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Torture
Bill States Non-Allegiance To Bush Is Terrorism
Legislation
tolls the bell for the day America died, birth of the
dictatorship
Paul
Joseph Watson & Alex Jones/Prison Planet.com | September
29 2006
Buried amongst the untold
affronts to the Bill of Rights, the Constitution and the very
spirit of America, the torture bill contains a definition of
"wrongfully aiding the enemy" which labels all
American citizens who breach their "allegiance" to
President Bush and the actions of his government as terrorists
subject to possible arrest, torture and conviction in front of
a military tribunal.
7:25PM CST UPDATE
After five hours of
searching through the 80-plus
page bill, Alex Jones, who won the 2004 Project
Censored award for his analysis of Patriot
Act 2, uncovered numerous other provisions and
definitions that make the bill appear as almost a mirror image
of Hitler's 1933 Enabling Act.
In section 950j. the bill
criminalizes any challenge to the legislation's legality by
the Supreme Court or any United States court. Alberto
Gonzales has already threatened federal judges to shut up
and not question Bush's authority on the torture of detainees.
"No court, justice,
or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any claim
or cause of action whatsoever, including any action pending on
or filed after the date of the enactment of the Military
Commissions Act of 2006, relating to the prosecution, trial,
or judgment of a military commission under this chapter,
including challenges to the lawfulness of procedures of
military commissions under this chapter."
The Bush administration is
preemptively overriding any challenge to the legislation by
the Supreme Court.
The definition of torture
that the legislation cites is US
code title 18 section 2340. This is a broad
definition of torture and completely lacks the specific
clarity of the Geneva Conventions. This definition allows the
use of torture that is, "incidental to lawful
sanctions." In alliance with the bill's blanket authority
for President Bush to define the Geneva Conventions as he sees
fit, this legislates the use of torture.
The media has spun the
bill as if it outlaws torture - it only outlaws torture for
"enemy combatants," and in fact outlaws the
retaliation of any military against the United States as
"murder." Those deemed "enemy combatants"
are not even allowed to fight back yet the government affords
itself every power including the go-ahead to torture.
Further actions that
result in the classification of an individual as a terrorist
include the following.
- Destruction of any
property, which is deemed punishable by any means of the
military tribunal's choosing.
- Any violent activity
whatsoever if it takes place near a designated protected
building, such as a charity building.
- A change of the
definition of "pillaging" which turns all illegal
occupation of property and all theft into terrorism. This
makes squatters and petty thieves enemy combatants.
In light of Greg
Palast's recent hounding by Homeland Security,
after they accused him of potentially giving terrorists key
information about U.S. "critical infrastructure"
when filming Exxon’s Baton Rouge refinery (clear photos of
which were publicly available on Google Maps), sub-section 27
of section 950v. should send chills down the spine of all
investigative journalists and even news-gatherers.
"Any person subject
to this chapter who with intent or reason to believe that it
is to be used to the injury of the United States or to the
advantage of a foreign power, collects or attempts to collect
information by clandestine means or while acting under false
pretenses, for the purpose of conveying such information to an
enemy of the United States, or one of the co-belligerents of
the enemy, shall be punished by death or such other punishment
as a military commission under this chapter may direct."
Subsection 4(b) (26) of
section 950v. of HR
6166 - Crimes triable by military commissions -
includes the following definition.
"Any person subject
to this chapter who, in breach of an allegiance or
duty to the United States, knowingly and
intentionally aids an enemy of the United States, or one of
the co-belligerents of the enemy, shall be punished as a
military commission under this chapter may direct."
For an individual to hold
an allegiance or duty to the United States they need to be a
citizen of the United States. Why would a foreign terrorist
have any allegiance to the United States to breach in the
first place?
