Dear god in heaven.
The Bush administration is supporting a provision in the House leadership's intelligence reform bill that would allow U.S. authorities to deport certain foreigners to countries where they are likely to be tortured or abused, an action prohibited by the international laws against torture the United States signed 20 years ago.
The provision, part of the massive bill introduced Friday by House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.), would apply to non-U.S. citizens who are suspected of having links to terrorist organizations but have not been tried on or convicted of any charges. Democrats tried to strike the provision in a daylong House Judiciary Committee meeting, but it survived on a party-line vote.
The provision, human rights advocates said, contradicts pledges President Bush made after the Abu Ghraib prisoner-abuse scandal erupted this spring that the United States would stand behind the U.N. Convention Against Torture. Hastert spokesman John Feehery said the Justice Department "really wants and supports" the provision.
Justice Department spokesman Mark Corallo said, "We can't comment on any specific provision, but we support those provisions that will better secure our borders and protect the American people from terrorists."
So let me get this straight-ish: the people involved would not necessarily have been even charged with a crime. The only condition for such "extraordinary rendition" (as it is called) to torture-friendly countries is (a) being a foreign national -- and, apparently, not necessarily a foreign national of the country in which one is being rendered ... er, pardon, to which one is being rended, and (b) being arrested for ... something. Anything.
When did Congress lose what little is left of its collective mind? It would be really helpful to know this.
Actually, what it would be really helpful to know is what this provision is meant to distract us from. According to more normal US law, international treaties, once signed and ratified, have the force of US law. We have signed and ratified the treaties against torture. Approximately ten seconds after this law passed, and once Ashcroft and his star chamber decided to rend someone from this country, their lawyers would take this into court (although finding someone with standing will be ... problematic, given that most of the people to whom this applies are being held in secret), it would be declared unconstitutional and unconscionable, there'd be a few years of appeals in which the Star Chamber would be enjoined from rending anyone, and then even this Supreme Court -- and maybe even Scalia -- would produce an opinion saying, in more legalistic terms, "Are you fucking INSANE? What the hell are you yahoos thinking?" And Congress has to know this; it's full of former lawyers, after all.
So what on earth are they hiding? What else is in that massive omnibus bill that they don't want us looking at?
Or have they really and truly gone mad?
Posted by iain at September 30, 2004 12:38 AM
