Americans Face Guantanamo Detention – UK Guardian
It appears that some of the best coverage of this issue is in the UK Guardian. Please read the whole story.
Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial: Civil rights groups dismayed as Barack Obama abandons commitment to veto new security law contained in defence bill
Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.
Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of “a war that appears to have no end”.
The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the “war on terror” to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.
[...]
Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial “until the end of hostilities”. They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.
The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would “cause confusion” in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.
But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.
Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year’s election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.
Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.
Read the whole story:
Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial: Civil rights groups dismayed as Barack Obama abandons commitment to veto new security law contained in defence bill
© 2011, Kathleen4HB. All rights reserved.
Help HillBuzz by Shopping Amazon
"Bee" Advised!
I look forward to your comments. Please follow these simple guidelines:
- Please do not complain about your comment not yet showing up
- Stay on topic of the article ("This is OT, but..." = bad!)
- I will STING if you troll, spam, bait, swear or attack someone
Even Al Jazeera finds this legislation to be undesirable – and for many of the same reasons as US citizens do: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/americas/2011/12/20…
….and where, pray-tell, is the media on this? They, who could not scream long enough or loudly enough over "Warrantless Wiretaps" have suddenly gone silent!
I want every GOP candidate to give a press conference TODAY denouncing this illegal power grab for what it is. When will the American public wake up and see this man for who he is?
If the asshole in chief were smart he would veto it and pin the attempt to detain American civilians on the GOP
He doesn’t have to be smart to do this. QUISLING JOHN MCCAIN drafted these provisions in secret with Carl Levin. And a majority of Republicans voted for the damn thing in the House.
A POX on both their houses.
This article nails it. Graham is horrible. He has admitted that every US citizen can be sent to Gitmo or wherever. Of course, they can also kill you. They killed Al Awacky and his 16 year old son.
I wonder how many of us conservatives will end up in gitmo before the next election and not allowed to vote? Maybe that is one of obama's strategies to rig the election.
Can anybody say dictatorship?
The problem isn't that some idiot put this together and some d-bag president agrees with it, the problem is that the majority of Americans will never hear about it because the evil msm will never tell anyone about it. Bad freedom robbing ideas will always come around and it is the American population that shoots them down, but when most Americans never even know about it, well then, that is a problem.
I disagree. It’s not that people won’t know; it’s that there will be so many people out there (even conservatives) who will accept this terrible law because “it protects us from terrorism.” That’s the same excuse they gave for TSA pat-downs, x-rays, etc.
You've made my point for me. The people who accept the TSA are the ininformed, remember, the msm doesnt report on all the abuses inflicted by the TSA. There is a push-back against TSA but only with the people who know about their abuses but again, the msm doesnt report on the TSA abuses they just tell their audience that they (the TSA) are doing great things to protect us from terrorism. Its the same thing here, the only reporting that will be done by the msm will be about how our wonderful government is doing such a great job protecting us from terrorists.
Carl Levin admitted that BamBam specifically asked for the provision that gives the president the power to determine who is considered a terrorist. Guess who he and Holder and Napolitano consider to be terrorists? I wrote my Rep over his vote and plan to call my Senators. One is an admitted rabid liberal. The other tries to present himself as a moderate but always votes with Harry Reid. Nonethless, I will be placing phone calls to their offices before the vote this week. [youtube anjVgWNzQnk http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=anjVgWNzQnk youtube]
I don't doubt that 0bama would use this against his political enemies if he could, especially if he is reelected.