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Abramoff and Torture

September 29th, 2006

According to the Washington Post, Jack Abramoff was in contact with the White House a lot more than the Bush administration admitted. A House committee researching Abramoff’s emails and billing records indicated that Abramoff had around 450 contacts with the White House, including nine specifically with Karl Rove. The White House reacted essentially by saying that Abramoff can’t be trusted, so the data can’t either.

This is another one of those you-know-they-did-it cases where the White House can use any small claim of doubt to evade responsibility or answerability, just as with the Wilson/Plame leak-and-attack strategy, or Bush’s evasions about his past drug use or National Guard duty. It’ll probably have the same impact as well. As I’ve said in one way or another before, Bush could perform an illegal act on live television and sign a full confession to breaking the law, and even then he’d find a way to weasel out of it somehow.

Also in the news is another Rovian election-year tactic: the bill that’s just been passed which essentially suspends habeas corpus, which allows the Bush administration to arrest anyone without court review, hold them for as long as they desire without charges, and then torture them under broad and vague rules full of loopholes–rules which probably wouldn’t be followed anyway. About a dozen Democrats voted for the bill, apparently still in the cowering crowd of I’ll-do-anything-to-avoid-looking-weak. The Republicans win on this big-time, because it suspends constitutional rights they find inconvenient (high up on the GOP agenda), and can be used to bludgeon Democrats a month before midterm elections.

On the cynical side, this is business as usual; Republicans scheming to bring us one step closer to totalitarianism under the guise of national security during an election year while enough Democrats fearfully scramble for political cover to discourage everyone else in the party. So, what’s new?

On the brighter side, the Supreme Court could easily shoot this one down in flames.

Maybe, if they want to.

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  1. cc
    October 1st, 2006 at 18:31 | #1

    Terrorists don’t get habeas corpus. It should be enough that they are being guaranteed access to attorneys and trials. They should not receive all the same rights as regular citizens of the very Democracies they aim to destroy. I mean these are the same people who tell us and the world to convert to Islam or else.

  2. Luis
    October 1st, 2006 at 21:15 | #2

    Terrorists don’t get habeas corpus. It should be enough that they are being guaranteed access to attorneys and trials. They should not receive all the same rights as regular citizens of the very Democracies they aim to destroy. I mean these are the same people who tell us and the world to convert to Islam or else.Sigh… You do know what habeas corpus includes, yes? Not just people convicted, but also people being held. And that’s the whole point–we’re talking about people who will not necessarily be given niceties such as lawyers and trials, but people–possibly American citizens, potentially you–who will be arrested without charges, held without bail, attorney, or trial, taken away to a secret prison to be tortured, and held incommunicado for years.

    But your biggest error is that your answer presumes that everyone covered by this law will be a terrorist; the flaw: not everyone arrested is guilty. Take away the safeguards, and a lot more innocent people will be jailed. You apparently are perfectly willing to abandon the principle of “innocent until proven guilty”; most Americans are not. Under your assumptions, anyone arrested will be guilty, so we can feel OK about denying these “terrorists” their rights, because they want to destroy them for others.

    Unless you missed civics class in high school, you should be aware that most of the Bill of Rights was written under the presumption that the state may arrest innocents and presume them guilty; some of those rights apply even after a guilty verdict has been handed down (as is the case with habeas corpus), on the presumption that the state may have erred in its verdict as well. It is logically impossible to say “only terrorists” will lose their habeas corpus–especially before a trial has even been conducted. Take away habeas corpus and you will, without doubt, be condemning innocents while the guilty run free.

    By the way, why is it the default position of the right wing that everyone who is arrested is guilty, and the Bill of Rights is an inconvenience that we have to discourage and discount before those bleeding-heart liberals use it to let all the raging murderers out on the street?

  3. cc
    October 6th, 2006 at 13:59 | #3

    Sigh… You do know what habeas corpus includes, yes?

    Oh, well. I knew I would get caught with this one after I posted it. I was mixing up my opposition to the whole Geneva Convention arguments with the habeas corpus issue. Yes, I know what habeas corpus is. (When in doubt, use Wikipedia.) Certainly detainees deserve to know why they are there and be sent in for trial. But the issue is whether they deserve to be giving such trials in a military tribunal or civil court. Congress has taken on the issue of detainees, and tribunals make more sense. After all, these detainees weren’t found on the neighborhood corner smoking some weed. Most were found in the battlefields of places like Afghanistan and Iraq. However, they do not deserve to be treated as if they were citizens of our country who broke a driving law or something. They are enemy combatants and should be tried as such.

    I’m sorry I got my thoughts mixed up.

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