due process

The Justice Department secretly authorized President George Bush to use the military inside the United States to snoop on, raid and even kill citizens in order to fight terrorism without regard to the Fourth or Fifth Amendment, according to a Oct 23, 2001 memo released by the Obama Administration Monday.

"We do not think a military commander carrying out a raid on a terrorist cell would be required to demonstrate probable cause or to obtain a warrant," the Office of Legal Counsel memo said. "We think that the better view is that the Fourth Amendment does not apply to domestic military operations designed to deter and prevent future terrorist attacks."

Department of Justice special counsel Robert Delahunty and John Yoo, a deputy assistant attorney general best known for penning a memo authorizing government agents to torture suspected terrorists, issued the memo after the administration asked whether it could use the military inside the United States.

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The memo found that the military could be deployed widely within the United States without being subject to the limits of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Those actions include using the National Security Agency to spy on communications inside the United States without getting court approval -- as the Bush Administration admitted it did for years.

So really, what is the constitution for then?

And didn't Bush on September 26, 2006, push for Congress to revise the laws so the military could seize control immediately after a natural disaster due to Hurricane Katrina? How is it that the Bush administration thought the Posse Comitatus Act would bar the government from rescuing flooded citizens from the roofs of their houses but would totally OK arresting terrorists?

Interview with President and Mrs. George W. Bush

Aired January 13, 2009 - 21:00 ET

...

KING: So does it hurt you that Colin, who worked for you, is saying that?

G. BUSH: I don't think he said George Bush has tortured. I can't remember his quote. But I'm comfortable with what we did and know it was necessary to protect the country. KING: So there's nothing you've done in the area of treatment of prisoners that causes you any kind of pause?

G. BUSH: No. No. Everything we did was -- you know, it had legal -- legal opinions behind it. Look, you're sitting there, you've captured Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. He's the guy that ordered the September the 11th attacks. And we want to know what he knows in order to protect the United States of America.

And I got legal opinions that said whatever we're going to do is legal. And my job is to protect you, Larry. And I've given it my all. I've given it my all.

Emphasis mine.

What kills me is he thinks he's done the best job possible, that the war on terror was really what needed to be started, that torture and lack of due process was how to fight it and that everyone else who disagrees with him is not only a traitor, but is crazy.

Oh, and not only has god told him that this is all OK, but he's got legal opinions that let him do whatever he wants.

The PHR report has since received widespread attention in the media, in Congress, and among policy--makers in U.S. Department of Defense and has humanized the national debate on detainee interrogation and treatment policies, and for that Hashemian, the report's lead author, is pleased. The experience of compiling the report, meanwhile, has left the 30--year--old alumna struggling to understand the darker side of human nature and has reinforced her commitment to prevent it from happening again.

"It was very intense work. You listen while a middle--aged man sobs uncontrollably describing the brutality that became normalized in Abu Ghraib. Others tell you that to this day they suffer from the pain and the shame of sexual humiliations. Their families have been broken and their lives have been shattered," said Hashemian. "You stare at this abyss of unimaginable human cruelty, you witness their agony, immerse yourself in their suffering, and their harrowing stories haunt you at night. We were asking people to go back to dark times. It is really, really hard to hear these stories, but it is grueling to have lived them."

The report, Broken Laws, Broken Lives: Medical Evidence of Torture by US Personnel and Its Impact, provides a detailed and graphic account of how 11 former detainees of the United States (seven of whom were held in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison; the other four were arrested in Afghanistan and eventually ended up at Guantánamo Bay) were treated before they were summarily released without being charged.

Today, the majority in a federal Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 against Center for Constitutional Rights client Maher Arar's case against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and interrogated for a year under the extraordinary rendition program.

Maher Arar is not available to comment in person, but is issuing the following statement: "The Court's 2-1 ruling is outrageous. It basically legitimizes what was done to me, and permits the government to use immigration law as a disguise to send people to torture without regard for due process."

The majority ruled that Mr. Arar's constitutional claims that it was a violation of due process to lock him up for two weeks, obstruct his access to a lawyer and a court, and then to ship him to Syria for the purpose of having him interrogated under torture could not be heard in federal court for two reasons. It concluded that adjudicating the claims would interfere with sensitive matters of foreign policy and national security, and that Arar, as a foreigner who had not been formally admitted to the U.S., had no constitutional due process rights with respect to the government's interference with his access to a lawyer and the decision to send him to Syria to be tortured.

