A Proud Day For America

The reports were correct... today is the day that President Bush intends to sign the detainee bill that was so urgently needed that he needed to ram it through Congress with little public debate or scrutiny but not urgently enough that he couldn't wait three weeks to sign it after it passed. You know, that bill.

Here's the AP story: Bush to sign law on terror suspects

Nice bland headline, AP. Was "Bush to further destroy America's international credibility by legalizing torture, indefinite detention, rendition, eliminate habeas corpus rights all so that he can create an electoral wedge issue and retroactively pardon past crimes and abuses" deemed too lengthy?

Anyway, here's the lead paragraph-

President Bush is signing into law today new standards expediting interrogation and prosecution of terror suspects, a bill the White House says strengthens his hand in a time of war...

But I think the more relevant information is buried in the middle-

The swift implementation of the law is a rare bit of good news for Bush as casualties mount in Iraq in daily violence. Lawmakers are increasingly calling for a change of strategy and political anxieties are jeopardizing Republican's chances of hanging onto control of Congress.

Bush was able to divert attention from Republican troubles when he first asked for the legislation during a dramatic speech on Sept. 6 in the White House East Room attended by some families of Sept. 11 victims...

...The signing ceremony offered Bush the chance to bask in a legislative victory...

Ahhhh, there we go.

(UPDATE: It's official- the bill has been signed. Here's a photo of the White House photo-op for it, including a 'Protecting America' sign on the desk. You'll also notice in that picture of few of those 'maverick' Republicans who promised to stop this bill applauding its signing.)

The President, ignoring of course that Osama bin Laden remains very much free, says that this bill will bring to justice those who "orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people," as if everyone we've captured was a 9/11 terrorist... or even a terrorist at all. Most of the people swept up in the immediate aftermath of the attacks were detained with no evidence at all. Many of them have now been proven to be innocent, and yet many remain in custody. Who decided these men were terrorists? George Bush? Dick Cheney? John Ashcroft? Any number of overzealous military soldiers? But proof didn't matter; we were scared and angry and action needed to be taken. These men were locked away, tortured or worse, and kept hidden by a complicit media and Congress in the shadows of American visibility.

This bill does not make such uncomfortable distinctions.

New revelations about Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib and secret prisoners over the tears brought a lot of this into the open. Then, last June, the Supreme Court (who obviously haven't learned to be as polite and subservient as Bush's Congress) came and told the President that, yes, the Constitution does apply to him too. It was put up or shut up time for the Decider. Time to try these 'enemy combatants' and put all their evidence cards on the table.

Many innocent Guantanamo detainees have been released over the years, but many innocent men remain among the scattered 'evildoers' and 'folks'. Many of these men will be tried too, which is why the bill makes sure to allow hearsay and (likely false) evidence gained by torture. The burden of proof in Bush's kangaroo court is small.

Keith Olbermann did a great segment exploring the constitutional implications of the bill.

Lt. Commander Charles Swift, the lawyer who represented Hamdan in the aforementioned Supreme Court case, stated yesterday that "I don’t believe that it’s going to match constitutional muster when the courts have an opportunity to take a look at it." He is absolutely right. But that process will take time. Until then, we will have to live to with this law.

And so what could have been written off by history as the temporary mistakes of an overzealous wartime President are now on course to become permanent parts of the American legacy and image.

The saddest part of this is, as the Washington Post editorial pointed out last month, how unnecessary all of this is. This could've waited a few weeks to be debated substantively in a less partisan environment. These prisoners have been locked up for years now without any legal recourse; any pretense by the administration that now all of the sudden they want to give them their day in court is bunk. This legislation and this battle was forced as an electoral strategy, as one last effort to score cheap 'national security' points with a divided, confused, and scared electorate. Will it work? We'll find out in about two weeks.

Finally, Jack Balkin calls this law "the very essence of tyranny". I concur.