Obama Fumbles Again ... Military Given Go-Ahead To Detain US Terrorist Suspects Without Trial .. MLK Would Still Be In A Birmingham Jail

Back tracking back stabbing … 5 thumbs fumble. I am happy people like Minister Farakhan said he was not going say anything but just let the movie play. Malcolm said “time will tell”. Looks like Guantanamo Bay will have some new faces … United States Citizens. All the reasons to acquire guns … no simply… GET WEAPONS.  This NDAA Act, which the disputed amendment was crafted by Senator John McCain, Senator Levine and Dick Chenny, codifies the old 2001 AUMF (Authorization to Use Military Force) on indefinite detention, does expand the definition of who it applies to and yes Americans weather within or outside of the United States is included. Senator Feinstein amendment which would have excluded Americans was defeated. Even the New York Times Editorial page which has been Pro-Obama comes out to call this “a complete political cave-in, one that reinforces the impression of a fumbling presidency” and lamenting that “the bill has so many other objectionable aspects that we can’t go into them all,” as well as from vocal Obama supporters such as Andrew Sullivan, who wrote yesterday that this episode is “another sign that his campaign pledge to be vigilant about civil liberties in the war on terror was a lie.” Has the likes of John McCain finally posses the key that turns Obama off and on?

 

 Military given go-ahead to detain US terrorist suspects without trial

Civil rights groups dismayed as Barack Obama abandons commitment to veto new security law contained in defence bill

 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/15/americans-face-guantana...

 

Barack Obama has abandoned a commitment to veto a new security law that allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.

 

Human rights groups accused the president of deserting his principles and disregarding the long-established principle that the military is not used in domestic policing. The legislation has also been strongly criticised by libertarians on the right angered at the stripping of individual rights for the duration of "a war that appears to have no end".

 

The law, contained in the defence authorisation bill that funds the US military, effectively extends the battlefield in the "war on terror" to the US and applies the established principle that combatants in any war are subject to military detention.

The legislation's supporters in Congress say it simply codifies existing practice, such as the indefinite detention of alleged terrorists at Guantánamo Bay. But the law's critics describe it as a draconian piece of legislation that extends the reach of detention without trial to include US citizens arrested in their own country.

 

"It's something so radical that it would have been considered crazy had it been pushed by the Bush administration," said Tom Malinowski of Human Rights Watch. "It establishes precisely the kind of system that the United States has consistently urged other countries not to adopt. At a time when the United States is urging Egypt, for example, to scrap its emergency law and military courts, this is not consistent."

 

There was heated debate in both houses of Congress on the legislation, requiring that suspects with links to Islamist foreign terrorist organisations arrested in the US, who were previously held by the FBI or other civilian law enforcement agencies, now be handed to the military and held indefinitely without trial.

 

The law applies to anyone "who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaida, the Taliban or associated forces".

Senator Lindsey Graham said the extraordinary measures were necessary because terrorism suspects were wholly different to regular criminals.

"We're facing an enemy, not a common criminal organisation, who will do anything and everything possible to destroy our way of life," he said. "When you join al-Qaida you haven't joined the mafia, you haven't joined a gang. You've joined people who are bent on our destruction and who are a military threat."

 

Graham added that it was right that Americans should be subject to the detention law as well as foreigners. "It is not unfair to make an American citizen account for the fact that they decided to help Al Qaeda to kill us all and hold them as long as it takes to find intelligence about what may be coming next," he said. "And when they say, 'I want my lawyer,' you tell them, 'Shut up. You don't get a lawyer.'"

Other senators supported the new powers on the grounds that al-Qaida was fighting a war inside the US and that its followers should be treated as combatants, not civilians with constitutional protections.

 

But another conservative senator, Rand Paul, a strong libertarian, has said "detaining citizens without a court trial is not American" and that if the law passes "the terrorists have won".

 

"We're talking about American citizens who can be taken from the United States and sent to a camp at Guantánamo Bay and held indefinitely. It puts every single citizen American at risk," he said. "Really, what security does this indefinite detention of Americans give us? The first and flawed premise, both here and in the badly named Patriot Act, is that our pre-9/11 police powers were insufficient to stop terrorism. This is simply not borne out by the facts."

