From this interim report, it's more apparent than ever that the central excuse made by Obama defenders to justify preventive detention and military commissions -- there are dangerous Terrorists who cannot be released but also cannot be tried because Bush obtained the evidence against them via torture -- is an absolute myth. That's clear for multiple reasons: Full Story »
Posted by Dwight Rousu - via Glenn Greenwald
Greenwald strongly protests Obama's dictatorial imprisonment powers he is trying now to claim, after opposing those same powers when abused by bush.
Nobody is talking about confining the power of preventive detention or military commissions to current Guantanamo detainees who were tortured. The opposite is true: this is to be a permanent, institutionalized detention scheme with the power vested in the President going forward to imprison people with no charges.
as a result of breathtakingly broad criminal laws in the U.S. defining “material support for terrorism,” there are few things easier than obtaining a criminal conviction in federal court against people accused of being Terrorists.
Manifestly, this isn’t about anything other than institutionalizing what has clearly emerged as the central premise of the Obama Justice System: picking and choosing what level of due process each individual accused Terrorist is accorded, to be determined exclusively by what process ensures that the state will always win. If they know they’ll convict you in a real court proceeding, they’ll give you one; if they think they might lose there, they’ll put you in a military commission; if they’re still not sure they will win, they’ll just indefinitely imprison you without any charges
The Alice in Wonderland absurdity of -first the sentence, then the verdict - is a telling equivalent to this proposed Obama Orwellian doublespeak of justice.