On That "Tacit Backing of Gitmo Gulag"

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On That "Tacit Backing of Gitmo Gulag"

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Simon McGuinness

Comment:

I think Ed Pearl is missing the point of what the US Supreme Court said.
He is not alone in this.

The court said that the President didn't have the power to use miliraty
tribunals in place of proper trials BECAUSE THE CONGRESS HAD NOT GIVEN HIM
THAT POWER. The clear implication, and the encouragement Bush is drawing,
is that if congress had given him that power then it would be legal for him
to deny those he classifies as "unlawful combattents" access to a fair
trail. This is contrary to the Geneva Conventions. It is also contrary to
the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The court is silent on the
Geneva Conventions, presumably because they are not part of the US
Constitution from which it derives its authority.

The "tacit" element in the court judgement is actually the silence on the
question of international law. In other words the US Supreme Court denies
the existence of intenational law and recognises no higher law than that
which can be gaurenteed (or denied) by the US Constitution.

The fundamental flaw in the US Constitution is that it allows Congress to
award UNLIMITED power to the President in a time of war. The War on Terror
[sic] is a contrivance deliberately arrived at to create such a pretext.
The fact that Congress has failed to give the President the power to use an
unfair judicuial proceedure to convict so-called unlawful combattents of
crimes they are not guilty of is seen by the President as an omission on
the part of the Congress. Alas, he is right. They will give him the
powers he requests ... and then some.

The US Supreme Court has thus paved the way for the institutionalisation of
indefinite military kangaroo courts for anyone the US President decides is
an unlawful combattent in the war on terror. The reader of this email
might easily be so defined. And if you are, and the Congress has given GW
Bush the powers he is about to request, then you too will be subject to
trial in a military kangaroo court, a kangaroo court endorsed by the US
Supreme court. And you will have no right of appeal.

It will matter little to you that reading this email is not considered a
crime in international law, that the UN will define you as "arbitrarily
detained" and Amnesty International will list you as a "prisoner of
consious". Under US Law, as endorsed by the Supreme Court, your legal
staus will have been decreed by the US President and the form of trial you
are granted will be whatever he decides to allow to you.

You are welcome to the land of the free [sic] - it never was free and it
has just got a whole lot less free.

- - Simon McGuinness, Dublin.

---------------Original Post -------------

[NYTr] Latest Bush Spin: Supremes "Tacitly" OK'd Use of Gitmo


Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

sent by Ed Pearl

[Note that he declares that he is "willing to abide by the ruling of
the Supreme Court." Of course, by constitutional law he MUST
follow Court rulings, but presumably may not be willing in future
cases so he announces willingness IN THIS SPECIFIC CASE.) -Ed]

"I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his
keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who
yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to
become a slave." -H. L. Mencken, "Why Liberty?" Jan. 30, 1927


The New York Times - July 8, 2006

Justices Tacitly Backed Use of Guantánamo, Bush Says

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

WASHINGTON, July 7 - In his most detailed comments to date on the
Supreme Court's rejection of his decision to put detainees on trial
before military commissions, President Bush said Friday that the
court had tacitly approved his use of the detention center at
Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

"It didn't say we couldn't have done - couldn't have made that
decision, see?" Mr. Bush said at a news conference in Chicago. "They
were silent on whether or not Guantánamo - whether or not we should
have used Guantánamo. In other words, they accepted the use of
Guantánamo, the decision I made."

Mr. Bush's remarks put a favorable spin on a ruling that has been
widely interpreted as a rebuke of the administration's policies in
the war on terror. The court, ruled broadly last week in Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld that military commissions were unauthorized by statute and
violated international law.

The question of whether Mr. Bush had properly used Guantánamo Bay to
house detainees was not at issue in the case. At issue was whether
the president could unilaterally establish military commissions with
rights different from those allowed at a court-martial to try
detainees for war crimes.

Mr. Bush has said since the ruling that he will work with Congress to
figure out how to use military commissions to try detainees, a
promise he repeated on Friday in Chicago.

"I am willing to abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court," the
president said.

The Chicago news conference, which featured local reporters asking
the president questions alongside the regular members of the White
House press corps, was designed by the White House to give the
president more exposure in the country at a time when his poll
numbers are declining and Americans are uneasy with his leadership on
the economy and the war in Iraq.

But members of the Chicago press did not serve up softball questions.
The issue of Mr. Bush's polls came up when a reporter asked about a
fund-raiser the president planned to attend for Judy Baar Topinka,
the Republican candidate for Illinois governor.

"An aide to Judy Topinka was quoted as saying that given your low
approval ratings in the polls, they prefer you to come here in the
middle of the night," the reporter said.

"Didn't work," Mr. Bush replied. "I'm coming to lunch."

The president also gave an endorsement of sorts to Patrick J.
Fitzgerald, the special prosecutor who handled a leak investigation
involving Karl Rove, Mr. Bush's chief political adviser.

Mr. Bush said Mr. Fitzgerald, who is also the United States attorney
in Chicago, had done a "very professional job" in handling the leak
investigation, which resulted in the indictment of I. Lewis Libby
Jr., the former chief of staff to Vice President *** Cheney. Mr.
Rove was not indicted.


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