In the official Republican response to President Obama's weekly address to the nation, Sen. Susan Collins called for Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, aka the Christmas Bomber, to be reclassified as a enemy combatant, not a criminal, which is what he is. She laments that he was given a Miranda Warning and a lawyer, and not surprisingly, he stopped talking" after he turned "the skies over Detoirt into a battleground on the War on Terror." Watch it:
I've always thought this idea of labeling terrorists as combatants was wrong, as it gives them credibility that they don't deserve. Thus anointed as warriors, we - our government - provides them with a foundation for their own ideology, something that mere criminals would not have.
I would like to know if Collins wrote the words that she recorded, or if this script were handed to her, because it is nothing but the same fear-mongering used by the Bush/Cheney administration for so long.
In his piece today, nostalgia for Bush/Cheney radicalism, Glenn Greenwald reminds us that that treating terrorists as warriors wasn't always the case. I urge you to read the entire piece, but here is a snippet:
To see how radical our establishment consensus in this area has become, just consider two facts. First, look at the Terrorism policies of what had previously been the most right-wing administration in America's history: the Reagan administration. In this post yesterday, Larry Johnson does quite a good job of documenting how Terrorism by Islamic radicals had been a greater problem in the 1980s than it is now. There was the 1983 bombing of our Marine barracks in Lebanon, a 1982 and 1984 bombing of Jewish sites in Argentina, numerous plane hijackings, the blowing up of an Air India civilian aircraft that killed 329 people, the Achille Lauro seizure, and what the State Department called "a host of spectacular, publicity-grabbing events that ultimately ended in coldblooded murder" (many masterminded by Abu Nidal).
Despite that, read the official policy of the Reagan Administration when it came to treating Terrorists, as articulated by the top Reagan State Department official in charge of Terrorism policies, L. Paul Bremer, in a speech he entitled "Counter-Terrorism: Strategies and Tactics:"
Another important measure we have developed in our overall strategy is applying the rule of law to terrorists. Terrorists are criminals. They commit criminal actions like murder, kidnapping, and arson, and countries have laws to punish criminals. So a major element of our strategy has been to delegitimize terrorists, to get society to see them for what they are -- criminals -- and to use democracy's most potent tool, the rule of law against them.
It was also Ronald Reagan who signed the Convention Against Torture in 1988 -- after many years of countless, horrific Terrorist attacks -- which not only declared that there are "no exceptional circumstances whatsoever" justifying torture, but also required all signatory countries to "ensure that all acts of torture are offences under its criminal law" and -- and Reagan put it -- "either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution." And, of course, even George W. Bush -- at the height of 9/11-induced Terrorism hysteria -- charged attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid with actual crimes and processed him through our civilian courts.
How much clearer evidence can there be of how warped and extremist we've become on these matters? The express policies of the right-wing Ronald Reagan -- "applying the rule of law to terrorists"; delegitimizing Terrorists by treating them as "criminals"; and compelling the criminal prosecution of those who authorize torture -- are now considered on the Leftist fringe.
Collins, and many others (including members of the current administration and to a certain degree President Obama), would have you believe that our own laws are not enough to confront terrorists, and the ideology that underpins it.
Collins also uncorks this statement that really she should be forced to explain:
Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist lawyered up and stopped talking.
2. Petitioners have the constitutional privilege of habeas corpus.
This ruling overturned part of a law that she had voted for, and Bush had signed, that stripped the writ of habeas from non-citizens. Greenwald wrote about it here:
As a result, Guantanamo detainees accused of being "enemy combatants" have the right to challenge the validity of their detention in a full-fledged U.S. federal court proceeding. The ruling today is the first time in U.S. history that the Court has ruled that detainees held by the U.S. Government in a place where the U.S. does not exercise formal sovereignty (Cuba technically is sovereign over Guantanamo) are nonetheless entitled to the Constitutional guarantee of habeas corpus whenever they are held in a place where the U.S. exercises effective control.
In upholding the right of habeas corpus for Guantanamo detainees, the Court found that the "Combatant Status Review Tribunals" process ("CSRT") offered to Guantanamo detainees -- mandated by the John-McCain-sponsored Detainee Treatment Act of 2005 -- does not constitute a constitutionally adequate substitute for habeas corpus. To the contrary, the Court found that such procedures -- which have long been criticized as sham hearings due to the fact that defendants cannot have a lawyer present, government evidence is presumptively valid, and defendants are prevented from challenging (and sometimes even knowing about) much of the evidence against them -- "fall well short of the procedures and adversarial mechanisms that would eliminate the need for habeas corpus review." Those grave deficiencies in the CSRT process mean that "there is considerable risk of error" in the tribunals' conclusions.
And Boumediene is just one example of constitutional protections guaranteed to non-citizens - what about persons in the U.S. legally, on Green Cards or tourist visas?
A further examination of Collins' statement demands that she explain how she proposes to force Abdulmutallab to tell what he knows, now that he has "lawyered up and stopped talking."
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