Matt Drudge and others have received their talking points and they are by design focusing on rap music and twisting Durbin's statements to distract us from the real issue - torture.
Torture was witnessed by the FBI and documented:
The FBI memos described "torture techniques" that it said included shackling detainees into painful positions, forced nakedness, deafening music, temperature extremes, and sexual humiliation by female interrogators.
They are also trying to cover up the real issue and that is war crimes and there legal slap down by the Supreme Court. More below the fold:
What I would really like these people to answer is why are they advocating that we NOT comply with court decisions that have said that the Geneva Conventions DO apply unless a COMPETENT tribunal determines otherwise.
Since no competent tribunal has reviewed any detainee cases then they all must be afforded POW status.
What I want to know is whether these right wing talking heads agree with Justice Scalia or do they think he is an activist Judge that Senator Cornyn would like to shoot.
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Anthony Scalia Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld
The very core of liberty secured by our Anglo-Saxon system of separated powers has been freedom from indefinite imprisonment at the will of the Executive. Blackstone stated this principle clearly:
"Of great importance to the public is the preservation of this personal liberty: for if once it were left in the power of any, the highest, magistrate to imprison arbitrarily whomever he or his officers thought proper ... there would soon be an end of all other rights and immunities. ... To bereave a man of life, or by violence to confiscate his estate, without accusation or trial, would be so gross and notorious an act of despotism, as must at once convey the alarm of tyranny throughout the whole kingdom. But confinement of the person, by secretly hurrying him to gaol, where his sufferings are unknown or forgotten; is a less public, a less striking, and therefore a more dangerous engine of arbitrary government. ...
"To make imprisonment lawful, it must either be, by process from the courts of judicature, or by warrant from some legal officer, having authority to commit to prison; which warrant must be in writing, under the hand and seal of the magistrate, and express the causes of the commitment, in order to be examined into (if necessary) upon a habeas corpus. If there be no cause expressed, the gaoler is not bound to detain the prisoner. For the law judges in this respect, ... that it is unreasonable to send a prisoner, and not to signify withal the crimes alleged against him." 1 W. Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England 132-133 (1765) (hereinafter Blackstone).
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If you didn't get what he is saying Justice Scalia is calling the Bush administration a despotic regime!
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Here is the majority opinion of the court written by Justice O'Conner:
The capture and detention of lawful combatants and the capture, detention, and trial of unlawful combatants, by "universal agreement and practice," are "important incident[s] of war." Ex parte Quirin, 317 U. S., at 28. The purpose of detention is to prevent captured individuals from returning to the field of battle and taking up arms once again. Naqvi, Doubtful Prisoner-of-War Status, 84 Int'l Rev. Red Cross 571, 572 (2002) ("[C]aptivity in war is 'neither revenge, nor punishment, but solely protective custody, the only purpose of which is to prevent the prisoners of war from further participation in the war' " (quoting decision of Nuremberg Military Tribunal, reprinted in 41 Am. J. Int'l L. 172, 229 (1947)); W. Winthrop, Military Law and Precedents 788 (rev. 2d ed. 1920) ("The time has long passed when 'no quarter' was the rule on the battlefield ... . It is now recognized that 'Captivity is neither a punishment nor an act of vengeance,' but 'merely a temporary detention which is devoid of all penal character.' ... 'A prisoner of war is no convict; his imprisonment is a simple war measure.' " (citations omitted); cf. In re Territo, 156 F. 2d 142, 145 (CA9 1946) ("The object of capture is to prevent the captured individual from serving the enemy. He is disarmed and from then on must be removed as completely as practicable from the front, treated humanely, and in time exchanged, repatriated, or otherwise released" (footnotes omitted)).
("[The Founders] knew--the history of the world told them--the nation they were founding, be its existence short or long, would be involved in war; how often or how long continued, human foresight could not tell; and that unlimited power, wherever lodged at such a time, was especially hazardous to freemen"). Because we live in a society in which "[m]ere public intolerance or animosity cannot constitutionally justify the deprivation of a person's physical liberty," O'Connor v. Donaldson, 422 U. S. 563, 575 (1975), our starting point for the Mathews v. Eldridge analysis is unaltered by the allegations surrounding the particular detainee or the organizations with which he is alleged to have associated. We reaffirm today the fundamental nature of a citizen's right to be free from involuntary confinement by his own government without due process of law, and we weigh the opposing governmental interests against the curtailment of liberty that such confinement entails.
An interrogation by one's captor, however effective an intelligence-gathering tool, hardly constitutes a constitutionally adequate factfinding before a neutral decisionmaker. Compare Brief for Respondents 42-43 (discussing the "secure interrogation environment," and noting that military interrogations require a controlled "interrogation dynamic" and "a relationship of trust and dependency" and are "a critical source" of "timely and effective intelligence") with Concrete Pipe, 508 U. S., at 617-618 ("one is entitled as a matter of due process of law to an adjudicator who is not in a situation which would offer a possible temptation to the average man as a judge . . . which might lead him not to hold the balance nice, clear and true" (internal quotation marks omitted). That even purportedly fair adjudicators "are disqualified by their interest in the controversy to be decided is, of course, the general rule." Tumey v. Ohio, 273 U. S. 510, 522 (1927). Plainly, the "process" Hamdi has received is not that to which he is entitled under the Due Process Clause.
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Here is what the court is saying: the Geneva Conventions DO apply unless a competent tribunal determines otherwise.
A competent tribunal cannot rely on coerced evidence obtained through a traditional battlefield interrogation (especially when it includes torture/abuse).
The detention of combatants is soly to prevent them from returning to the battlefield and is not for exacting revenge or punishment as is occurring currently.
To summarize the judgement of the court - they are saying stop acting like a despotic regime and follow the constitution and the law.
If there is any doubt that prisoners were abused and tortured all you have to do is look at the government memos that create all sorts of legal justcifications for abuse and torture.
Furthermore, the FBI said prisoners were tortured, the Navy said that prisoners were tortured, the International Committee of the Red Cross said prisoners were tortured, Amnesty International said that prisoners were tortured, physicians for human rights said that prisoners were tortured.
However, Rumsfled and the army says that prisoners are being treated "humanly" and of course all of the army investigators said that no policy permitting abuse was enacted; even though we know Rumsfeld authorized forced nudity in violation of the Geneva Conventions and International law.
We need to fight back - they cannot get away with a continuing policy of torture.