What does the new law provide?
The new law leaves this mockery of justice stronger. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 makes it virtually impossible to contest a status tribunal's decision. It prohibits claims of habeas corpus -- the ancient right of prisoners in just societies to have their detentions reviewed -- or any case based directly or indirectly on the Geneva Conventions. Even if an appeal got to the single appeals court now authorized to hear it, the administration would very likely argue that it cannot be heard without jeopardizing secrets, as it has done repeatedly.
The new law dangerously expands the definition of illegal enemy combatant and allows Mr. Bush -- and the secretary of defense -- to give to anyone they choose the authority to designate a prisoner as an illegal combatant. It also allows Mr. Bush to go on squirreling prisoners away at secret C.I.A. camps where none of the rules apply.
As to Bush's "just trust me" meme:
Mr. Bush wants Americans to trust him to apply these powers only to truly dangerous men. Even if our system were based on that sort of personal power and not the rule of law, it would be hard to trust the judgment of a president and an administration whose records are so bad. The United States has yet to acknowledge that it kidnapped an innocent Canadian citizen and sent him to be abused in a Syrian prison. In another case, a German citizen has accused the United States of grabbing him off the streets of Macedonia, drugging him and sending him to Afghanistan, where he was brutally treated. Then there is the Ethiopian living in London who said he was grabbed by American agents and brutalized by Moroccan torturers until he confessed to plotting with Jose Padilla to set off a "dirty bomb." Mr. Padilla was never charged with the crime. The Ethiopian remains at Guantánamo Bay.
And my favorite point of all:
Republicans who support the new law like to point out that it only covers foreigners. But Americans have never believed that human rights are just for Americans. Our nation is outraged when an authoritarian government jails an American, or one of its own citizens, on trumped-up charges and brings him or her before a phony court. Surely that is not the model we want to follow in our nation's prisons.
If this is what it takes to make the New York Times wake up as to how we treat prisoners, at home and abroad, whether American or not, I'm all for new awakening. Until we redefine our notions of crime, punishment and conditions of confinement, there will be more of the same, not just to "enemy combatents" but to those born and raised in Peoria.
I only hope their voice is loud enough to be heard, with only 24 days to go .
