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Bush signs law authorizing harsh interrogation

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush signed a law on Tuesday allowing tough CIA interrogation and military trials for terrorism suspects, triggering bitter election-year denunciations from Democrats.

With Republicans in danger of losing control of the U.S. Congress in November 7 elections because of voter anger over the Iraq war, Bush sought to put back on the campaign agenda a more favorable issue for him -- national security and dealing with those blamed for the September 11 attacks.

In a White House ceremony, Bush signed the Military Commissions Act of 2006. He said the new law, the product of frantic September negotiations when senior Republicans broke with him, would bring to trial some of those believed complicit in the September 11 attacks.

The new law means Bush can continue a secret CIA program for interrogating terrorism suspects whom he believes have vital information that could thwart a plot against America.

Human rights groups charge that the measure, likely to face legal challenges that go up as far as the Supreme Court, would allow harsh techniques bordering on torture, such as sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia.

At the signing ceremony, Bush could not resist a swipe at Democrats, an indirect shot far short of campaign stump speeches in which he charges they are soft on terrorism.

"Every member of the Congress who voted for this bill has helped our nation rise to the task that history has given us. Some voted to support this bill even when a majority of their party voted the other way," Bush said.

Democrats wasted no time firing back.

"I am deeply disappointed that Congress enacted this law," said Wisconsin Democratic Sen. Russ Feingold (news, bio, voting record). "We will look back on this day as a stain on our nation's history."

Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy (news, bio, voting record) said: "The Republican-led Congress missed another opportunity to write a good law because this administration was mostly interested in trying to score political points in the run-up to the elections and avoiding accountability for its unlawful actions."

Bush said the law would allow intelligence professionals to question suspects without fear of being sued by them later.

"This bill spells out specific recognizable offenses that would be considered crimes in the handling of detainees so that our men and women who question captured terrorists can perform their duties to the fullest extent of the law," he said.

The White House has refused to describe what techniques will be allowed. Bush insisted "the United States does not torture."

CHALLENGES SEEN

The law also establishes military tribunals for terrorism suspects, most of whom are held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

The Pentagon expects to try under the new law more than 70 of the 435 detainees held at Guantanamo and is aiming for the first pre-trial proceedings to be held in early 2007, according to a U.S. defense official.

Trials, however, will not occur before summer 2007 because of the time needed to build courtrooms and facilities and to move enough staff and lawyers to the base, the official said.

Critics and legal experts have predicted the law will draw vigorous court challenges and could be struck down for violating rights guaranteed under the U.S. Constitution.

They cited provisions that strip foreign suspects of the right to challenge their detentions in U.S. courts and what they described as unfair rules for military trials.

The law was prompted by a Supreme Court ruling in June that Bush lacked legislative authority in setting up his first system of military commissions.

Shortly after Bush signed the law, the Republican National Committee issued a press releasing headlined, "Democrats would let terrorists free" and listed the names of many Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate who opposed it.

New take on old right of habeas corpus

WASHINGTON -- The military tribunals bill signed by President Bush yesterday marks the first time the right of habeas corpus has been curtailed by law for millions of people in the United States.

Although the debate about the law focused on trials at Guantánamo Bay, it also takes away the right to go to court for immigrants and noncitizens in the United States -- including more than 12 million permanent residents -- if they are declared "unlawful enemy combatants."

No one has suggested the Bush administration plans to use its newly won power to round up large numbers of immigrants.

But before yesterday, the principle of habeas corpus meant that anyone thrown into jail had a right to ask a judge to hear his case. He also had a right to go free if the government could not show a legal basis for holding him.

Many legal scholars predict the law's partial repeal of habeas cor pus will be struck down as unconstitutional.

"This is an outright slap at the Supreme Court, and it is heading for invalidation," said Eric M. Freedman, a law professor at Hofs tra University and an expert on ha beas corpus. "This is a core principle of law that was established by the prisoners who were tossed into the Tower of London by the king, and it was preserved in the Constitution. Now, Congress is saying it doesn't apply to this disfavored group of prisoners."

The new law says: "No court, justice or judge shall have jurisdic tion to hear or consider an applica tion for a writ of habeas corpus filed by or on behalf of an alien detained by the United States who has been determined ... to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination." In early drafts, the bill would have cut off habeas corpus only for unlawful combatants detained "outside the United States" and at Guantánamo Bay. However, the final version deleted that phrase.

Now it not only bars the men held at Guantánamo Bay from challenging their detention in court, but it closes the courthouse door to noncitizens who are ar rested in Los Angeles or Chicago and held by the military as a possible "unlawful enemy combatant."

