothing but disgust, loathing & despair on the subject of bloggers now.
Billmon even roused himself to post again today. I hope he does find a way to do it w/out becoming addicted & burning too much time. But even he didn’t bother discussing it…
So what’s the point of it all….?????
Damn where are R’Giap’s poetics of fury when we MOST need him?????

Posted by: jj | Sep 29 2006 4:52 utc | 30

As if I wasn’t feeling miserable enough, here’s a bit from Josh’s joint (he chose to print it from reader BC), indicating what woman-hating trash male Dems. often are:
Every day I read countless liberal blogs offering compelling confrontation to the lies and smears the republicans let fly in their constant barrage, yet none of this corrective dialogue is observable in the MSM. I guess my point is, do we fault the MSM for this mostly one-sided debate the average news consumer is exposed to, or are the democrats no-shows when it comes to aggressively getting “our side” presented in the daily discourse of the media? The liberal blogs are great with exposing truth, but they’re preaching to the choir while the republicans never let up in their campaign to control the greater public dialogue. (An analogy- a dem takes a girl out on a date, and he spends the evening asking about her while telling her about himself- a pleasant evening enjoying one another’s company. A repub takes a girl out, and he relentlessly paws at her, he continuously tries to undress her, and single-mindedly devotes the entire evening pursuing his libido-driven agenda, much to her dismay. Worn down, she eventually succumbs to his aggressions.)

Posted by: jj | Sep 29 2006 5:04 utc | 32

So will the US now abrogate the 1984 Convention against torture?
link
Silly me. These things no longer matter.
The US used to be an exception – it had a middling GINI (measure of equality) index and was not a dictatorial, repressive state, followed Int’l law (this is always relative) or was not a state wracked with civil strife, armed groups, etc.
very roughly:
Most equal, the North: Canada, Scandinavia, Russia, some parts of ex USSR, Japan, parts of Europe to the North (Germany, Benelux..)
Next: The rest of Europe, other parts of ex USSR, India (plus Pak and Bangla), Australia (and close by), several countries in Africa, such as Egypt and Algeria; Israel..
Then the middle (from 0.38 to 0.45): The US, China, the ME, Turkey, and in S. America, a few, e.g. Bolivia and Equator.
Now the US belongs to that camp in a clearer way. There is also the old hit parade of State executions, with the US, China and some ME countries always at the top.
States who score in the lowest two categories of ‘equality’ have very varied types of Gvmt. They include, for example, Brazil, Chili, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina, Peru, the whole geog. tip of S Africa (up to Zimbabwe).
The US is a out of whack in its ‘camp’ because of its high GDP, which would normally place it with parts of the EU, Aus, Israel, Egypt, India…(etc.)
Correlations…I know!…
Are the anomalies due to massive military investment, a stab for hegemony; to Bush’s personality or the Republican party in general (the Democrats, I judge, would if they could, bring the US back into line with the second tier, Europe and so on – but is that realistic?), war mongering in general?
Rambling on the wider view point…no consolation…but the out of sync aspect explains, in part, the outrage of the upper or middle classes (?)….

Posted by: Noirette | Sep 29 2006 15:22 utc | 34

We’re an open society. We’re a society that is going to investigate fully, fully investigate in this case, what took place in that prison.
That stands in stark contrast to life under Saddam Hussein. His trained torturers were never brought to justice. There were no investigations about mistreatment of people. There will be investigations, people will be brought to justice.

George W. Bush
Press conference on Abu Ghraib
May 5, 2004

Working with our allies, we’ve captured and detained thousands of terrorists and enemy fighters in Afghanistan, in Iraq, and other fronts of this war on terror. . . .Many specifics of this program, including where these detainees have been held and the details of their confinement, cannot be divulged. . . .The Supreme Court’s recent decision has impaired our ability to prosecute terrorists through military commissions, and has put in question the future of the CIA program. In its ruling on military commissions, the Court determined that a provision of the Geneva Conventions known as “Common Article Three” applies to our war with al Qaeda. This article includes provisions that prohibit “outrages upon personal dignity” and “humiliating and degrading treatment.” The problem is that these and other provisions of Common Article Three are vague and undefined, and each could be interpreted in different ways by American or foreign judges. And some believe our military and intelligence personnel involved in capturing and questioning terrorists could now be at risk of prosecution under the War Crimes Act — simply for doing their jobs in a thorough and professional way.

George W. Bush
Speech proposing legislation for secret tribunals and aggressive questioning
September 6, 2006

Posted by: nihil obstet | Sep 29 2006 19:36 utc | 36

conchita
the darkness you feel is very real indeed
there can be no light in a quixotic search for either honour & sense from what are in effect jackalls. jackalls who inhabit the executive, the legislature & the judiciary
as alabama elaborates often bush is nothing if not a toruturer. his governorship of texas was his immersion into the deep seas of shit that constitute american jurisprudence
today a committe from the congress articulates what we have been saying for years of the relationship between rove & abramoff – that these thugs & that is what they are – are inextricably entwined
there is no higher mission than to debase
& what they have done to the arab people has been done almost without comment to over 2 million american prisoners
there is nothing lofty to be found in either their intelligence or instincts
if they possess these – they possess them in a way a jackall does
what makes my blood go very cold indeed is to listen to commentators of every sort & variety speaking shit from their mouths holding on to their hard ons speaking & supporting of the proposals of torture
i would suggest that the ghost of james byrd is dragged behind the truck of what we shall loosely call a legislature
i remember the face of the black panther elmer pratt (perhaps b real may know his other name) who after serving 27 years for a crime he clearly did not commit – i remember when he was freed & the face of the prosecutor was the face of a toruture
i remember one of the first images my father showed me – of the three men who killed civil rights workers chewing gum & smiling at the camera – they had the face of torturers
torture is absolutely consistent with u s jurisprudence – & now the annulation of habeus corpus rips the last shreds of cloth that may have surrounded it
there are ways to deal with corruption – one is to do as the courageous fred hampton did – to organise – the other is holy & is perhaps less useful but it is resonant still – the work of john brown for example – it is possible to live like them
they are committing unspeakable cruelties upon others, they are degrading whatever it is that they are & they debase us for even the pretence of ‘democracy’ in those two houses that have murder in their mouths

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Sep 29 2006 20:00 utc | 38