Posted on 05/15/2011 10:15:18 AM PDT by Nachum
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) has introduced a bill that would allow the President to imprison an unlimited number of American citizens (as well as foreigners) indefinitely without trial. Known as The Enemy Belligerent Interrogation, Detention, and Prosecution Act of 2010, or S. 3081, the bill authorizes the President to deny a detainee a trial by jury simply by designating that person an “enemy belligerent.”
The bill, which has eight cosponsors, explicitly names U.S. citizens as among those who can be detained indefinitely without trial:
An individual, including a citizen of the United States, determined to be an unprivileged enemy belligerent ... may be detained without criminal charges and without trial for the duration of hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners in which the individual has engaged, or which the individual has purposely and materially supported, consistent with the law of war and any authorization for the use of military force provided by Congress pertaining to such hostilities. [Emphasis added.]
Note that the Bush administration once said that the so-called “war on terror” would last a generation or more, and the U.S. military has officially classified many former Guantanamo detainees, such as England's Tipton Three, as having “returned to the battlefield” for merely granting an interview for the movie The Road to Guantanamo. Another five innocent Uighur (Ethnic Turkish Muslims from China) detainees had been listed as having “returned to the battlefield” after their release because their lawyer had written an op-ed protesting their prolonged detention without trial after they had been mistakenly picked up by a greedy bounty hunter. Writing an opinion or speaking an opinion against the party in power in Washington can — and already has — made some people “enemy belligerents.”
(Excerpt) Read more at thenewamerican.com ...
What did they do to that guy in the Hanoi Hilton?
I wish McCain would just shut up and retire before he does any more damage.
Indeed
Just as a heads-up, this was introduced last year and died an early death.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-3081
Apparently, McCain wants to extend Constitutional protections to foreign terrorists and eliminate them for American citizens.
Old news. This article is over a year old.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it wouldn’t have mattered who won in the last election. McCain and Obama have way too much in common.
R2/CW2 anyone??
After destroying the 1st Amendment, it looks like McCain has the 4th and 5th in his sights.
Let’s start with any Presidents, Senators or Congressman who propose or enact any laws or policies that violate their oaths to protect and defend the Constitution. And waterboard them daily, too.
Just wait until Obama declares all Tea Partiers to be "enemy belligerents."
FUJM!!!
Don't fall for the phony hero crap.
Getting captured does not make one a hero. We had may heroes during the Viet Nam conflict. Mclaim was not one of them.
I know you didn't say he was a hero but some have said it.
Some of the men there with Mclaim don't think to highly of him. Since I wasn't there I can't really say, except he is no hero that much I know.
What now?
I loathe McCain and his daughter is a nut that didn’t fall any distance at all from the tree. (not an apple, a nut)
“simply by designating that person an “enemy belligerent.”
This is too much unchecked power for the president.
I can see the detention for terrorists, as the ones we captured in Afghanistan, etc., those who are in Guantanamo now — I can see a future need for “indefinite detention”, but that should be determined by some very clear criteria, by a military tribunal, or more, it most certainly should NOT be just at the decision of the president alone, or we will be in a dictatorship as soon as this becomes law, and we can all expect that “knock on the door” and indefinite detention — any criticism of the president could be defined as being “belligerent”, not as exercising our freedom of speech. Our Founding Fathers must be spinning in their grave.
Well they sure turned his arms in to rubber seeing how far he can “reach” across the aisle.
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