The Supreme Court has ruled that foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay have rights under the U.S. Constitution to challenge their detention in civilian courts.

The justices, in a 5-4 ruling Thursday, handed the Bush administration its third setback at the high court since 2004 over its treatment of prisoners who are being held indefinitely and without charges at the U.S. naval base in Cuba.

"We hold these petitioners do have the habeas corpus privilege," Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court majority in the 70-page opinion.

President George W. Bush's successor should renounce his monarchy. It betters the instruction of King George III, which provoked the Declaration of Independence. Among other things, the 44th president of the United States should do the following promptly upon taking office: Transfer the impending trials of six "high-value" al-Qaida detainees before Spanish Inquisition-like military commissions to civilian courts; repudiate President Bush's kidnappings, secret imprisonments, and maltreatments of suspected al-Qaida supporters abroad on his say-so alone--a page from Hobbes' state of nature; denounce signing statements that declare the president's intent to disregard provisions of bills he has signed into law because he disputes their constitutionality; and end the snobbish custom of former government Brahmins preening in their honorifics after leaving office. The Founding Fathers prohibited titles of nobility to encourage a nonhierarchical culture that honors equality before the law.

While the newly released memo focuses on "asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators," it contains a footnote referencing another Administration memo that caught our eye:

... our Office recently concluded that the Fourth Amendment had no application to domestic military operations.

"If a government defendant were to harm an enemy combatant during an interrogation in a manner that might arguably violate a criminal prohibition, he would be doing so in order to prevent further attacks on the United States by the al Qaeda terrorist network," Yoo wrote. "In that case, we believe that he could argue that the executive branch's constitutional authority to protect the nation from attack justified his actions."

I love how the ends now justify the means.

JOHN YOO'S hitherto secret memo justifying the use of harsh interrogation tactics has finally been declassified and released. As legal scholar Marty Lederman observes, it is hard to see any real justification for having kept the document under lock and key for so long--except, I suppose, that it makes clear there's no wondrous legal proof lurking behind the curtains here, just Mr Yoo's rather extreme (and by now depressingly familiar) view that there is no law higher than presidential whim in time of war. Or, as he puts it, "it is for the President alone to decide what methods to use to best prevail against the enemy."

Local mirror of John Yoo's memo authorizing torture

In the first decision of its kind, a federal judge today ordered the government to stop the deportation of Egyptian national Sameh Khouzam based on a secret and unreliable "assurance" from the Egyptian government that it will not torture him upon his return. The judge called for Khouzam's immediate release from jail under reasonable conditions of supervision and granted his habeas corpus petition. The American Civil Liberties Union, which filed a lawsuit on Khouzam's behalf, applauded the judge's ruling.

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The U.S. State Department has documented widespread Egyptian persecution and discrimination against Christians and other religious minorities, as well as widespread use of torture in Egypt. A State Department report on the matter is available at:
www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/hrrpt/2006/78851.htm

Senator Robert Casey, Jr. (D-PA) sent a letter to Homeland Security Director Michael Chertoff supporting Khouzam and denouncing Egypt’s diplomatic assurances. That letter is available at:
www.aclupa.org/downloads/CaseytoChertoffonKhouzam.pdf

Congressman Joseph Pitts (R-PA) also sent a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice requesting Khouzam’s deportation be cancelled. That letter is available at:
www.aclu.org/immigrants/gen/29982prs20070604.html

More here:

Mr. Khouzam's lawyers say he was detained and beaten by Egyptian authorities after he refused to convert to Islam. They say he escaped from a hospital, went straight to the airport and got on a plane to the United States. While he was in the air, Egyptian officials called U.S. officials and said Mr. Khouzam was wanted for killing a woman, and the U.S. canceled his visa.

"The issue in this case does not concern any right of Khouzam to remain in the United States," Judge Vanaskie wrote. "The right at stake here is to be free from torture."

Local mirror of Judge Vanaskie's decision freeing Khouzam and barring his deportation