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-- USSC: No military tribunals for gitmo (http://www.asylumnation.com/asylum/showthread.php?threadid=45027)
Posted by mudded on 06-29-2006 04:09 PM:
USSC: No military tribunals for gitmo
CNN
The jist of it is that the supreme court finds that the proposed military tribunals violate both US law as well as the geneva convention.
This seems to be a pretty big blow to the administration line. Cheney can't be pleased.
I am relieved though. Bring criminal charges in civilian court or let them go. This quasi-legal subterfuge has gone on long enough.
cheers
-m
Posted by CHiPsJr on 06-29-2006 05:32 PM:
Of course, the way it's written, what this basically means is that the people involved will just be detained forever without a trial of any kind.
Posted by Smug Git on 06-29-2006 05:41 PM:
I don't think that will turn out to be politically feasible.
Doesn't the opinion leave open the possibility of a Congressional Act authorising tribunals, or would such an Act only apply, in any case, to future detainees?
__________________
I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of
Posted by CHiPsJr on 06-29-2006 06:20 PM:
Why politically infeasible? I don't know that anyone who'd vote on such a matter wasn't voting against Bush already.
Posted by Paint CHiPs on 06-29-2006 06:54 PM:
More significant even, the ruling appears to validate that the Geneva Convention's Article 3 applies to the War on Terror and to Al Queda. Even if that wasn't the express intent, that's the letter of the ruling--Article 3 applies as law, without question. If I were a lawyer working for any of the US torture victims, I'd start throwing lawsuits around like crazy based on this.
link:
quote:
The Court appears to have held that Common Article 3 of Geneva aplies to the conflict against Al Qaeda. That is the HUGE part of today's ruling. The commissions are the least of it. This basically resolves the debate about interrogation techniques, because Common Article 3 provides that detained persons "shall in all circumstances be treated humanely," and that "[t]o this end," certain specified acts "are and shall remain prohibited at any time and in any place whatsoever"—including "cruel treatment and torture," and "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading treatment." This standard, not limited to the restrictions of the due process clause, is much more restrictive than even the McCain Amendment. See my further discussion here.
This almost certainly means that the CIA's interrogation regime is unlawful, and indeed, that many techniques the Administation has been using, such as waterboarding and hypothermia (and others) violate the War Crimes Act (because violations of Common Article 3 are deemed war crimes).
If I'm right about this, it's enormously significant.
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Posted by Smug Git on 06-29-2006 07:37 PM:
quote:
Originally posted by CHiPsJr
Why politically infeasible? I don't know that anyone who'd vote on such a matter wasn't voting against Bush already.
Internationally, it'd be untenable to keep it going forever. Also, I just can't see the hawks being happy with people being held without trial by the US for the rest of their natural lives; as a temporary measure it has more supporters than as a permanent measure, I think. I also think that using Guantanamo Bay in this manner was an error in the first place and that if the administration had its time again, it wouldn't do it this way again. They have too many people with too little evidence; the 'shop a terrorist for a reward and we'll hold them without trial' dealy was, in retrospect, asking for trouble.
__________________
I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of
Posted by Smug Git on 06-29-2006 07:44 PM:
Ron Suskind was on NPR this morning talking about some of the torture business (he has a book out on it, 'The One Percent Doctrine'). The announced 'Al Quaida leader', Zubaydah, turned out to be a schizophrenic with not that much information but who spouted enormous amounts of untrue information upon being tortured.
Also, at one stage (according to this guy), they told Khalid Sheikh Mohammed that if he didn't tell them more, they'd start on his kids. He made two points about that; firstly that once you've made that sort of threat, you're turning a corner and secondly that, when KSM told the interrogators 'well, they'll end up in a better place with Allah', you've become a busted flush. Either you do it and break US law and moral dictates or you don't and it's clear that you're a bullshitter. There's no way back in either case.
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I want to live and I want to love
I want to catch something that I might be ashamed of
Posted by Paint CHiPs on 06-29-2006 07:51 PM:
That Suskind book is blazing around the internet and punditsphere lately; it's apparantly the must-read political book of the year, according to everybody. I'm going to buy a copy for TT (along with kos' book) when I soak him for a hundred bucks in November.
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Posted by Risus on 06-30-2006 03:12 AM:
Shrub has already said he is doing nothing wrong, so he is gunna ignore the ruling. He should be impeached. He thinks he is a law unto himself. What an ass.
Posted by billgerat on 06-30-2006 06:58 AM:
"The Supreme Court has made their decision, now let them enforce it!"
I can just imagine Bush/Cheney saying that.
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"[A]n act of terror is different than a terrorist attack." - Darrell Issa (R-Benghazi)
Posted by Paint CHiPs on 06-30-2006 07:47 PM:
Andrew Sullivan.
