Sunday, January 02, 2005

Gutless toadies

Lugar Condemns Plan To Jail Detainees for Life
What this story should have said:
"A leading Republican senator yesterday strongly condemned as "a terrible idea" a reported U.S. plan to keep some suspected terrorists imprisoned for a lifetime even if the government lacks evidence to charge them . . . Influential senators denounced the idea as completely unconstitutional and condemned the White House and the Pentagon for suggesting a scheme which would "deliberaterly circumvent the Supreme Court rulings for due process for every detainee,"Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said on "Fox News Sunday. Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), senior Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, also cited earlier U.S. Supreme Court decisions, as well as the Geneva Conventions which are intended to prevent indefinite imprisonment without trial. "There absolutely must be due process. No person, whether American or foreign, should ever be detained without evidence," Levin said, also on Fox."
Oh, I wish they had shouted to the rooftops, using language which condemned this evil plan in the strongest possible terms. Instead, these gutless Senate toadies called it just "a bad idea" and asked only for "some modicum, some semblance" of due process.
Has no one in Washington noticed, by the way, that the Pentagon seems to be blithely IGNORING the Supreme Court requirement that a procedure be established to provide due process hearings for every detainee? What kind of government allows its military to disregard court decisions it disagrees with? What kind of president swears to uphold the US Constitution and then ignores it?

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