Reply #32: Section 950 [View All]

[davekriss]

Drops any mention of "alien" or "unlawful enemy combatant" and simply uses the word "persons" instead. From that section forward it's reasonable to deduce that it applies to anyone, citizen or non-citizen. If a U.S. citizen is suspected of commiting any of the crimes enumerated -- including this, from "§ 950v. Crimes triable by military commission"...

1 (25) WRONGFULLY AIDING THE ENEMY.—
2 Any person who, in breach of an allegiance or duty
3 to the United States, knowingly and intentionally
4 aids an enemy of the United States or one its co-
5 belligerents shall be guilty of the offense of wrong-
6 fully aiding the enemy and shall be subject to
7 whatever punishment the commission may direct.

All through this section it no longer says "alien unlawful enemy combatant" or even just "enemy combatant", no, it says "person". Any person. Who are these "persons"? Who can be "in breach of an allegiance or duty to the United States"? Can it pertain to a Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen who "wrongfully aided the enemy" (actually several other of the crimes listed here)? So Jose Padilla could be, by the latter part of the bill, tried by military tribunal, lawfully subjected to treatment respectful of the Geneva Conventions as Bush interprets it, denied habeas corpus, and thus detained indefinately.

Slippery slope here. What if our brilliant brained and principled Attorney General declares DU, due to the many rants posted here, as aiding and abetting the enemy. Could military officers cart Skinner out of his office, render him to Egypt, where they beat out of him the names and addresses of the rest of us, then ship him to a metal container in Bagram and leave him there. Never confronting Skinner with the charges, never informing his family and friends of his detention and the charges, he just joins the "disappeared", something that seems to happen in nations where we intervene. Just ask John Negroponte, our Director of National Intelligence, he knows much about "disappeared" in Honduras, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, and perhaps even briefly instructed Iraqi death squads on the Salvadorean Solution.

This bill, it is the Bush Regime's Enabling Act. We slid further down the slope to overt fascism today.

We all know the oft used quote:

The illusion of freedom in America will continue as long as it's profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way, and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theatre.
--Frank Zappa, 1977

Apparantly our plutocracy thinks free, fair elections, a free press, and that damn piece of paper, the Constitution, are just too expensive to maintain.