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The Bush administration has made a determined effort in the
past week to strong-arm Congress into ratifying as law the military commissions
for detainees which the Supreme Court blocked with its Hamdan v. Rumsfeld decision this past summer. There has been some opposition from a few
Republican Senators who worry about America’s image, losing international
support for the “war on terrorism”, and fear that the torture the US
government is using on its captives could be used against US soldiers (note
that their concern is not with the actual torture being carried out, just that
is might make us look bad). In response,
Bush said that he would “resist any bill” that does not let the CIA
use “alternative interrogation practices” on detainees.
Besides legalizing torture, the Bush administration also
wants the military tribunals to:
-allow for secret evidence which the defense has no access
to,-use evidence obtained under coercion to be used against
detainees,-refuse to allow any oversight from the courts,
-exempt US interrogators from the War Crimes Act from
prosecution,-and define “enemy combatant” so broadly that
effectively the President gets to decide who is sent off to military tribunals.
While Republican Senators such as Warner, McCain, and Graham
have objected to some of the ways Bush’s proposed military tribunals sharply
depart from due process and standards of international law, their proposed
legislation would simply bring the military tribunals within the law while
using such vague language that effectively the same torture will continue.
And what are the
Democrats saying about this?
They have decided to stay out of this, outrageously claiming
that if they opposed legalized torture and fascistic military tribunals it
might hurt their chances in the upcoming election.
But silence and paralysis are NOT acceptable. That
which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced –
to accept.
If you cannot stomach looking at the pictures above and
knowing that this is what is being made legal right now and carried out in the
name of your safety, then you need to throw in everything you can and more over
the next three weeks to make October 5th a day when people all across the
country come out into the streets in protest to Bring This To A Halt!