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Body Politics<br>
(this extremely important article cites many sources - to get those
links, <br>
read this article at:<br>
<a href="http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11061.htm" eudora="autourl">
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article11061.htm</a>)<br>
By Chris Floyd<br><br>
11/18/05 "Moscow Times" -- -- Four years ago, President George
W. Bush<br>
quietly assumed dictatorial powers with a secret executive order<br>
granting himself the right to imprison anyone on earth indefinitely,<br>
without charges or trial or indictment or evidence, simply by
declaring<br>
them an "enemy combatant," on his say-so alone. This week,
the<br>
assemblage of bootlickers and bagmen that befoul the U.S. Senate
voted<br>
to codify the core of this global autocracy under the pretense of<br>
curtailing it.<br><br>
With great self-fluffing fanfare, the Senate passed two measures<br>
ostensibly designed to stem the flood of torture and tyranny issuing<br>
from the White House. But the twinned amendments to a military
spending<br>
bill have the curious effect of canceling each other out: The<br>
anti-torture measure leaves Bush's tyranny intact, while the<br>
anti-tyranny measure will allow torture to continue unabated. This<br>
switcheroo, we are told by one of the scam's sponsors, "will<br>
re-establish moral high ground for the United States," The
Washington<br>
Post reports.<br><br>
But what can we actually see from this lofty moral promontory? We
see<br>
that all foreign captives in Bush's worldwide gulag have now been<br>
stripped of the ancient human right of habeas corpus. They will not
be<br>
allowed to challenge "any aspect of their detention" in court
-- until<br>
they have already been tried and convicted by a "military
tribunal"<br>
constituted under rules concocted arbitrarily by Bush and his
minions.<br>
Only then, after years of incarceration without rights or legal<br>
protection, will they be given access to a single federal appeals
court<br>
that can review their conviction -- subject to the usual
"national<br>
security" restrictions on challenging evidence gathered by secret
means<br>
from secret sources in secret places. Remarkably, the Supreme Court
is<br>
expressly prohibited from any jurisdiction whatsoever over any
aspect<br>
of gulag captivity, The Washington Post reports. And of course, Bush<br>
can simply skip the tribunal and keep anyone he pleases chained in<br>
legal limbo until they rot. Neither of the ballyhooed amendments<br>
affects this raw despotism.<br><br>
Meanwhile, U.S. citizens can also be arbitrarily imprisoned<br>
indefinitely without charge or trial. But for now, any Homelanders<br>
caught in Bush's net can at least appear briefly in court prior to<br>
their conviction, where they will enjoy a "judicial process"
that<br>
Stalin or Saddam would have loved: Bush officials present the judge<br>
with a piece of paper declaring that the prisoner is one bad hombre,<br>
but all the evidence against him is classified and nobody can see it
--<br>
especially the prisoner, The Washington Post reports. And that's it.<br>
The captive is then plunged back into the gulag, to be disposed of<br>
according to Bush's whim. Again, this medieval mechanism of tyranny
was<br>
left untouched by the Senate's actions.<br><br>
The Senate originally voted to cast Bush's captives into outer
darkness<br>
forever, without a single legal recourse. But then a few prissy hens<br>
and bleeding hearts made the usual squawk about rights and law and
all<br>
that pinko jazz. So the compromise of allowing a post-conviction
appeal<br>
-- for people who have been arbitrarily seized and held in isolation<br>
for years without charges, who have often been tortured, humiliated
and<br>
driven to madness or attempted suicide before facing a kangaroo
court<br>
-- was hastily cobbled together and presented to the world as a
triumph<br>
of the human spirit and the American way.<br><br>
Ah, but what about the anti-torture amendment, sponsored by the<br>
Republican "maverick," Senator John McCain, and hailed by
editorialists<br>
across the land as a great leap forward in the evolution of
political<br>
morality? The effusions that have greeted this measure are puzzling.
It<br>
does nothing more than restate what is already the law of the land.<br>
American forces were already forbidden from subjecting any captive
"to<br>
cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" as prohibited
by<br>
the Constitution and the UN Convention Against Torture. This<br>
regurgitation of existing law is the extent of the McCain amendment,<br>
along with an adjuration to interrogators to follow written
guidelines<br>
for rough stuff set down by the Pentagon.<br><br>
But the partisans of atrocity in the Bush White House knew these
laws<br>
when they set up the gulag's torture regimen in 2001. They simply<br>
redefined "torture" to accommodate any brutal technique they
cared to<br>
implement, then declared that the commander in chief is beyond the<br>
reach of law in wartime -- and that any underlings who commit crimes
at<br>
his order are likewise absolved of legal liability. This sinister<br>
sophistry is still very much in operation and remains unchallenged
by<br>
the toothless amendment of the "maverick."<br><br>
The dual amendments are a cynical PR ploy: Torture will be condemned
in<br>
public but quietly continued in the former KGB camps and other
secret<br>
hellholes that Bush has strung across the world like a barbed-wire<br>
necklace. The Pentagon's own lawyers certainly understand the true<br>
nature of the game. As one told The Guardian: "If detainees can't
talk<br>
to lawyers or file cases, how will anyone ever find out if they have<br>
been abused?" No one ever will, of course; that's the point.
With<br>
habeas corpus denied up front, the worst cases of torture and false<br>
imprisonment can now be buried forever in "indefinite
detention"; the<br>
tribunals, with their access to appeals, will be reserved for<br>
open-and-shut showpieces.<br><br>
These draconian measures reach far beyond a handful of hard-core<br>
terrorists. According to the Pentagon's own figures, more than
21,000<br>
innocent people have been caged without due process in Iraq alone,
The<br>
Guardian reports. Hundreds more have been unjustly imprisoned around<br>
the world. A regime that thrives on fear requires a steady stream of<br>
"enemy combatants" to justify its unlimited "war
powers." The belly of<br>
this beast will never be full.<br><br>
<br>
<br>
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