How to end the assault on liberties
Sunday, March 4, 2007
Five years of the Bush administration’s overreaching and congressional collaboration continue to exact a high toll in human lives, America’s global reputation and the architecture of democracy. Brutality toward prisoners, and the denial of their human rights, have been institutionalized; unlawful spying on Americans continues; and the courts are being closed to legal challenges of these practices.
It will require forceful steps by this Congress to undo the damage. Taking on this task is a moral imperative that will show the world the United States can be tough on terrorism without sacrificing its humanity and the rule of law.
Here we offer a list which, sadly, is hardly exhaustive of things that need to be done to reverse the unwise and lawless policies of President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney. Many will require a rewrite of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, an atrocious measure pushed through Congress with the help of three Republican senators Arlen Specter, Lindsey Graham and John McCain.
Our list starts with three fundamental tasks:
Restore habeas corpus
One of the new act’s most indecent provisions denies anyone Bush labels an “illegal enemy combatant” the ancient right to challenge his imprisonment in court. The arguments for doing this were specious.
Habeas corpus is nothing remotely like a get-out-of-jail-free card for terrorists, as supporters would have you believe. It is a way to sort out those justly detained from those unjustly detained. It is essential to bringing integrity to the detention system and reviving the United States’ credibility.
Stop illegal spying
Bush’s program of intercepting Americans’ international calls and e- mail messages without a warrant has not ceased. The agreement announced recently under which a secret court supposedly gave its blessing to the program did nothing to restore judicial process or ensure that Americans’ rights are preserved. Congress needs to pass a measure to force Bush to obey the law that requires warrants for electronic surveillance.
Ban torture, really
The provisions in the Military Commissions Act that McCain trumpeted as a ban on torture are hardly that. It is still largely up to the president to decide what constitutes torture and abuse for the purpose of prosecuting anyone who breaks the rules. This amounts to rewriting the Geneva Conventions and puts every American soldier at far greater risk if captured. It allows the president to decide in secret what kinds of treatment he will permit at the CIA’s prisons. The law absolves American intelligence agents and their bosses of any acts of torture and abuse they have already committed.
Many of the tasks facing Congress involve the way the United States takes prisoners, and how it treats them. There are two sets of prisons in the war on terror. The military runs one set in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay. The other is even more shadowy, run by the CIA at secret places.
Close the CIA prisons
When the Military Commissions Act was passed, Bush triumphantly announced that he now had the power to keep the secret prisons open. He cast this as a great victory for national security. It was a defeat for America’s image around the world.
Account for ‘ghost prisoners’
The United States has to come clean on all of the “ghost prisoners” it has in the secret camps. Holding prisoners without any accounting violates human rights norms. Human Rights Watch says it has identified nearly 40 men and women who have disappeared into secret American- run prisons.
Ban extraordinary rendition
This is the odious practice of abducting foreign citizens and secretly flying them to countries where everyone knows they will be tortured. It is already illegal to send a prisoner to a country if there is reason to believe he will be tortured. The administration’s claim that it got “diplomatic assurances” that prisoners would not be abused is laughable.
A bill by Representative Edward Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts, would require the executive branch to list countries known to abuse and torture prisoners. No prisoner could be sent to any of them unless the secretary of state certified that the country’s government no longer abused its prisoners or offered a way to verify that a prisoner will not be mistreated. It says “diplomatic assurances” are not sufficient.
Congress needs to completely overhaul the military prisons for terrorist suspects, starting with the way prisoners are classified. Shortly after 9/11, Bush declared all members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban to be “illegal enemy combatants” not entitled to the protections of the Geneva Conventions or American justice. Over time, the designation was applied to anyone the administration chose, including some U.S. citizens and the entire detainee population of Guantánamo.
To address this mess, the government must:
Define ‘combatant’
“Illegal enemy combatant” is assigned a dangerously broad definition in the Military Commissions Act. It allows Bush or for that matter anyone he chooses to designate to do the job to apply this label to virtually any foreigner anywhere, including those living legally in the United States.
Screen prisoners fairly
When the administration began taking prisoners in Afghanistan, it did not much bother to screen them. Hundreds of innocent men were sent to Guantánamo. The vast majority will never even be brought before tribunals and still face indefinite detention without charges.
Under legal pressure, Bush created “combatant status review tribunals,” but they are a mockery of any civilized legal proceeding. They take place thousands of miles from the point of capture, and often years later. Evidence obtained by coercion and torture is permitted. The inmates do not get to challenge this evidence. They usually do not see it.
The Bush administration uses the hoary “fog of war” dodge to justify the failure to screen prisoners, saying it is not practical to do that on the battlefield. That’s nonsense.
Beyond all these huge tasks, Congress should halt the federal government’s race to classify documents to avoid public scrutiny 15.6 million in 2005, nearly double the 2001 number. It should also reverse the grievous harm this administration has done to the Freedom of Information Act by encouraging agencies to reject requests for documents whenever possible.
The United States should apologize to a Canadian citizen and a German citizen, both innocent, who were kidnapped and tortured by American agents.
Oh yes, it is time to close Guantánamo camp. It is a despicable symbol of the abuses committed by this administration, with Congress’ complicity, in the name of fighting terrorism.
