Another take on the passage by Congress of the Military Commissions Act 2006
Thumbs Up for Torture - Military Commissions Act 2006 Passes as Law
What was previously termed by Amnesty International as “Bad Domestic Policy” has now become bad domestic law. Today, the Senate Surveillance Bill, S.3930 and also known as the Military Commissions Act of 2006, cleared by the Senate and the House this week, was signed officially into law.
This bill had been hotly debated before the Senate with several GOP objections, but passed Wednesday 253-168;. 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats voting to approve it in the House with 160 Democrats, 7 Republicans and 1 independent opposed.
Last minute changes included allowing the US government to strip Green Card holders and other legal residents of the US of their rights if the government deems them to be an enemy combatant. The party or parties responsible for the changes are unknown.
After culling various sources, news reports and the bill itself, the Military Commissions Act will:
:
• Retroactively backdate the “War on Terror” to prior to Sept, 11 2001 and forgive any and all violations sustained against the US committed under this paradigm.
• Do away with Habaes Corpus.
• Prohibit ‘grave breaches’ of the Geneva Convention such as torture, rape, biological experiments and cruel and inhuman treatment.
• Empower the president with the authority to determine what exactly constitutes torture itself.
• Prohibits any detainee from the right toinvoke the protections of the Geneva Conventions or its protocols.
• Prohibit any person from invoking the Geneva Conventions or their protocols as a source of rights in any action in any US court.
• Permit the executive to convene military commissions to try "alien unlawful enemy combatants", as determined by the executive under a dangerously broad definition, in trials that would provide foreign nationals so labeled with a lower standard of justice than US citizens accused of the same crimes. This would violate the prohibition on the discriminatory application of fair trial rights.
• Permit civilians to be tried by military commission rather than civilian courts, contradicting international standards and case law.
• Permit, in violation of international law, the use of evidence extracted under cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, or as a result of "outrages upon personal dignity, particularly humiliating or degrading treatment", as defined under international law.
• Permit the use of classified evidence against a defendant, without the defendant being able to challenge the "sources, methods or activities" by which the government acquired the evidence.
• Allow heresay evidence.
• Allow coerced testimony.
• Give the military commissions the power to hand down death sentences, in contravention of international standards which only permit capital punishment after trials affording "all possible safeguards to ensure a fair trial".
• Allow indefininte and secret detention.
• Prohibit US courts from using "foreign or international law" to inform their decisions in relation to the War Crimes Act.
• Give the President the authority to subjectively interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva Conventions.
Barring individuals from protesting violations of Geneva Conventions standards in court and the ability to invoke a writ of Habeas Corpus is a groundbreaking event for US history. Habaes Corpus is the legal instrument allowing any detainee of the US to challenge their imprisonment in a court of law, and was formerly protected under the constitution as “The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."
For the purposes of this bill, all rights of Habeas Corpus are forthwith denied.
As for the nearly 200 appeals currently pending against the US Government and filed on behalf of Guantanamo detainees, the passing of this Bill ensures that any recourse or hope that these appeals would quickly become addressed and resolved is now defunct.
Perhaps the most unsettling aspect of the bills’ passing is not merely the hypocritical message that it sends to the International community as regards fair and humane treatment of individuals, but the mind-boggling elasticity of interpretation and the extent to which it can be manipulated due to the generalized wording of the bill itself.
"Our most solemn job is the security of this country. People shouldn’t forget there’s still an enemy out there that wants to do harm to the United States," President Bush noted earlier this week. And on this count, both President Bush and I wholeheartedly agree.
The only differentiation being which of us is the more certain in determining who exactly that enemy is.
