The facts of this US Federal
Court Ruling we can read as reported by the Associated Press News Service in
their article titled "Federal court rules against ex-bin Laden
driver" and which says; "A federal
appeals court put the Bush administration’s military commissions for terrorist
suspects back on track Friday, saying a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison
who once was Osama bin Laden’s driver can stand trial.
A three-judge panel ruled 3-0 against Salim Ahmed
Hamdan, whose case was halted by a federal judge on
grounds that commission procedures were unlawful. “Congress authorized the
military commission that will try Hamdan,” said the
U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia
Circuit.
The protections of the 1949 Geneva Convention do
not apply to al-Qaida and its members, so Hamdan does not have a right to enforce its provisions in
court, the appeals judges said. U.S. District Judge James Robertson ruled last
year that Hamdan could not be tried by a military
commission until a competent tribunal determined that he was not a prisoner of
war.
“We believe the military commission is such a
tribunal,” said the appeals court. President Bush created the military
commissions after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, opening a legal channel for
alleged al-Qaida terrorists and their associates to be
tried for war crimes. Hamdan’s lawyers said Bush
violated the separation of powers in the Constitution when he established
military commissions. The court disagreed, saying Bush relied on Congress’s
joint resolution authorizing the use of force after the Sept. 11 attacks, as
well as two congressionally enacted laws. “We think it no answer to say, as
Hamdan does, that this case is different because
Congress did not formally declare war,” said the decision by appeals court judge
A. Raymond Randolph.
Congress authorized the president to use all
necessary and appropriate force in the war on terrorism." Two
lawyers representing Hamdan, Neal Katyal and Navy Lt. Commander Charles D. Swift, said the
appeals court ruling “is contrary to 200 years of constitutional law.” Katyal said Hamdan will seek
further appeals. “Today’s ruling places absolute trust in the president,
unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress, and longstanding treaties
ratified by the Senate of the United States,” the two defense lawyers said in a
statement."
Also repeating
history is the fact that the only institution in the United States that have
fought against these new dictatorial powers has been the United States Military,
and who like their German counterparts during the rise of Hitler have also
attempted to keep an American Dictatorship from forming. As
the American Navy Lt. Commander Charles D. Swift has been quoted by the
Associated Press, “[This ruling] is contrary to 200 years of constitutional
law. Today’s ruling places absolute trust in the president,
unchecked by the Constitution, statutes of Congress, and longstanding treaties
ratified by the Senate of the United States.”
It has also not been lost upon
current historians the remarkable similarities between the rise of the American
Empire and the Nazi Empire of last century, and as exampled by the American
writer Doris Colmes who in surviving the barbarities of life under the Nazi’s is
now seeing a repeat of history, and as we can read in her commentary titled
“Enabling the Patriot
Act" and which
says;
"At the end of the school
year of June, 1938, my parents received a polite, but firm letter from Dr. Gregor Ziemer, headmaster of "The
American School of Berlin," stating that Jewish children were no longer
permitted to attend. It was the only school I’d ever known, from kindergarten up
through fifth grade, and I loved it. My older sisters liked it, too, because –
amongst other things – there were a lot of cute American boys in attendance and
everybody spoke English. It wasn’t just American School, though: Jewish kids
were no longer allowed into any schools
whatsoever.
This rejection was based on an edict formulated by
the German "Enabling Act" of 1933, which gave the Nazi government incalculable
powers over individuals, groups, and targeted population components. As a matter
of fact, the German "Enabling Act" of 1933 is remarkably similar to our current
Patriot Act, which – according to an Associated Press release to the Portland
Oregonian of June 4, 2005 – is currently up for revisions not only giving it
expanded powers well beyond those it already has, but making it permanent, just
like the German Enabling Act was made permanent. (The more one compares the Nazi
Germany "Enabling Act" with the U.S.A. "Patriot Act," the more they appear to be
Siamese twins.)"
Even to the creation of an
Elite Military Unit modeled upon the dreaded Nazi Gestapo has the American
President accomplished, and as we can read as reported by the American
Resistance writer Mike Whitney in his article titled "Genesis of an American
Gestapo" and
wherein he says;
"Tyranny has very few
indispensable parts; a compliant media, that will regulate information to meet
the goals of the state; a “rubber-stamp” Parliament that will endorse the
policies of the supreme leader; a judiciary that will adjust the law to serve
the requirements of the ruling body, a strong military to seize the wealth of
weaker nations; and a security apparatus, that will eliminate any domestic
threats to the system. On June 29 President Bush took the great-leap forward in
transforming the nation’s intelligence services by ordering a restructuring of
the FBI and putting “a broad swath of the agency” under the direct control of
the executive.
