Stupid Lindsey Graham!
[Haven't been blogging much lately. Tends to happen when you don't have a moment to stop and think.]
Y'know I had almost begun to like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He had been part of the "Gang of 14" moderate Republicans and Democrats who headed off the nuclear option a couple months back. He, along with most Senators, supported John McCain's anti-torture amendment. And when the existence of secret CIA detention centers - and the inhuman treatment that happens there - was leaked to the Washington Post last week, Graham scoffed the the Republican leadership's plans to investigate how the leaks got out: "Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails."
Sure I didn't agree with him on many, many things - Graham was one of the prosecutors of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial - but I thought he was reasonable about America's commitment to human rights.
Until, that is, he got the Senate to pass an amendment that stripped the Guantanamo detainees' rights to challenge their enemy combatant status.
So filing a lawsuit to challenge whether you are properly classified as an "enemy combatant" is now the equivalent of suing "in every court in the land . . . based on every possible complaint"? Forcing the Defense Dept. to prove it has a good reason for locking up - and, let's admit it, possibly torturing - Detainee X is "not fair"? Wonder how "fair" it must feel if any of those detainees in fact were NOT even Taliban or Qaeda soldiers, but simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can't know right now, can we?
Never mind that even Taliban soldiers should be treated like prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions!
Other news:
- The Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportions Act of 2005 failed to pass in the House.
- Steve McHone (Rest In Peace)
- My job search continues.
Y'know I had almost begun to like Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC). He had been part of the "Gang of 14" moderate Republicans and Democrats who headed off the nuclear option a couple months back. He, along with most Senators, supported John McCain's anti-torture amendment. And when the existence of secret CIA detention centers - and the inhuman treatment that happens there - was leaked to the Washington Post last week, Graham scoffed the the Republican leadership's plans to investigate how the leaks got out: "Talk about not seeing the forest for the trees. The real story is those jails."
Sure I didn't agree with him on many, many things - Graham was one of the prosecutors of Bill Clinton's impeachment trial - but I thought he was reasonable about America's commitment to human rights.
Until, that is, he got the Senate to pass an amendment that stripped the Guantanamo detainees' rights to challenge their enemy combatant status.
"It is not fair to our troops fighting in the war on terror to be sued in every court in the land by our enemies based on every possible complaint," Mr. Graham said. "We have done nothing today but return to the basics of the law of armed conflict where we are dealing with enemy combatants, not common criminals."
So filing a lawsuit to challenge whether you are properly classified as an "enemy combatant" is now the equivalent of suing "in every court in the land . . . based on every possible complaint"? Forcing the Defense Dept. to prove it has a good reason for locking up - and, let's admit it, possibly torturing - Detainee X is "not fair"? Wonder how "fair" it must feel if any of those detainees in fact were NOT even Taliban or Qaeda soldiers, but simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. We can't know right now, can we?
Never mind that even Taliban soldiers should be treated like prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions!
Other news:
- The Moral Disaster of Monumental Proportions Act of 2005 failed to pass in the House.
- Steve McHone (Rest In Peace)
- My job search continues.
posted by Ben at
9:01 AM
2 Comments:
Didn't the Supreme Court rule that such restrictions were unconstitutional?
By
Jeff, at 11/11/2005 10:43 AM
No, I'm pretty sure the Court ruled the detainees' right to appeal was based on statutory law, meaning Congress has the power to take it away. Not positive about that, though.
By
Ben, at 11/11/2005 10:49 AM
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