A provision in the Senate’s version of the omnibus Pentagon spending measure shortly before Congress adjourned for its summer recess would shift all terror suspects into immediate military custody, dodging the civilian authorities traditionally tasked with such cases.
A similar provision was tucked into the House version of the bill, but was eliminated. It will be decided upon later this month when Congress meets to reconcile the two versions.
Under the new law, arrested terror suspects would be placed under military custody rather than being left to civilian law enforcement agencies like the FBI. As written, measure wouldn’t apply to American citizens, but it would put the rights of large numbers of terror suspects at risk and has the creeping potential of being used to justify further abridgments of individual rights, possible against Americans.
The provision was written and included at the behest of Senator John McCain (R-AZ) who criticized the Obama administration for giving Umar Farouq Abdulmuttalab – the failed Christmas Day/underwear bomber – to the FBI. “That person should be tried as an enemy combatant; he’s a terrorist,” McCain said on CNN in January 2010. “To have a person be able to get lawyered up when we need that information very badly betrays or contradicts the president’s view that we are at war.”
There isn’t really any legal justification for pushing criminals into military commissions other than to curtail the full exercise of their individual rights under a civilian trial. McCain’s aversion to letting accused persons “get lawyered up” reflects a deep disdain for the rule of law.
If agreed upon by Congress, the law would presumably go into effect without a veto. The Obama administration has shown similar disdain for providing terrorism suspects with legal recourse or access to council: he has reversed his initial stated aims of closing Guantanamo Bay and trying Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in a civilian court, instead opting to continue to hold detainees indefinitely without trial, giving some access to military commissions.
It would be a drastic shift away from customary American law, which bars the military from conducting law-enforcement activities on American soil under the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878. The military would be obligated to take over domestic investigations on terror suspects, long understood to be a threat to freedom.
There is some objection, though. Pentagon General Counsel Jeh Johnson said in a speech to the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy in July, “There is danger in over-militarizing our approach to the current terrorist threat. We must guard against the impulse to automatically send into military custody every terrorist, every alleged terrorist, particularly those arrested on American soil for acts that violate American law. Our military is the most powerful in the world … because of the limits we place on its ability to reach into the other areas of national security typically occupied by civilian law enforcement.”
Brutal imperialism, the quest for cheep oil and the corruption of terrorist Israel helping us to trade war materials for Middle-East oil, that is the root cause of terrorism.
But, how do we get to the root cause when neither corporate controlled government nor corporate funded media ever address the root cause? Even the fake root cause, that Muslims are jealous of our prosperity and beautiful white skin, even this is never again to be mentioned. A total blackout on the reason why the world hates with such vengeance USA, does this not mean that terrorism will not end until the downfall of Empire USA?
I doubt that the downfall of the USA will even come close to ending terrorism. It is a societal affliction that has spread through humanity. There will always be those who will feel that the use of terrorism is justified – be they the kid next door, the ideologue who thinks that God speaks directly to them, or the governments that believe the violence they bring to others will bring peace and prosperity to the whole world.
Fools, all. Not worthy of existence.
America is no longer the country it once was many years ago.They are criminals besides very few in government.The citizens need to take the country back.In the vlast civil war 750 thousand people died but America became a great country.It would be worth it to have the country back that was once a model to the world.Now its the last country another would want to emulate.