Paul was backed by Senator Dianne Feinstein.

 

"Congress is essentially authorising the indefinite imprisonment of American citizens, without charge," she said. "We are not a nation that locks up its citizens without charge."

Paul said there were already strong laws against support for terrorist groups. He noted that the definition of a terrorism suspect under existing legislation was so broad that millions of Americans could fall within it.

 

"There are laws on the books now that characterise who might be a terrorist: someone missing fingers on their hands is a suspect according to the department of justice. Someone who has guns, someone who has ammunition that is weatherproofed, someone who has more than seven days of food in their house can be considered a potential terrorist," Paul said. "If you are suspected because of these activities, do you want the government to have the ability to send you to Guantánamo Bay for indefinite detention?"

Under the legislation suspects can be held without trial "until the end of hostilities". They will have the right to appear once a year before a committee that will decide if the detention will continue.

 

The Senate is expected to give final approval to the bill before the end of the week. It will then go to the president, who previously said he would block the legislation not on moral grounds but because it would "cause confusion" in the intelligence community and encroached on his own powers.

But on Wednesday the White House said Obama had lifted the threat of a veto after changes to the law giving the president greater discretion to prevent individuals from being handed to the military.

 

Critics accused the president of caving in again to pressure from some Republicans on a counter-terrorism issue for fear of being painted in next year's election campaign as weak and of failing to defend America.

Human Rights Watch said that by signing the bill Obama would go down in history as the president who enshrined indefinite detention without trial in US law.

 

"The paradigm of the war on terror has advanced so far in people's minds that this has to appear more normal than it actually is," Malinowski said. "It wasn't asked for by any of the agencies on the frontlines in the fight against terrorism in the United States. It breaks with over 200 years of tradition in America against using the military in domestic affairs."

In fact, the heads of several security agencies, including the FBI, CIA, the director of national intelligence and the attorney general objected to the legislation. The Pentagon also said it was against the bill.

 

The FBI director, Robert Mueller, said he feared the law could compromise the bureau's ability to investigate terrorism because it would be more complicated to win co-operation from suspects held by the military.

 

"The possibility looms that we will lose opportunities to obtain co-operation from the persons in the past that we've been fairly successful in gaining," he told Congress.

Civil liberties groups say the FBI and federal courts have dealt with more than 400 alleged terrorism cases, including the successful prosecutions of Richard Reid, the "shoe bomber", Umar Farouk, the "underwear bomber", and Faisal Shahzad, the "Times Square bomber".

Elements of the law are so legally confusing, as well as being constitutionally questionable, that any detentions are almost certain to be challenged all the way to the supreme court.

Malinowski said "vague language" was deliberately included in the bill in order to get it passed.

 

"The very lack of clarity is itself a problem. If people are confused about what it means, if people disagree about what it means, that in and of itself makes it bad law," he said.

Tags: Obama

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Permalink Reply by Bennetta on December 21, 2011 at 9:34pm

It appears your president, the former CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, has absolutely NO RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.  This was not only ANOTHER cave-in, but in fact, it was the ultimate sell out! really sad what he's turned into...

Permalink Reply by Pianki on December 22, 2011 at 9:36pm

You are not the only one saying that.

Bennetta said:

It appears your president, the former CONSTITUTIONAL LAW PROFESSOR, has absolutely NO RESPECT FOR THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.  This was not only ANOTHER cave-in, but in fact, it was the ultimate sell out! really sad what he's turned into...

Permalink Reply by Pianki on January 1, 2012 at 5:54am

Latest developments. President Barack Obama added civility to what would have otherwise been a horrible calamidy on United States Citizens. I don't think it went far enought to provide assurances such as Senator Feinstein recommends and she had stated she will seek admendments early on in the new year. Many would have wanted the dollar figure in defense to look more like $400 billion with further cuts in the not so distant future. So here is what Obama said and I give him credit for taking this suddle position wishing he would have been more authoritative in his administering ... http://edition.cnn.com/2011/12/31/politics/obama-defense-bill/index...

 

"I want to clarify that my administration will not authorize the indefinite military detention without trial of American citizens," Obama said in a statement Saturday. "Indeed, I believe that doing so would break with our most important traditions and values as a nation."