The De-Throning of King George
30 Jun 2006 12:31 pm
Absorbing the Hamdan decision today prompts the following thoughts. This is not an unprecedented moment in America's constitutional history. In war-time, presidents have over-reached before, and they will over-reach again. The over-reach is often for good reasons; and after 9/11, it's understandable that some corners were cut. What this decision represents is therefore the re-balancing of the constitutional order, after the heat of the moment. Think of it as the moment when King George's crown was yanked off his head. The Congress has tried a couple of times, but been foiled by "signing statements." So the judiciary has stepped in. Other presidents have tried mini-coronations. What we are seeing is the end of the latest monarchical pretension.
This time, however, the relief is greater for a few reasons. The first is that this war has no clearly defined enemy and no clearly defined end-point. So the presidential over-reach was particularly grave because it threatened a permanent expansion of law-free executive power (which is another word for an elected tyranny). As Orwell understood, a permanent war is integral to the maintenance of tyranny; and in our current predicament, vigilance is warranted perhaps more than in any previous, more discretely formulated conflict.
There is also clear evidence that much of what this president attempted was not simply a good-faith attempt to protect American civilians. It was a deliberate attempt to expand executive authority, promoted by radical theorists of state power, and fomented by a cabal of dead-enders, bent on avenging Nixon. The intent of Rumsfeld, Cheney, Addington, Cambone, Yoo, and the other advocates of an untrammeled executive was the acquisition of unaccountable power. In wartime, such dangerous characters are even more of a threat, because they can use the cover of security to seize new prerogatives. By far the most disturbing aspect of those prerogatives was the power to torture. The ever-lasting stain on this president will be his abandonment of centuries of Anglo-Saxon prohibition of this evil. Eventually, when we discover the full extent of his torture program, we will be able to assess the profound damage he has done to his own country and the civilization which it defends.
Lastly, this is not over. The court decision was relatively close. If Roberts had not already endorsed a quasi-monarchy in a perpetual war, he would have voted with the dissenters. The Republican party, which has become an enemy, rather than a friend, of domestic liberty, cannot wait to place another proponent for an executive-on-steroids on the Supreme Court. When the next attack comes, the possibility exists for another, graver suspension of constitutional liberty. If Bush-style Republicans keep winning the presidency, there is no knowing what permanent suspensions of basic liberties we may confront. There is a balance here, of course. Some loss of liberty is inevitable in a conflict such as the war on terror. Many of those shackled in Gitmo are dangerous, ruthless and barbaric. But many, many are not; and were not detained "on the battlefield" as the president keeps saying. They were picked up often far from battlefields, incarcerated on the flimsiest of evidence, tortured, abused and sent into a black hole of lawless arbitrary power. That is what we are fighting. It is not what we should become. We have been granted a chance to maintain that distinction. But if we do not keep that constantly in our minds, we may lose it. And in losing that distinction, lose ourselves.
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Posted by Thimbles worth of opinion on 06-30-2006 11:50 PM:
Pertinant
quote:
http://www.consortiumnews.com/2006/063006.html
The majority opinion, which stopped Bush from proceeding with a kangaroo court that stripped Guantanamo Bay detainees of basic legal protections and mocked the Geneva Conventions, carried a profound secondary message – that the Court was not prepared to endorse Bush’s vision of his “war powers” as limitless and beyond challenge.
But it was equally noteworthy that only five of the nine justices believed that the rule of law and constitutional limits on Bush’s powers should prevail. Four justices – Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and John Roberts – have made clear that they are prepared to rubber-stamp any judgment that Bush makes.
In dissenting opinions on the tribunal case, Scalia, Thomas and Alito embraced legal arguments that bowed before Bush’s imperial presidency. Chief Justice Roberts would surely have joined them, except that he had already ruled in Bush’s favor in the case while sitting on the U.S. Appeals Court and thus was forced to recuse himself.
The one-vote fragility of the Supreme Court’s embrace of constitutional principles over one-man rule was further underscored by the fact that the landmark ruling was written by Justice John Paul Stevens, a decorated World War II veteran who is now 86. Another justice, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, is known to have battled health problems.
It is a strong possibility that if the Republicans retain control of the U.S. Congress in the November 2006 elections, Bush will get to fill at least one more Supreme Court vacancy with the likes of Scalia, Thomas, Alito and Roberts. Then, the court’s majority will flip in the opposite direction, granting Bush the authoritarian powers he so covets.
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My nipples are asymetrical... and that's a feature not a bug.
Posted by Paint CHiPs on 07-02-2006 07:58 PM:
Sort of schmaltzy to begin with; gets better.