The new law also defines this term broadly to include not just terrorists and fighters, but also people -- including American citizens -- who have "materially supported hostilities against the United States." While a citizen could be arrested as an "enemy combatant," he or she could still challenge the government's action in court.

Some legal experts say the fate of this repeal of habeas corpus is uncertain because it is entirely unprecedented.

Year One of the Empire
Bush: Resistance is Illogical

Bush and a supine, cowardly Congress shredded the US Constitution on Tuesday, abolishing the right of a court review (habeas corpus) for some classes of suspect. Suspect, mind you, not proven criminal.

In other words, we have to be confident that George W. Bush is so competent, all-knowing, and inherently just that we can just trust him. If he says someone is an enemy combatant, then he or she is. No need to check with a judge about why he or she is being held. And then Bush can have the suspect tortured to make him confess, and can convict him on the basis of the coerced confession, all in secret.

This law creates two classes of persons inside the United States, citizens with rights and non-citizens (12 million persons? Equivalent to the entire state of Michigan!) without rights.

Basically, Bush can issue them what the French kings used to call lettres de cachet.:

' In French history, lettres de cachet were letters signed by the king of France, countersigned by one of his ministers, and closed with the royal seal, or cachet. They contained orders directly from the king, often to enforce arbitrary actions and judgements that could not be appealed. . .'

We Americans made a revolution against such arbitrary practices of the French and other Empires.

Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution says, "The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it."

I look out my window. I don't see a general Rebellion or an invasion by a foreign power. The conditions, under which the right of the imprisoned to demand that a court establish whether there are genuine grounds to hold him is suspended, are absent.

The law is unconstitutional.

Moreover, our founding documents did not admit of a distinction among human beings with regard to rights. The Declaration of Independence says:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness."

All men here means all human beings. It says they are all created equal and endowed with certain inalienable rights. All of them. Not some of them.

Of course we have had these periods of neo-Monarchy and temporary insanity before in our history. There was the Alien and Sedition Act, and the Red Scare after World War I, etc.

King George came on O'Reilly and said that it is "illogical" to disagree with his policies in Iraq and branded arguments that he is drifting along without a plan "propaganda."

Bush sounds more and more like the Borg every day. I swear to God, next we are going to get up in the morning and hear him proclaim, "Resistance is futile!"

So of course eventually Bush-think will lead to attempts to cure those of us who are critical of him of our illogicality, and to suppress our "propaganda." We'll all be right-thinking non-propagandists after a little water-boarding. You say we don't have to worry about that because we are citizens? But what is to stop Bush from declaring you an enemy combatant and stripping you of your citizenship? And then keeping you away from any civil court where those letters of cachet can be challenged?

The Republic is Dead, Long Live the Republic.

US constitution wrote: The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Lairiodd wrote:IMO, the US should have claimed the moon when it got there.

I dont wanna be like that woman from texas that held her child too long underwater... I dont want to be like Martha Bush!!

US adopts tough new space policy

The US has adopted a tough new policy aimed at protecting its interests in space and denying "adversaries" access there for hostile purposes.

The document - signed by President Bush - also says "freedom of action in space is as important to the United States as air power and sea power".

The document rejects any proposals to ban space weapons.

But the White House has said the policy does not call for the development or deployment of weapons in space.

However, some military experts warn that by refusing to enter into negotiations on space weaponry, the US is likely to fuel international suspicions that it will develop such weapons.

The 10-page strategic document states that the US national security "is critically dependent upon space capabilities, and this dependence will grow".

"The United States will preserve its rights, capabilities, and freedom of action in space... and deny, if necessary, adversaries the use of space capabilities hostile to US national interests," it says.

Satellite fears

The document also sets out US commercial ambitions, saying it is committed to encouraging and facilitating a growing entrepreneurial space sector.

It is the first revision in US space policy for 10 years, and it is a forthright one, the BBC's Nick Miles in Washington says.

It addresses concerns voiced in a 2001 Pentagon report that said technological advances would enable potential enemies to disrupt orbiting US satellites, our correspondent says.

Unclassified details of the policy published on the internet say space capabilities, including spy and other communication satellites, are essential for national security.

But the White House said the policy was not a prelude to putting weapons in orbit and that there was no shift in US policy.

"The notion that you would do defence from space is different from that of weaponisation of space. We're comfortable with the policy", White House spokesman Tony Snow said.

President Bush authorised the policy in August but it was not released until October.

During the Cold War, President Ronald Reagan proposed a defence shield using laser or particle beam technology to "intercept and destroy" incoming nuclear missiles.

The Strategic Defence Initiative, or "Star Wars" programme as it came to be known, was abandoned in 1993.