He would further say ..

"Ultimately, I decided to sign this bill not only because of the critically important services it provides for our forces and their families and the national security programs it authorizes, but also because the Congress revised provisions that otherwise would have jeopardized the safety, security, and liberty of the American people," the president said Saturday.

 

Other provisions in the bill as reported I see as window dressing as usual and brinks on what Congressman Ron paul has elaborated on countless of times.

As Malcolm X said .. "Time Will Tell"

Permalink Reply by bishop omega on January 2, 2012 at 8:19am
Permalink Reply by Pianki on January 2, 2012 at 10:43am

Omega in da House.

bishop omega said:

Permalink Reply by bishop omega on January 2, 2012 at 11:15am

OUR BLACK YOUTH ARE NOW CONSIDERED TERRORIST!?!?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=78SyNyyH_Qc

Permalink Reply by bishop omega on January 2, 2012 at 1:21pm
Permalink Reply by Bennetta on January 2, 2012 at 2:04pm

GUESS WHAT YOUR PRESIDENT GAVE US FOR A NEW YEARS/CHRISTMAS GIFT?....HIS SIGNED APPROVAL OF AMERICA NOW BECOMING A MARTIAL POLICE STATE....really...

While President Obama issued a signing statement saying he had “serious reservations” about the provisions, the statement only applies to how his administration would use it and wouldNOT affect how the law is interpreted by subsequent administrations AND he can also change his mind again between now and his last day in office.

According to ACLU, “The statute is particularly dangerous because it has no temporal or geographic limitations, and can be used by this and future presidents to militarily detain people captured far from any battlefield.”  Therefore, the breadth of the NDAA’s detention authority violates international law because it is not limited to people captured in the context of an actual armed conflict as required by the laws of war.     

Thankfully we have three branches of government, and the final word on the scope of detention authority belongs to the Supreme Court, which has yet to rule on the scope of detention authority. But Congress and the president also have a role to play in cleaning up the mess they have created because no American citizen or anyone else should live in fear of this or any future president misusing the NDAA’s detention authority.  


Obama is still a very dangerous consummate of hypocrisy and it still really sickens me that I actually voted for such a person to be my president in the first place.....it feels more personal with this administration because I never voted for Bush anyways so I never took any responsibility for His illegal reinstatement of Cointelpro via the Patriot Act and other such post 9/11 domestic acts against American citizens which have clearly always weighed much heavier on American MINORITY citizens but since Obama has strategically chosen to ignore African Americans during the past three years anyhow, I guess this little fact isn't that relevant to Him.  God please have mercy on our country  and government from this day forward and please give Your Wisdom to ALL Voters in 2012 for the sake of our Constitution, and more importantly, for the sake of Moral Decency and Humanity.

Permalink Reply by Avid Follower on January 2, 2012 at 4:44pm

Second that emotion!

Bennetta said: 

" . . . God please have mercy on our country  and government from this day forward and please give Your Wisdom to ALL Voters in 2012 for the sake of our Constitution, and more importantly, for the sake of Moral Decency and Humanity."


And Bennetta, I'd like to add . . . especially when it comes down to the Electoral College.

Permalink Reply by bishop omega on January 2, 2012 at 10:26pm
Permalink Reply by Howard R. Lee on January 3, 2012 at 5:06am

Evidently someone has spiked the Kool-Aid, I can't believe the ignorance I am reading. Tell me again, who is it that would have considered MLK a terrorist? Give me a break man, do you people even think about what you're saying before you put this garbage on the internet for others to read? Out of all the legitimate things Republicans can be held accountable for, you find nothing to criticize them for. Nothing negative to say about their efforts to turn the constitution on it's head by rolling back voters rights back to the days of poll taxes and guessing how many jelly beans are in the jar, etc. etc.. How many of these sillouettes are whites sowing discord. Why aren't you people down in Iowa caucusing for what ever clown is leading in the polls this week?

Permalink Reply by Howard R. Lee on January 3, 2012 at 5:29am

An an don't forget to tell em bout the gun line boss!!! Tell em bout the gun line!!

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