proofs for bonsai

[peace4all]

Because I didnt want to take another topic off topic farther, lets do somethin here eh?

Idunno, but the whole paying journalists to write good reports about the iraq war in iraq, openly lying to the public, spying on your own citizens, and taking away peoples rights and detaining them for years, with no explanation, all seems more of a nazi/communist thing to me.

But idunno, that might just be because thats what happened, and whats happenin gunder bush.

Hold it there.... :roll:

You offer absolutely no proof of any of your claims.

Probably because there is no proof. ;-)

so first.
Can anyone here atually say that we found WMD's in iraq, tha tbush said that they had? (besides the white phosphorus we used on the iraqi's)


now as for the faulty journalism, some unrelated to iraq from the ush administration

# USA Today: http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... lick-refer Education Dept. paid commentator to promote law. Seeking to build support among black families for its education reform law, the Bush administration paid a prominent black pundit $240,000 to promote the law on his nationally syndicated television show and to urge other black journalists to do the same.

# Washington Post: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/ar ... 5Jan6.html Drug Control Office Faulted For Issuing Fake News Tapes. Shortly before last year's Super Bowl, local news stations across the country aired a story by Mike Morris describing plans for a new White House ad campaign on the dangers of drug abuse. What viewers did not know was that Morris is not a journalist and his "report" was produced by the government, actions that constituted illegal "covert propaganda," according to an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

now onto those related to the iraq war

THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ
U.S. Military Covertly Pays to Run Stories in Iraqi Press
# Troops write articles presented as news reports. Some officers object to the practice.

By Mark Mazzetti and Borzou Daragahi, Times Staff Writers

WASHINGTON  As part of an information offensive in Iraq, the U.S. military is secretly paying Iraqi newspapers to publish stories written by American troops in an effort to burnish the image of the U.S. mission in Iraq.

The articles, written by U.S. military "information operations" troops, are translated into Arabic and placed in Baghdad newspapers with the help of a defense contractor, according to U.S. military officials and documents obtained by the Los Angeles Times.

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Many of the articles are presented in the Iraqi press as unbiased news accounts written and reported by independent journalists. The stories trumpet the work of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce insurgents and tout U.S.-led efforts to rebuild the country.

Though the articles are basically factual, they present only one side of events and omit information that might reflect poorly on the U.S. or Iraqi governments, officials said. Records and interviews indicate that the U.S. has paid Iraqi newspapers to run dozens of such articles, with headlines such as "Iraqis Insist on Living Despite Terrorism," since the effort began this year.

The operation is designed to mask any connection with the U.S. military. The Pentagon has a contract with a small Washington-based firm called Lincoln Group, which helps translate and place the stories. The Lincoln Group's Iraqi staff, or its subcontractors, sometimes pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they deliver the stories to Baghdad media outlets.

The military's effort to disseminate propaganda in the Iraqi media is taking place even as U.S. officials are pledging to promote democratic principles, political transparency and freedom of speech in a country emerging from decades of dictatorship and corruption.

It comes as the State Department is training Iraqi reporters in basic journalism skills and Western media ethics, including one workshop titled "The Role of Press in a Democratic Society." Standards vary widely at Iraqi newspapers, many of which are shoestring operations.

Underscoring the importance U.S. officials place on development of a Western-style media, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld on Tuesday cited the proliferation of news organizations in Iraq as one of the country's great successes since the ouster of President Saddam Hussein. The hundreds of newspapers, television stations and other "free media" offer a "relief valve" for the Iraqi public to debate the issues of their burgeoning democracy, Rumsfeld said.

The military's information operations campaign has sparked a backlash among some senior military officers in Iraq and at the Pentagon who argue that attempts to subvert the news media could destroy the U.S. military's credibility in other nations and with the American public.

"Here we are trying to create the principles of democracy in Iraq. Every speech we give in that country is about democracy. And we're breaking all the first principles of democracy when we're doing it," said a senior Pentagon official who opposes the practice of planting stories in the Iraqi media.

The arrangement with Lincoln Group is evidence of how far the Pentagon has moved to blur the traditional boundaries between military public affairs  the dissemination of factual information to the media  and psychological and information operations, which use propaganda and sometimes misleading information to advance the objectives of a military campaign.

The Bush administration has come under criticism for distributing video and news stories in the United States without identifying the federal government as their source and for paying American journalists to promote administration policies, practices the Government Accountability Office has labeled "covert propaganda."

Military officials familiar with the effort in Iraq said much of it was being directed by the "Information Operations Task Force" in Baghdad, part of the multinational corps headquarters commanded by Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were critical of the effort and were not authorized to speak publicly about it.

A spokesman for Vines declined to comment for this article. A Lincoln Group spokesman also declined to comment.

One of the military officials said that, as part of a psychological operations campaign that has intensified over the last year, the task force also had purchased an Iraqi newspaper and taken control of a radio station, and was using them to channel pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. Neither is identified as a military mouthpiece.

The official would not disclose which newspaper and radio station are under U.S. control, saying that naming them would put their employees at risk of insurgent attacks.

U.S. law forbids the military from carrying out psychological operations or planting propaganda through American media outlets. Yet several officials said that given the globalization of media driven by the Internet and the 24-hour news cycle, the Pentagon's efforts were carried out with the knowledge that coverage in the foreign press inevitably "bleeds" into the Western media and influences coverage in U.S. news outlets.

"There is no longer any way to separate foreign media from domestic media. Those neat lines don't exist anymore," said one private contractor who does information operations work for the Pentagon.