Bingo; Bush’s personal
secret police; an American Gestapo. The formation of the new agency was
presented as part of 74 recommendations made by the 9-11 Commission on
Intelligence. Every member of the so-called “independent” panel was hand-picked
by the Bush team and their proposals reflect the narrow interests of American
elites. Bush loyalists and Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) members Lawrence
Silberman and Charles Robb, (both of whom were
directly involved in the 9-11 whitewash) chaired the committee, and provided the
rationale for the dramatic changes to the existing system. Astonishingly, Bush
was able to unilaterally create the National Security Service without
congressional approval as part of his sweeping powers under the new anti-terror
legislation.
The freshly minted National Security Service, which
has been dubbed the New SS, will operate under the authority of former
ambassador to Iraq, John Negroponte, whose involvement in overseeing the
terrorist activities of death squads in Nicaragua will provide him with the
necessary experience for his new task. Negroponte, the new Intelligence czar,
will report directly to the President, who in turn will carefully monitor the
violations of civil liberties that will naturally evolve from unsupervised
investigations. The formation of the Bush Gestapo overturns long held precedents
for maintaining the independence of law enforcement
agencies."
To the warnings about these
shocking events the American citizens themselves have received many, and as we
can see exampled from a speech given to the United States Congress by one of
their own Leaders, Congressman Ron Paul, and who on June 27, 2002, and seeing the dangers his country was
facing, said;
"Mr. Speaker, what, then, is
the answer to the question: "Is America a Police State?" My answer is: "Maybe
not yet, but it is fast approaching." The seeds have been sown and many of our
basic protections against tyranny have been and are constantly being undermined.
The post-9/11 atmosphere here in Congress has provided ample excuse to
concentrate on safety at the expense of liberty, failing to recognize that we
cannot have one without the
other.
When the government keeps
detailed records on every move we make and we either need advance permission for
everything we do or are penalized for not knowing what the rules are, America
will be declared a police state. Personal privacy for law-abiding citizens will
be a thing of the past. Enforcement of laws against economic and political
crimes will exceed that of violent crimes (just look at what's coming under the
new FEC law). War will be the prerogative of the administration. Civil liberties
will be suspended for suspects, and their prosecution will not be carried out by
an independent judiciary. In a police state, this becomes common practice rather
than a rare
incident.
Some argue that we already
live in a police state, and Congress doesn't have the foggiest notion of what
they're dealing with. So forget it and use your energy for your own survival.
Some advise that the momentum towards the monolithic state cannot be reversed.
Possibly that's true, but I'm optimistic that if we do the right thing and do
not capitulate to popular fancy and the incessant war propaganda, the onslaught
of statism can be
reversed.
To do so, we as a people
will once again have to dedicate ourselves to establishing the proper role a
government plays in a free society. That does not involve the redistribution of
wealth through force. It does not mean that government dictates the moral and
religious standards of the people. It does not allow us to police the world by
involving ourselves in every conflict as if it's our responsibility to manage a
world American
empire.
But it does mean government
has a proper role in guaranteeing free markets, protecting voluntary and
religious choices and guaranteeing private property ownership, while punishing
those who violate these rules- whether foreign or domestic. In a free society,
the government's job is simply to protect liberty- the people do the rest. Let's
not give up on a grand experiment that has provided so much for so many. Let's
reject the police
state."
Just two years later this same
American Congressman Ron Paul tried to warn his American Citizens again, and as
we can read in his article titled “Police State USA” and where again he
said;
"Every generation must
resist the temptation to believe that it lives in the most dangerous time in
American history. The threat of Islamic terrorism is real, but it is not the
greatest danger ever faced by our nation. This is not to dismiss the threat of
terrorism, but rather to put it in perspective. Those who seek to whip the
nation into a frenzy of fear do a disservice to a country that expelled the
British, fought two world wars, and stared down the Soviet empire.
Liberty is lost through complacency and a
subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints,
random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our
streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of
government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom
for long."
Where a little over a decade
ago many we newly released from the Gulag celebrated our freedom, and which was
won by the millions of former Soviet citizens who threw off the shackles of
tyrannical communist rule, we could have never imagined that these shackles
would be then taken by the American peoples to put upon themselves.
We could have never imagined that where in Russia today
every school child is given a Bible, in
America today
their school children are threatened with prison if they so much as even mention
the Bible, God or Jesus.
In all of these strange and
horrible events, perhaps the one warning these Americans should have heeded most
of all was made by their own President Bush who in December, 2000 was quoted by
the Associated Press as saying, "If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck
of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."
Today that statement has come
true.
© July 16, 2005, EU
and US all rights reserved.