Original Message: ----------------- From: Robert Seeberger [EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Fri, 06 Oct 2006 18:44:54 -0500 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: We Will Not Be Afraid
>I'm not sure if we are on the same page here. >(Certainly, I posted the links I did for informative reasons and not >as an example of my own beliefs. But I think you are missing the gist >of the argument given.) I do understand that you often post ideas that you think are worth looking at, even if you don't agree with them. In particular, I took your posting of this idea as an example of the case that folks make that Bush is attacking the liberties of American citizens. I went straight to discussing the idea...assuming that it is one you just put on the table for consideration, not one you were backing personally. >What I am given to understand is not that US Citizens can be tried in >a tribunal, but that they can be held indefinitely, a removal of >habeas corpus rights westerners have enjoyed for many hundreds of >years. But, this law does not attempt to revoke habeas corpus. Yes, it does allow Americans to be called unlawful enemy combattants. This means that those Americans, who are caught on the battlefield, would not be afforded the same protection under the Geneva convention as would lawful combattants. But, the habeas corpus rights of Americans are not based on the Geneva convention, they are based on the Constitution of the United States. So, the president declaring an American citizen an unlawful enemy combattant would only be relavant under very specific circumstances. >This administration has done pretty much that with at least one >citizen That was a special case. The person was caught fighting with enemies of Americans on the battlefiend in Afganistan. Let me give a parallel from history. If a German family came to the US for a few years in the very early '20s, had a son here who was an American citizen, and then returned to Germany where the son enlisted in the German army in 1942, when he turned 18, this son would not be entitled to habeas corpus rights on the battlefield. The US would have treated him like any other German soldier. >and a good number of aliens even to this day Aliens who are in the United States illegally are in a precarious legal position with respect to detention. The US has legally detained aliens who do not have the legal right to be in the United States pending deportation without granting these people habeas corpus. If the people are in the US, there are some limits on that. But, there is historical precident, with the Haitian refugees, of keeping aliens in camps at Gitmo...without habeas corpus rights. If you watch Bush's actions, and I'm thinking in particular of someone who was declaired an alien enemy combattant while in the US, and then that designation being dropped before the case could reach the Supreme Courts, you see someone who is aware of the limitations on his actions. He's definately pushing boundaries, but he also acknolwedges them tacitly. In a real sense, checks and balances are working here. He knows that any attempt to deny habeas corpus rights to American citizens residing in the US would be met by a court challange in picoseconds. He also knows that he'd lose such a challange. The proof of this is that he's afraid of a court test of his denying habeas corpus to alien unlawful enemy combattants. In short, checks and balances are working, now. It isn't perfect, things are certainly done wrong. But, we're improving on how we handled it before...which is a good thing. Dan M. >and I see that as the fear being expressed. -------------------------------------------------------------------- mail2web - Check your email from the web at http://mail2web.com/ . _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
