Monday, June 25, 2007

The Military Commissions Act of 2006

I told you there was too much for one post. The suspension of habeas corpus is the least of the problems with that law:

The Military Commissions Act, passed by strong majorities of the Senate and House on Sept. 28 and 29, 2006, gave "the office of the vice president almost everything it wanted," said Yoo, who maintained his contact with Addington after returning to a tenured position at Berkeley.

The new law withstood its first Supreme Court challenge on April 2. It exempts CIA case officers and other government employees from prosecution for past war crimes or torture. Once again, an apparently technical provision held great importance to Cheney and his allies.

Without repealing the War Crimes Act, which imposes criminal penalties for grave breaches of Geneva's humane-treatment standards, Congress said the president, not the Supreme Court, has final authority to decide what the standards mean -- and whether they even apply.
But hey, they're furriners and terrists and they hate us for our freedom anyway, right?

"Nobody kills anybody in my place of business except me or Zed."

And you thought "Pulp Fiction" was just a movie. Dick Cheney thinks its a road-map for American foreign policy.

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