(Reworked with a link to KO's Special Comment regarding the MCA and Habeas Corpus. I believe this issue goes to the very heart of what we are fighting for: our Constitution. BushCo is trampling it into the mud.)
Just after 4 AM yesterday morning, when all was looking good for Tuesday, this chilled my bones:
U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons
Court Is Asked to Bar Detainees From Talking About Interrogations
It seems that these "enemy combatants" are privy to state secrets on our new "alternative methods" of interrogation, and maybe even the location of the secret prisons they were held in. And what's even scarier is that this could happen to more people, even to American citizens like myself. For if BushCo declares me an "unlawful enemy combatant" and denies me habeas corpus, how am I going to get a court hearing to prove my citizenship? Are we going to have to start carrying our passports wherever we go? Maybe we should.
And our nation sinks even deeper into the slime courtesy of BushCo. More madness/sadness on the flip...
The "Justice Department" has filed briefs based on the recent bill restricting habeus corpus aka the Military Commissions Act:
The Bush administration has told a federal judge that terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk.
The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release -- even to the detainees' own attorneys -- "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton on Oct. 26.
So we snatch people from their homes in the middle of the night, take them somewhere secret and use "alternative methods" of interrogation (such as "dunking" in water, according to Dickhead Cheney), and after a few years of being held the person is sent to Guantanamo Bay for a life sentence without trial, and now BushCo doesn't want anybody to hear their story.
Why does that not surprise me?
The thinking of the "Justice Department":
The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public.
Because Khan "was detained by CIA in this program, he may have come into possession of information, including locations of detention, conditions of detention, and alternative interrogation techniques that is classified at the TOP SECRET//SCI level," an affidavit from CIA Information Review Officer Marilyn A. Dorn states, using the acronym for "sensitive compartmented information."
Now, I can see why this administration would not want the detainees experiences shared with the public, as they were horrendous, but is this going to really become settled law? Here in America?
This is chilling to me, the arrest of Majid Kahn, his brother and wife and their infant son:
Khan's family did not learn of his whereabouts until Bush announced his transfer in September, more than three years after he was seized in Pakistan.
The family said Khan was staying with a brother in Karachi, Pakistan, in March 2003 when men, who were not in uniform, burst into the apartment late one night and put hoods over the heads of Khan, his brother Mohammad and his brother's wife. The couple's 1-month-old son was also seized.
Luckily, mother and infant were released after a week. Mohammad was released after three months, never having been charged and with no explanation.
And Majid disappeared into the rabbit hole of secret CIA prisons with names like "the Salt Pit", where their American interogators told them they were "...in a land where there were no laws."
I want to live in a land with laws. Laws that provide basic rights to all human beings, whether white, black, brown, yellow, whatever. It's what our nation is supposed to stand for. It's what we fought a Civil War over, to say nothing of a couple of World Wars.
We simply cannot continue to be a nation where people can be arrested in the middle of the night and disappeared into a system that sends them to a place like Gitmo for a life term without charge, trial, or access to lawyers. We cannot continue to be nation like this:
Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' "
Not if I have a fucking thing to say about it. How far we have fallen as a nation in a few short years is sickening. It's sad on a deep, visceral level. But after the sadness it's time to get mad, to take action so we can make sure we these evil people out of power.
Because as Keith Olbermann put it in this Special Comment:
And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an "unlawful enemy combatant" - exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not?
That is a stunning concept, one I have no argument against. Only bone-chilling fear.
Who are you going to talk to about such things today?