The founding fathers save America's soul
Andrew Sullivan
The full importance of the United States Supreme Court’s decision in Hamdan vs Rumsfeld took a little time to sink in. Military tribunals to try suspects at Guantanamo Bay were found to be illegal. The administration had breached both American law and the Geneva convention on the treatment of prisoners. The lesson is that even in times of war America is run, not by a president, but by a constitution.
The president is not an old-style monarch, empowered in wartime to make up rules as he goes along to defend his subjects. He is not the law. He must obey the law, as all citizens must. And in a series of actions and decisions after 9/11, President George W Bush in effect broke the law, violated his oath of office and pushed the limits of his power beyond the permissible.
*
Not for the first time, in other words, a King George has been dethroned in America. This time, though, it wasn’t the British monarch but a president who had almost come to regard himself as a king in a war with no end. The rebels were not a crew of colonial tax-avoiders, but the Supreme Court set up more than two centuries ago by the first independent Americans. On Tuesday Americans will celebrate that moment on July 4. This year, thanks to the court, Independence Day came early.
America is not in essence a geographical entity. When it was founded, it occupied a fraction of the land it now does. Nor is it defined by an ethnic group or a royal line. Its core is essentially a piece of paper, a written constitution, a formal set of procedures designed, before everything else, to protect individual liberty. At the heart of that liberty is the right to a fair trial and the insistence that nobody — especially not the president — can take that away.
That constitution has been tested before. It was tested when Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in the civil war. It was tested when Franklin D Roosevelt interned thousands of Japanese-American citizens in camps during the second world war. It was tested when Richard Nixon turned the presidency into a criminal conspiracy in Watergate. There was never any doubt that the war launched against the United States on September 11, 2001, would test it too. Wars do that, as Lincoln and Roosevelt demonstrate. No war by foreign enemies has implicated the American homeland as profoundly as this one.
In retrospect a large part of Bush’s immediate response to 9/11 was understandable, even admirable. Facing a sudden attack, the constitution allows the president to take emergency measures to protect American citizens. He can act swiftly and legally to defend the country as commander-in-chief — and he did. If he hadn’t and further attacks had occurred, he would have been pilloried. It is to his credit that no further attacks have taken place.
But the constitution also insists that any emergency powers be temporary, that Congress alone can declare war and regulate the laws of warfare, and that the president’s first task is to protect the constitution, not violate it. He does not have, as this president argued, one “accountability moment” every four years. He is continually accountable to a constitution applicable to everyone.
After 9/11, this president and his closest advisers decided otherwise. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld believed presidential power was overly shackled after Nixon. They saw in 9/11 a golden opportunity to get it back. Yes, they seized emergency powers. But they seized them while claiming they had no need for congressional permission. The president, they claimed, was empowered to be judge, jury and executioner in wartime. Neither Congress nor courts could stop him from his duty to defend Americans. If that meant tearing up the Geneva conventions, violating the constitution, breaking domestic law, setting up ad hoc courts and enforcing torture, so be it. After 9/11, few dissented.
What happened last week was the return of constitutional order. The court insisted that the president needed legislative backing for prosecuting terrorists and that he was bound by the laws of warfare passed by Congress. The farcical military tribunals at Gitmo were more suited to a banana republic than the US — and they had to be scrapped. Torture is illegal in America — and the president has no authority to say otherwise. What we saw last week, in other words, was the end of a potential rival regime to constitutional government in America.
It doesn’t mean Guantanamo will close. It doesn’t mean that the president cannot detain some individuals indefinitely in wartime. It doesn’t mean the president has no right to take military actions to defend the country as he sees fit. But he must work through constitutional channels, get congressional backing and win court support. If he wants to torture prisoners, he must ask Congress to repeal the law against it.
Nor does the Hamdan decision end the debate over presidential power in America. The decision was written by the most senior member of the court — and the one most likely to retire next. Bush’s own appointees, Samuel Alito and John Roberts, favour the notion of an untrammelled executive power in wartime. The vote was essentially 5-4 and Bush is one nominee away from reversing it.
The conservative intelligentsia in America have also shifted dramatically from a conservatism that protects the individual from government towards a conservatism that wants to impose democracy abroad and enforce morality at home. These new conservatives are contemptuous of constitutional propriety and limited government. They believe in results, rather than following careful procedures. They will not relent after one court decision.
What will ultimately decide this battle for the soul of America will be the people who elect their own representatives to check the president. The court is as evenly balanced as it has ever been. American constitutional democracy is only marginally more secure this Sunday than last.
Can democracies fight long — let alone open-ended — wars without ceasing to be democracies? Can we fight barbarians without becoming like them? This has always been an open question, but rarely as open as today. The enemy knows no moral boundaries and no checks on its power. The West is defined by both. What we saw last week was the moment when the most powerful democracy asked itself if it could fight terror and retain its soul. The answer was yes. But the question will come again. Maybe sooner than we think.
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