the real threat to american freedom is coming from those who are sworn to defend it.
bush and his gang are getting more and more like hitler's fascists every day.
In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me -
and by that time no one was left to speak up.
Martin Niemöller
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jun2003/marr-j25.shtml
BUSH INVOKES "ENEMY COMBATANT" RULE AGAINST DEFENDANTS
"In the wake of a federal appeals court ruling earlier this month affirming the US government's right to conduct secret arrests, the Bush administration has announced a series of measures that significantly escalate the police-state powers it has assumed in the name of a "war on terrorism."
"On June 23, Bush signed an order declaring Ali S. Marri an "enemy combatant." Marri, a Qatari immigrant and resident of Peoria, Illinois, was arrested in December of 2001 during the nationwide roundup of Arabs and Muslims in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
"The designation of Marri as an enemy combatant denies him the right to a trial, placing him in legal limbo, without the right to a lawyer or the right to answer charges and evidence brought against him. He is subject to indefinite detention in a military brig, with the possibility of being brought before a military court at any time. Such a drumhead proceeding could result in a death sentence, with no right of appeal.
"In a separate action, the government announced June 20 that Iyman Faris, a Columbus, Ohio truck driver and naturalized US citizen from Kashmir, pled guilty in a closed-door proceeding to two counts of aiding a terrorist organization, after having waived his right to a trial. Faris had been arrested, detained and charged in secret.
"Government sources told reporters for both the New York Times and the Washington Post that Faris agreed to plead guilty and face a possible 20-year sentence after he was threatened with being designated an enemy combatant and turned over to the military.
"Faris was accused of involvement in an improbable plot to bring down the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City by cutting its suspension cables with acetylene torches.
"The action against Ali S. Marri marked the first time the Bush administration has stopped an ongoing judicial process by dropping criminal charges and declaring a defendant an enemy combatant. The president has designated two other men as enemy combatants: Yaser Esam Hamdi, who was captured in Afghanistan; and Jose Padilla, who was arrested in Chicago in May 2002 and accused of plotting to produce a "dirty" radioactive bomb. Both Padilla, born in Brooklyn, and Hamdi, born in Louisiana, are US citizens.
"Arrested in December 2001, Marri, married and a father of five, was held incommunicado for a year as a "material witness"?-the same legal pretext used to detain hundreds of Muslim immigrants?-before the complaint was issued against him. He had been scheduled to go to trial next month.
Attorneys for Marri vowed to challenge the government's action by filing a writ of habeas corpus in federal court. They insisted that their client had a strong defense against the government's criminal charges and that much of its justification for labeling Marri an enemy combatant had never been raised before this week.
"There is nothing in the indictment or the discovery that I'm aware of that directly links him to Al Qaeda, or that he is an enemy combatant," said one of the lawyers, L. Lee Smith. "If that evidence exists, it certainly wasn't established in what was turned over to us."
"Lawrence Lustberg, a second attorney for the student, told the Washington Post: "If the government had proof he was involved in terrorism, they would have charged him with that, but they didn't."
"The Bush administration has once again done an end run around the criminal justice system," said a spokesman for the group. "It is invoking the laws of war in the United States to justify locking people up without charge and without access to a lawyer. This kind of military detention has no place in a country committed to the rule of law."
"In the cases of Marri, Faris and Padilla there are no allegations that they were involved in acts of war, making the "enemy combatant" designation fraudulent on its face. Hamdi is a prisoner of war, captured in the US invasion of Afghanistan, and denied the elementary rights granted to POWs under the Geneva Convention.
"In none of these cases has the government presented a shred of evidence in open court that these men were supporters of Al Qaeda, much less involved in acts of terrorism. Instead, Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and other US officials have made unsubstantiated and sensationalist accusations of terrorist connections, which were then retailed by the American media as though they were incontrovertible fact.
"
WITH THESE LATEST ACTIONS, THE GOVERNMENT IS INSTITUTIONALIZING A PROCEDURE UNDER WHICH THE PRESIDENT, INVOKING HIS POSITION AS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, CAN ISSUE AN EDICT AND IMPRISON ANYONE HE CHOOSES. TO DECLARE SOMEONE AN ENEMY COMBATANT, THE PRESIDENT IS NOT EVEN REQUIRED TO PRESENT PROOF OF THE TARGETED PERSON'S ALLEGED OFFENSE. ALL HE HAS TO DO IS ASSERT THE PERSON'S GUILT.
"THE GOVERNMENT CAN THREATEN ANY DEFENDANT WITH BEING DESIGNATED AN ENEMY COMBATANT, THROWN INTO A MILITARY BRIG AND HELD INDEFINITELY WITHOUT LEGAL COUNSEL, IN ORDER TO COERCE HIM INTO PLEADING GUILTY IN COURT AND FOREGOING HIS RIGHT TO A TRIAL."
Instead of worrying about those make believe Iraqi WMD I would hope instead that the alleged "conservatives" get off their asses and defend liberty at home, before someone comes for them.
, if 200 fine young American and British men and women and thousands of Iraqi civilians weren't dead.
