By RJ Schinner
Updated 9/28: In a 253 to 168 vote on Wednesday, the House passed the legislation Bush and McCain agreed on last week. Thursday, 65 Senators passed the bill. This is nothing short of a vote for torture, indefinite detention, and military tribunals which deny basic legal rights. What makes this worse is that no longer will torture be carried out by secret orders in secret prisons, but openly and with Congressional approval.
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253 members of the House of Representatives and 65 Senators approve |
The Democratic opposition boiled down to the following from Representative Ike Skelton:
If you want to be tough on terrorists, let’s not pass something that
rushes to judgment and has legal loopholes that will reverse a
conviction.
Heaven forbid torture victims have their convictions by kangaroo courts overturned.
The Democrats even agreed not to filibuster and bring the bill to a quick vote. Any attempts to change the law to be a little less fascistic were defeated.
Bush, of course, will sign it into law, maybe even adding in a “signing statement” nullifying any details he doesn’t like.
Imagine
if pictures of the Nazi concentration camps were revealed to the
world. Imagine if in response, Hitler demanded that the government
legalize their existence and openly talked about how this was a
necessary measure to protect the German people. Imagine if a few
powerful members of the Nazi Party with close connections to the German
military command expressed reservations about legalizing concentration
camps, concerned that Germany’s enemies may use the same horrors
against German troops. Imagine if Hitler reached an agreement with
them that allowed the concentration camps to continue, and there was no
real opposition from inside the official political structures.
In
2006, this is not a stretch of the imagination. This is exactly what
has happened with torture in the past week. It really is that bad.
And we have the responsibility to bring it to a halt.
Also read:
Silence at a Time of Torture is Complicity – statement from World Can’t Wait
That which you will not resist and mobilize to stop, you will learn – or be forced – to accept…
And be in the streeets October 5.