This is page one of a 9 page article in the NY Times. I don't think you can read this and not be at least a little afraid of what this administration has done and is willing to do...


After Terror, a Secret Rewriting of Military Law
By TIM GOLDEN

Published: October 24, 2004


WASHINGTON - In early November 2001, with Americans still staggered by the Sept. 11 attacks, a small group of White House officials worked in great secrecy to devise a new system of justice for the new war they had declared on terrorism.

Determined to deal aggressively with the terrorists they expected to capture, the officials bypassed the federal courts and their constitutional guarantees, giving the military the authority to detain foreign suspects indefinitely and prosecute them in tribunals not used since World War II.

The plan was considered so sensitive that senior White House officials kept its final details hidden from the president's national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, and the secretary of state, Colin L. Powell, officials said. It was so urgent, some of those involved said, that they hardly thought of consulting Congress.

White House officials said their use of extraordinary powers would allow the Pentagon to collect crucial intelligence and mete out swift, unmerciful justice. "We think it guarantees that we'll have the kind of treatment of these individuals that we believe they deserve," said Vice President Dick Cheney, who was a driving force behind the policy.

But three years later, not a single terrorist has been prosecuted. Of the roughly 560 men being held at the United States naval base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, only 4 have been formally charged. Preliminary hearings for those suspects brought such a barrage of procedural challenges and public criticism that verdicts could still be months away. And since a Supreme Court decision in June that gave the detainees the right to challenge their imprisonment in federal court, the Pentagon has stepped up efforts to send home hundreds of men whom it once branded as dangerous terrorists.

"We've cleared whole forests of paper developing procedures for these tribunals, and no one has been tried yet," said Richard L. Shiffrin, who worked on the issue as the Pentagon's deputy general counsel for intelligence matters. "They just ended up in this Kafkaesque sort of purgatory."

The story of how Guantánamo and the new military justice system became an intractable legacy of Sept. 11 has been largely hidden from public view.

But extensive interviews with current and former officials and a review of confidential documents reveal that the legal strategy took shape as the ambition of a small core of conservative administration officials whose political influence and bureaucratic skill gave them remarkable power in the aftermath of the attacks.

The strategy became a source of sharp conflict within the Bush administration, eventually pitting the highest-profile cabinet secretaries - including Ms. Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld - against one another over issues of due process, intelligence-gathering and international law.

In fact, many officials contend, some of the most serious problems with the military justice system are rooted in the secretive and contentious process from which it emerged.

Military lawyers were largely excluded from that process in the days after Sept. 11. They have since waged a long struggle to ensure that terrorist prosecutions meet what they say are basic standards of fairness. Uniformed lawyers now assigned to defend Guantánamo detainees have become among the most forceful critics of the Pentagon's own system.

Foreign policy officials voiced concerns about the legal and diplomatic ramifications, but had little influence. Increasingly, the administration's plan has come under criticism even from close allies, complicating efforts to transfer scores of Guantánamo prisoners back to their home governments.

To the policy's architects, the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon represented a stinging challenge to American power and an imperative to consider measures that might have been unimaginable in less threatening times. Yet some officials said the strategy was also shaped by longstanding political agendas that had relatively little to do with fighting terrorism.

continued at: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/24/inter ... r=homepage

i thought it was going to be about all the rules buggy has instituted with his cabinet

Thus, you have the Patriot Act. Under the PA, it's not just 'foreign prisoners' or 'suspected terrorists,' it's everyone. Anyone can be arrested and held indefinitely without being charged.

I was arrested back in March because there was a paperwork problem with some court fees I had to pay (their mistake.) I owed $300. A cop read my license plate, pulled me over and arrested me without reading me my rights. I was sent to State Prison without being able to make a phone call or talk to my lawyer. I was never charged. I stayed there for three days until they brought me to court where they charged me, then immediately threw out the charges and released me. I talked to my lawyer when I got home, and what they did is totally legal under the Patriot Act. Three years ago, I probably could have collected six-figures for police-ignorance.

Scary shit.

I hope everyone that supports the Patriot Act has a similar experience as yours jack so they can see how truly scary it can be. I've always been of the opinion that if you need all of these laws stripping everyday citizens of their rights in order to catch terrorists then you've got bigger problems than needing those laws. I mean I always thought the government would do the old "wink wink" type of following the laws if it was a matter of national security. Now it seems we have state sanctioned government ignorance. Basically they are allowed to monitor or watch anyone just in case they might be a terrorist instead of actually using good investigative police work.

What's better, spending money on having people translate those 1000's of hours of terrorist chatter or putting a wire tap on someone because they checked out Mein Kampf?