Quote:
Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
The whole "enemy combatant" regime troubles me a lot. As applied to a U.S. citizen, on U.S. soil, who is undoubtedly entitled to all of the protections offered by the U.S. Constitution, it troubles me even more.
Arrest a U.S. citizen, and slap him in jail. Just before you may have to make a court appearance -- remove his case from the criminal justice system and transfer him to a military prison without telling anyone.
Take the position that, because the Administration has declared that citizen an "enemy combatant", he has essentially no procedural rights -- and no ability to challenge his detention or the information on which it was based. Take the position that the Administration can hold him incommunicado indefinitely -- until the "War on Terror" is won.
Take the position that the Courts cannot intervene, and have no standing to look behind a bland summary declaration submitted by a government official who has no first-hand knowledge of the facts.
Deny him access to a lawyer, or to any visits from anyone, for years. Interrogate him at will, under undisclosed conditions.
After losing at the Ct. of Appeals level -- and during a bad news week for the Administration while the S.Ct has your case under advisement -- have the Deputy Attorney General hold a press conference in which he puts out a whole bunch of damaging information about you allegedly resulting from the years of your incommunicado detention and interrogation.
In fairness, the written form of the presentation (letter to Orrin Hatch) does footnote your denials of membership in al Qaeda and allegiance to bin Laden, and your claim that you discussed this stuff with AQ so that they'd let you go back to the U.S. rather than send you to Afghanistan with John Walker. However, its damn clear that, if the government gets its way, you will never have the ability to contest the charges against you.
That's a fair summary of what I have a problem with.
If you don't, well -- if the War on Terror is still going on when I'm elected President, I'll garauntee you that Not Me and Gin Rummy are going down. Probably have to silence AG as well. He'd make a stink.
S_A_M
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I don't really know enough about this area of law, but it is my understanding that this is not a case of first impression. So I'm not sure it is right to say he is undoubtedly entitled to Constitutional protections.
Perhaps you are arguing what the law should be, in which case, I believe there are constituencies on both sides whose rights need to be considered. From what I understand, the big fear of the GOV is that by giving him Constitutional rights, he would have access to communicate with those who mean to do us harm. If true, this is a serious concern to me. On the other side of the coin are, of course, the human rights issues. And on top of all this, we have separation of powers issues.
So given all this, it seems to me that the way to balance these competing issues is to have some sort of judicial review on the enemy combatant question, which I think is exactly what we have.
