Today George Bush is right when he tells us, “Be afraid.” We need to listen.

We need to be afraid of our own representatives of both parties and their willingness to dismantle democracy as they jockey for political edge and stretch for a few more votes in a moral vacuum. We need to be afraid of the economic fallout that might occur if tens of thousands of American immigrants, in this country legally, start to leave out of the fear that they can now be arrested with no evidence and held by a jailer who, accountable to no one, can throw away the key. We need to be afraid that some day soon, any American who speaks out could hear that late-night knock on the door emblematic of every totalitarian state where people are forced to lower their voices to a whisper.

Far-fetched, you say? After Thursday’s vote in the U.S. Senate, I’m not so sure.

Jerry Lanson | CommonDreams  (read more. . .)

Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws — while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists — because the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr. Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.

New York Times Editorial  (read more. . .)

The Republican Congress Wednesday moved to the cusp of passing landmark legislation to broaden the definition of “enemy combatants” in America’s global “war on terror” and to eliminate the right of all detainees to have judicial review of their incarceration. With George W. Bush eager for a star-spangled signing ceremony as Congress adjourns this week for the election season, the House approved the administration bill by a 253-168 margin, while the Senate was expected Thursday to reject the last four amendments standing in the way of passage.

The legislation, which was prompted by a June Supreme Court decision applying the Geneva Conventions to prisoners held by U.S. forces, had originally provoked a well-publicized struggle over placing legal limits on interrogation techniques. While a White House effort to redefine the anti-torture provisions of the Geneva Conventions was largely rebuffed by a recent bipartisan Senate rebellion, the compromise that three Republican senators negotiated with Bush officials included provisions eliminating the right of habeas corpus for all detainees.

“This provision would perpetuate the indefinite detention of hundreds of individuals against whom the government has brought no charges and presented no evidence, without any recourse to justice whatsoever,” Vermont Democrat Patrick Leahy declared at the start of Wednesday’s Senate debate. “This is un-American. It is unconstitutional and it is contrary to American interests.” Congressional critics argued that, coupled with an expanded definition of “enemy combatant,” the legislation would permit the government to indefinitely imprison any non-citizen — including a long-time resident of the United States who holds a green card — without review by the courts.

Mark Benjamin and Walter Shapiro | Salon  (read more. . .)

Amid the Sunday uproar over The New York Times’ report on a secret intelligence report labeling the war in Iraq an answer to anti-U.S. terrorists’ prayers, CNN aired a portion of an interview with President Bush conducted by Wolf Blitzer earlier in the week.

In a report here at E&P, we observed that in this exchange, Blitzer asked about the latest setbacks in Iraq and indications that civil war may be at hand. Bush, with a slight smile, replied, “Yes, you see — you see it on TV, and that’s the power of an enemy that is willing to kill innocent people. But there’s also an unbelievable will and resiliency by the Iraqi people…. I like to tell people when the final history is written on Iraq, it will look like just a comma because there is — my point is, there’s a strong will for democracy.”

Even for Bushisms, this is an odd one. Maybe he meant “coma.” No, that would be too negative.

A comma as a metaphor perhaps? If so, for what? All that bloodshed as merely a comma– a pause in a long sentence — leading to a hopeful phrase or conclusion? Comma, “and they all lived happily ever after”? Or maybe, comma, “and then we bombed Iran”?

Of course, one can think of other punctuation that might be apt, including “?” for the 140,000 Americans still deployed there, “!” for the cries of the gravely injured, and “$” for Haliburton and other contractors.

Greg Mitchell  | editorandpublisher  (read more. . .)

If torture produces limited gains at such high political cost, why does any rational American leader condone interrogation practices “tantamount to torture”?

One answer to this question seems to lie with a prescient CIA Cold War observation about Soviet leaders in times of stress. “When feelings of insecurity develop within those holding power,” reads an agency analysis of Kremlin leadership applicable to the post-9/11 White House, “they become increasingly suspicious and put great pressures upon the secret police to obtain arrests and confessions. At such times, police officials are inclined to condone anything which produces a speedy ‘confession,’ and brutality may become widespread.” In sum, the powerful often turn to torture in times of crisis, not because it works but because it salves their fears and insecurities with the psychic balm of empowerment.

Alfred W. McCoy | The Progressive  (read more. . .)

I will leave others to claim that torture, in fact, does not work, that confessions obtained under duress - such as that extracted from the heaving body of that poor Argentine braggart in some Santiago cesspool in 1973 - are useless. Or to contend that the United States had better not do that to anyone in our custody lest someday another nation or entity or group decides to treat our prisoners the same way.

I find these arguments - and there are many more - to be irrefutable. But I cannot bring myself to use them, for fear of honoring the debate by participating in it.

Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, not only the “intelligence” that is contaminated, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness?

Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America?

Ariel Dorfman | The Washington Post  (read more. . .)

The bill purports to confer on the president the authoritative role in interpreting “the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.” But this is a judicial, not an executive function, and it appears to permit the president to substitute himself for “a competent tribunal” in the all-important status determination required by Article 5. The bill then insures that no federal court will ever review the legality of the administration’s conduct by stripping the courts of jurisdiction and prohibiting any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights enforceable in any American court.

In addition, the compromise bill amends the War Crimes Act, which as currently written makes it a crime to violate any provision of Common Article 3. Under the current proposal, it would no longer be a war crime to subject detainees to “humiliating and degrading treatment” or to hold trials that do not provide “essential judicial guarantees” of due process.

The decriminalization of such conduct will hardly assist the U.S. in regaining the moral high ground in its efforts to combat terrorism around the world. Instead, it is likely to be seen as a telling comment on the legality (or lack thereof) of this administration’s detainee policy over the past five years, and a brazen attempt to immunize itself from the consequences of that conduct. As former Secretary of State and Gen. Colin Powell wrote in a recent letter to Sen. John McCain, “The world is beginning to doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism. To redefine Common Article 3 would add to those doubts. Furthermore, it would put our own troops at risk.”

Ironically, all the dangers presented by the president’s proposal can easily be avoided. Our existing civilian courts have for years conducted criminal trials of suspected terrorists with near-uniform success. The first World Trade Center bombers were tried and convicted in federal court. The millennium bomber, Ahmed Ressam, was tried and sentenced in federal court to a 22-year term. These courts, or courts-martial, are well equipped to deal with classified evidence while still guaranteeing fair procedures that ensure the credibility of convictions.

Bush often speaks passionately about American values. But “Justice for All” is one of those values that define us as a people, and it must never be compromised. At the White House in early September, the president said repeatedly his plan is needed to “bring terrorists to justice.” But no rhetoric can obscure the fact that by authorizing commissions in the form currently proposed we would be creating a two-tiered system of justice — one for ourselves which is fair and open, and one for our enemies, which is not. These commissions will undoubtedly produce convictions. They will not produce justice.

Charles Sipos and Joseph McMillan | Seattle Post-Intelligencer  (read more. . .)