And so it begins

Washington Post - Moving quickly to implement the bill signed by President Bush this week that authorizes military trials of enemy combatants, the administration has formally notified the U.S. District Court here that it no longer has jurisdiction to consider hundreds of habeas corpus petitions filed by inmates at the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba.

In a notice dated Wednesday, the Justice Department listed 196 pending habeas cases, some of which cover groups of detainees. The new Military Commissions Act (MCA), it said, provides that "no court, justice, or judge" can consider those petitions or other actions related to treatment or imprisonment filed by anyone designated as an enemy combatant, now or in the future. (h/t Atrios for the link)

They don't waste any time, do they? In their megalomania, Bush and his partners in despotism jumped right on the new bill and began stripping people of their rights before the ink was dry from his X. Before you go all "liberals just want the badguys to go free" on me, let me state that anyone who thinks that about liberals is an idiot of epic proportions.



No one wants that. What those of us who hate this bill and fear what the government will do with it think are funny things like "What if they make a mistake?" Now, I know that the Liar in Chief is infallible, but even he can't be everywhere at once, so what if one of these 196 people was wrongly imprisioned by the SS? We're saying that they don't even have the right to ask "Why am I in jail?" Why are we doing this? Are we so afraid that we can't even answer that simple question? It may be years before these people get their military "trial", and between now and then, they'll be in jail, exposed to torture, and spend years without basic rights that they still hold whether we like it or not (remember that whole "unalienable" thing?). What if we're wrong?

The other complaint I hear from those who support this monstrosity is that "they're not American citizens, so the Constitution (and basic human rights, apparently) does not apply to them." Well, I hate to break it to you folks, but (again from the Post) Historically, the Constitution has been interpreted to apply equally to citizens and noncitizens under U.S. jurisdiction. It's that pesky way the Constitution refers to "people", as if all people had rights, not just white men or something.

Now, I know that people who have advocated that torturing these people is necessary are unlikely to be worried about the imprisionment of someone who hasn't committed a crime - after all, if they didn't do anything wrong, why were they arrested? Huh? The rest of us, thankfully, have at least a vestigial brain.

What if we're wrong?

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