This is another telltale
facet that proves the bill applies to U.S. citizens and
includes them under the "enemy combatant"
designation. We previously cited the comments of Yale law
Professor Bruce Ackerman, who
wrote in the L.A. Times, "The compromise
legislation....authorizes the president to seize American
citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the
United States. And once thrown into military prison, they
cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the
normal protections of the Bill of Rights."
The
New York Times stated that the legislation
introduced, "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."
Calling the bill "our
generation’s version of the Alien and Sedition Acts,"
the Times goes on to highlight the rubber stamping of torture.
"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."
Since with this bill, in
the aggregate, Bush has declared himself to be above the
Constitution and the laws of the United States, the allegiance
of American citizens is no longer to the flag or the freedoms
for which it stands, but to Bush himself, the self-appointed
dictator, and any diversion from that allegiance will mandate
arrest, torture and conviction in a military tribunal under
the terms of this bill.
Similar to the UK's
Glorification of Terrorism law, which top lawyers
have slammed as vague, open to interpretation and a potential
weapon for the government to kidnap supposed subversives, the
nebulous context of "wrongfully aiding the enemy,"
could easily be defined to include publicly absolving an
accused terrorist of involvement in a terrorist attack.
That renders the entire
9/11 truth movement an aid to terrorist suspects and subject
to military tribunal and torture. In addition, Bush's recently
cited National Strategy for Combating Terrorism, which is
available on the White
House website, labels
conspiracy theorists as terrorist recruiters.
This should leave us with
no doubt as to which parties are the target of the
government's torture and intimidation campaign.
Could protesting a war
approved by the government and their bootlickers in Congress
and the Senate be considered breaching an allegiance to the
United States? Could campaigning against the bombing of a
target country be considered wrongfully aiding the enemy?
When the USA PATRIOT act
was rushed through at the height of an anthrax scare without
any members of Congress even having time to read it, we were
assured that it was to fight terrorists and would not be used
against the American people.
Since then a plethora of
cases whereby the USA PATRIOT act was used
against U.S. citizens emerged, including the
internment without trial for over three years of Jose
Padilla, an American citizen who was finally
released after no evidence of terrorism was uncovered.
The so-called
"compromise" before the bill was passed and the
media acclaim of John McCain as some kind of human rights
champion is one of the biggest con jobs ever inflicted upon
the American people.
Shortly after the bill was
finalized it
was spun by Bush security advisor Stephen Hadley
as "good news and a good day for the American
people." McCain said that it safeguarded "the
integrity and letter and spirit of the Geneva
Conventions."
In truth the legislation
does the exact opposite, giving Bush carte blanche to
"interpret the meaning and application of the Geneva
Conventions."
In addition, under the
bill, "No person may invoke the Geneva Conventions or any
protocols thereto in any habeas corpus or other civil action
or proceeding to which the United States, or a current or
former officer, employee, member of the Armed Forces, or other
agent of the United States is a party as a source of rights in
any court of the United States or its States or
territories."
The bill also allows
hearsay evidence (obtained via phony confessions after
torture) to be considered by the military tribunal and bars
the suspect from even having knowledge of the charges against
him - making a case for defense impossible. This is guaranteed
to produce 100% conviction rates as you would expect in the
dictatorships of Uzbekistan or Zimbabwe and other torture
protagonists who are in many cases allied with the Bush
administration and provide
phony confessions obtained from torture that
allow the U.S. government to scare its people with the threat
of imaginary Al-Qaeda terror cells waiting to kill them.
Following the Supreme
Court's ruling to previously strike down Bush's shadow penal
system, Alberto
Gonzales is already out threatening federal judges
to shut up and get behind the dictator or face the
consequences.
Gonzales has the sheer
gall to attack judges for even considering to "overturn
long-standing traditions or policies without proper support in
text or precedent," which is exactly what Gonzales, Bush
and the rest of the White House criminals are doing themselves
by de facto abolishing the Bill of Rights!
This is a dark day for the
United States, the day America died and the bastard birth of a
literal dictatorship.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september2006/290906torturebill.htm
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