International

Via Today's Papers on Slate.com, from an editorial in the NY Times:

Here's what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: The Bush administration uses Republicans' fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws - while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser... These are some of the bill's biggest flaws: Enemy Combatants: A dangerously broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant" in the bill could subject legal residents of the United States, as well as foreign citizens living in their own countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of appeal. The president could give the power to apply this label to anyone he wanted. The Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of international precedent by allowing Mr. Bush to decide on his own what abusive interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision could stay secret - there's no requirement that this list be published. Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the basic right to challenge their imprisonment. These cases do not clog the courts, nor coddle terrorists. They simply give wrongly imprisoned people a chance to prove their innocence. Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review any aspect of this new system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions, directly or indirectly. All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial. Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge considered it reliable - already a contradiction in terms - and relevant. Coercion is defined in a way that exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee Treatment Act, and anything else Mr. Bush chooses. Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and testimony that is kept secret from the defendant, whether the accused is a corporate executive or a mass murderer. But the bill as redrafted by Mr. Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence. Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow, a virtual reprise of the deeply cynical memos the administration produced after 9/11. Rape and sexual assault are defined in a retrograde way that covers only forced or coerced activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

Also via Today's Papers on Slate.com, from an article titled "Legal Battle Over Detainee Bill Is Likely" in the LA Times:

The measure's most disputed provision would block foreign prisoners held by the military from turning to the federal courts to end their imprisonment. By preventing detainees from challenging their confinement in court, it sets up a potential constitutional conflict before the Supreme Court... "This legislation will give the president the tools he needs to protect American lives without compromising our core democratic values," Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) said. But some lawmakers, Republicans as well as Democrats, called the move to suspend habeas corpus - the demand for legal justification of one's imprisonment - a historic mistake, and one that could cause the entire bill to be struck down. "This is wrong; it is unconstitutional; it is un-American," said Sen. Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee. The judiciary panel's chairman, Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), said, "Surely as we are standing here, if this bill is passed and habeas corpus is stricken, we'll be back on this floor again" grappling with a future ruling against it by the Supreme Court. Still, Specter was one of 53 Republicans who joined 12 Democrats in voting for the final bill. Leahy was among 32 Democrats who opposed it, along with one independent and one Republican - Sen. Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, who is locked in a tough fight for reelection in his Democratic-leaning state.

Without compromising our democratic values, Sen. Coburn? What a joke. Last night I watched the first half of "On Native Soil," the "documentary of the 9/11 commission report" which aired recently on courtTV. I learned some things I didn't know...e.g., that the port authority, responsible for the WTC, had no plan for rescuing people trapped on floors above a fire and that people in the second tower who tried to leave after the first tower was hit were told to go back to their offices. It was so sad seeing the elderly couple talk about the phone call from their son just before UA Flight 175 hit the second tower. It's tragic that such a horrible event has led to so much more tragedy (hundreds of thousand of dead civilians in Iraq and Americans justifying torture).

From an article of the same title in The Week on September 22, 2006:

Warning of an imminent bloodbath in the Darfur region of Sudan, tens of thousands of protesters in New York, London, and other cities this week demanded immediate U.N. intervention. Several world leaders joined the call for U.N. action. The Security Council last month agreed to dispatch 22,500 peacekeepers to Darfur, contingent on the permission of the Sudan government in Khartoum. But the government, which has launched a brutal offensive against rebel groups, opposes U.N. involvement... The U.S. must take the lead, said Sen. John McCain and former Sen. Bob Dole in The Washington Post. We could start by imposing economic sanctions and creating a no-fly zone over Darfur. But we should also make it clear that if these measures fail, military intervention will follow. "The question is whether the United States and other nations will act now to prevent a tragedy, or merely express sorrow and act later to deal with its aftermath."

The article by McCain and Dole in The Washington Post is here. A quote:

The scale of human destruction thus far in Sudan has been staggering. Already, more than 200,000 civilians have been killed, with perhaps 2.5 million forced into squalid camps. This catastrophe is the result of a directed slaughter perpetrated by the Sudanese government and allied Janjaweed militias... As with Srebrenica in 1995, the potential for further mass killing in Darfur today is plain for all to see. All the warnings have been issued, including one from the United Nations that the coming weeks may see "a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale." What remains unclear is only whether the world has the will to impose an outcome on Sudan different from that which unfolded so tragically in Bosnia. Make no mistake: At some point we will step in to help victims in Darfur and police an eventual settlement. The question is whether the United States and other nations will act now to prevent a tragedy, or merely express sorrow and act later to deal with its aftermath.

This week's episode of the The Hill was really interesting...watching Wexler and his staff trying to decide whether or not to vote for the Republican-introduced bill to withdraw immediately from Iraq (which they introduced after Murtha called for withdrawal to basically force Democrats to vote to stay in Iraq) and what a game the whole process was.

From an article of the same title in The Week, September 15, 2006:

...let's not overreact to the threat, said James Fallows in The Atlantic Monthly. Despite ominous talk of mushroom clouds in U.S. cities, it's highly unlikely that terrorists could build or buy a nuke and smuggle it into the country. That leaves terrorists with one means of inflicting major damage on the superpower: Baiting us into foolishly damaging our own interests. The Bush administration has fallen into this trap, by invading Iraq, killing Muslim civilians, and playing into al Qaida's narrative. Portraying the war as an epic clash of civilizations only feeds the terrorists' false grandiosity - and drives Muslim moderates into the extremists' hands. Terrorists may yet again strike on U.S. soil, but the reality is that we've essentially won the war. The sooner we recognize this, the sooner our policies will be motivated by strategic self-interest, instead of by terror.

I thought this was kinda funny. From an article of the same title on CNN.com:

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called on U.S. President George W. Bush to participate in a "direct television debate with us," so Iran can voice its point of view on how to end problems in the world. "But the condition is that there can be no censorship, especially for the American nation," he said Tuesday. The White House called the offer to debate Bush a "diversion" from international concerns over Iran's nuclear program, Reuters reported.