From The Nation:
Opinion
A President Rebuked
Bruce Shapiro, The Nation
Thu Jun 29, 10:08 PM ET
The Nation -- The only surviving World War II veteran on the Supreme Court, Justice John Paul Stevens, appointed three decades ago by a President as Republican as W., delivered the plain and airtight message: President Bush violated every standard of the military code, the US Constitution and international law with its order for military tribunals at Guantánamo. In its implications if not always its direct findings, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld is to Bush what the Pentagon Papers case was to Richard Nixon: a devastating rebuke to a President who thought he had a blank check; a clear reaffirmation of the rule of law even--or especially--in times of national crisis.
The Court's Hamdan ruling emphatically does not shut Guantánamo down. Indeed, the Court majority took pains to assert that the attacks of September 11 ignited the President's war powers and they do not challenge "the Government's power to detain [Salim Ahmed Hamdan] for the duration of active hostilities."
The ruling unambiguously declares that the President may not simply invent trials that conform to no known standard of law, which are not necessitated by urgent battlefield conditions, and deny defense lawyers access to evidence. It also dismantles every element of the Administration's case, from the conspiracy-to-commit-war crimes charges against the Yemeni national who was Osama bin Laden's driver in Afganistan to the necessity of an improvised process governed by no act of Congress. "Any urgent need...is utterly belied by the record," Justice Stevens writes. "Hamdan was arrested in November 2001 and he was not charged until mid-2004. These simply are not the circumstances in which, by any stretch of the historical evidence or this Court's precedents" justify a drumhead military commission.
In particular, Justice Stevens' majority ruling deals a devasating blow to tribunal rules which violate the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Convenions. Indeed, the most signficiant news in Justice Steven's Hamdan majority ruling is fierce insistence on the power of international law, and in particular the Geneva Conventions, which the Administration has long dismissed as irrelevant to non-state actors like Al Qaeda volunteers. Such dismissals are nonsense, according to Justice Stevens' ruling: the Geneva Conventions' Common Article 3 clearly prohibits "the passing of sentences...without previous judgment...by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees ... recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples." For three years, Administration lawyers have argued that the Geneva Conventions don't apply to its "war on terror". That argument is finished.
The Administration was probably prepared to lose the Hamdan tribunals. It is not clear, however, that the White House is ready for the sweeping implications of the Supreme Court's firm invocation of internationally recognized human rights standards. Black sites, secret interrogations, torture, the whole panoply of lawless methods embraced by Bush and Rumsfeld now stand exposed.
At bottom, the Hamdan ruling is what legal scholar Jack M. Balkin calls "democracy-forcing": It restores checks and balances, strips the President of illegally-seized powers, and requires the President to go back to Congress for an open debate on any new tribunals he would like to establish, as well as any revision to the nation's adherence to international law. What Justice Stevens and the five-vote Court majority have done is raise the floor on human rights--not just for Bin Laden's driver and not just at Guantánamo, but in Washington itself.
*"I hear the voices and I read the front page and I know the speculation," the president told reporters in the Rose Garden. "But I'm the decider and I decide what's best....... George W. Bush*
* "I'm the Decider"*
by Roddy McCorley
Well, it took me awhile, but I finally realized what "I'm the decider," reminds me of. It sounds like something a character in a Dr Seuss book might say. So with apologies to the late Mr. Geisel, here is some idle speculation as to what else such a character might say:
I'm the decider.
I pick and I choose.
I pick among whats.
And choose among whos.
And as I decide
Each particular day,
The things I decide on
All turn out that way.
I decided on Freedom
For all of Iraq.
And now that we have it,
I'm not looking back.
I decided on tax cuts
That just help the wealthy.
And Medicare changes
That aren't really healthy.
And parklands and wetlands
Who needs all that stuff?
I decided that none
Would be more than enough!
I decided that schools
All in all are the best.
The less that they teach
And the more that they test.
I decided those wages
You need to get by,
Are much better spent
On some CEO guy.
I decided your Wade
Which was versing your Roe,
Is terribly awful
And just has to go.
I decided that levees
Are not really needed.
Now when hurricanes come
They can come unimpeded.
That old Constitution?
Well, I have decided-
As "just Goddamn paper"*
It should be derided.
I've decided gay marriage
Is icky and weird.
Above all other things,
It's the one to be feared.
And Cheney and Rummy
And Condi all know
That I'm the Decider.
They tell me it's so.
I'm the Decider
So watch what you say,
Or I may decide
To have you whisked away
Or I'll tap your phones.
Your e-mail I'll read.
`cause I'm the Decider -
Like Jesus decreed.* This is an exact Bush Quote!
Now that I think about it, Dr. Seuss anticipated this administration pretty well when he wrote Yertle the Turtle...
__._,_.___
Bernie forgets one important point: (another Bush lie) that congress had the same intel information as the president.
Quit peddling your lies, Bernie; learn to live with some facts and truths once-in-awhile - if you can manage it.
Bush Resurrects False Claim That Congress Had "Same Intelligence" On Iraq
In his speech today, President Bush claimed that members of Congress who voted for the 2002 Iraq war resolution "had access to the same intelligence" as his administration. This is patently false.
Certainly, Mr. Imposter- Congress had the same Intelligence Information that President Bush had. If you read the piece by Mr. Podhoretz you would have learned that the intelligence came from the CIA to the President and that 15( FIFTEEN) other US agencies came to the same consensus and that9 MOST IMPORTANT) the intelligence agencies of Germany, Britain and France concurred that Saddam had WMD's
You should really learn to read the evidence, Mr. Imposter!!!
As stated many times before, Podhoretz is a neocon totally submerged into the Bushco religion. I trust him about as much as I trust you; none.
As I have stated before, your source, The NATION, was once referred to as Pravda West. But I will now do something which I am sure you fear to do, Mr. Imposter. I will take your post made by the Nation and attempt to rebut it----All you can do is weakly comment on the writer of the post(Podhoretz). I will not imitate your inability. I will analyze and try to rebut the Nation article.
Get busy, Mr. Imposter or you will show that you cannot debate at all!
I would like to rebut your comments in your post-This is patently false--but you give no link- Mr. Imposter.
Give a link and I will rebut!!
Nah, Bush is a fckg moron; no doubt about it. And those that support him are not far behind. Truth hurts.
Don't you wish.
I can get a laugh out of the moron in chief...and poor, deluded, knee-jerk conservatives who still kiss his ass...
...and the laugh is from the belly and as heart felt as any laugh imaginable.
But if it makes you feel better about yourself to see me being eaten up alive...go for it. The folks who know me in real life know where I'm at emotionally...and it ain't where you think.
Obviously neither of you support President Bush. Doesn't that beg the question of why you are posting in a thread called "Why do you still support President Bush?"
Can't you take your sewage elsewhere?