Daniel Kuehl, an information operations expert at National Defense University at Ft. McNair in Washington, said that he did not believe that planting stories in Iraqi media was wrong. But he questioned whether the practice would help turn the Iraqi public against the insurgency.

"I don't think that there's anything evil or morally wrong with it," he said. "I just question whether it's effective."

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld ... -headlines

this one, confirming it..

U.S. paid for Iraqi praise, paper says

December 1, 2005
BY LOLITA C. BALDOR

ASSOCIATED PRESS



WASHINGTON -- The U.S. military offered a mixed message Wednesday about whether it embraced one of its programs that reportedly paid a consulting firm and Iraqi newspapers to plant favorable stories about the war and the rebuilding effort.

Lt. Col. Barry Johnson, a military spokesman in Iraq, said the program is "an important part of countering misinformation in the news by insurgents." A spokesman for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, called a report detailing the program troubling if true and said he was looking into the matter.

"This is a military program initiated with the Multi-National Force to help get factual information about ongoing operations into Iraqi news," Johnson said in an e-mail.

Details about the program were first reported Wednesday by the Los Angeles Times. It was the second time this year that Pentagon programs have come under scrutiny for reported payments made to journalists for favorable press.

Two other federal agencies have been investigated in the past year for similar activities, leading Congress' Government Accountability Office to condemn one -- the Education Department -- for engaging in illegal covert propaganda.

Military officials who spoke to the Times on condition of anonymity said the Information Operations Task Force, based in Baghdad, bought an Iraqi newspaper and took over a radio station to put out pro-U.S. messages. Neither outlet was named out of fear that they would be targeted by insurgents, the newspaper said.

The stories in Iraqi newspapers often praise the efforts of U.S. and Iraqi troops, denounce terrorism and promote Iraq reconstruction efforts.

The Times quoted unnamed officials as saying some of the stories in Iraqi newspapers were written by U.S. troops and though basically factual, they sometimes give readers a slanted view of what is happening.

Defense Department officials didn't deny the report.

Rumsfeld spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "so this article raises some question as to whether or not some of the practices that are described in there are consistent with the principles of this department."

The Pentagon hired the Lincoln Group, a Washington-based firm that translates the stories into Arabic and places them in Baghdad newspapers, the newspaper said. Lincoln's staff or subcontractors in Iraq occasionally pose as freelance reporters or advertising executives when they hand stories to Iraqi news outlets, it said.

Laurie Adler, a spokeswoman for the Lincoln Group, said Wednesday she couldn't comment on the contract because it is with the U.S. government.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/arti ... 10490/1009

Now what else did I say I need to prove.

Ohh yes, spying on people. Don't you read the news?

Report: NSA spying broader than Bush acknowledged
NEW YORK (AP)  The National Security Agency has conducted much broader surveillance of e-mails and phone calls  without court orders  than the Bush administration has acknowledged, The New York Times reported on its website.

The NSA, with help from American telecommunications companies, obtained access to streams of domestic and international communications, said the Times in the report late Friday, citing unidentified current and former government officials.

The story did not name the companies.

Since the Times disclosed the domestic spying program last week, President Bush has stressed that his executive order allowing the eavesdropping was limited to people with known links to al-Qaeda.

But the Times said that NSA technicians have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might lead to terrorists.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunications data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the paper said, quoting an unnamed official.

The story quoted a former technology manager at a major telecommunications firm as saying that companies have been storing information on calling patterns since the Sept. 11 attacks, and giving it to the federal government. Neither the manager nor the company he worked for was identified.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington ... htm?csp=15

Bush Approved Eavesdropping, Official Says

Dec 17, 7:25 AM EST
By KATHERINE SHRADER
Associated Press Writer

Source: AP



WASHINGTON (AP) -- President Bush has personally authorized a secretive eavesdropping program in the United States more than three dozen times since October 2001, a senior intelligence official said Friday night.

The disclosure follows angry demands by lawmakers earlier in the day for congressional inquiries into whether the monitoring by the highly secretive National Security Agency violated civil liberties.

"There is no doubt that this is inappropriate," declared Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. He promised hearings early next year.

Bush on Friday refused to discuss whether he had authorized such domestic spying without obtaining warrants from a court, saying that to comment would tie his hands in fighting terrorists.

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In a broad defense of the program put forward hours later, however, a senior intelligence official told The Associated Press that the eavesdropping was narrowly designed to go after possible terrorist threats in the United States.

The official said that, since October 2001, the program has been renewed more than three dozen times. Each time, the White House counsel and the attorney general certified the lawfulness of the program, the official said. Bush then signed the authorizations.

During the reviews, government officials have also provided a fresh assessment of the terrorist threat, showing that there is a catastrophic risk to the country or government, the official said.

"Only if those conditions apply do we even begin to think about this," he said. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified nature of the intelligence operation.

"The president has authorized NSA to fully use its resources - let me underscore this now - consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution to defend the United States and its citizens," the official said, adding that congressional leaders have also been briefed more than a dozen times.

Senior administration officials asserted the president would do everything in his power to protect the American people while safeguarding civil liberties.

"I will make this point," Bush said in an interview with "The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer." "That whatever I do to protect the American people - and I have an obligation to do so - that we will uphold the law, and decisions made are made understanding we have an obligation to protect the civil liberties of the American people."

The surveillance, disclosed in Friday's New York Times, is said to allow the agency to monitor international calls and e-mail messages of people inside the United States. But the paper said the agency would still seek warrants to snoop on purely domestic communications - for example, Americans' calls between New York and California.

"I want to know precisely what they did," Specter said. "How NSA utilized their technical equipment, whose conversations they overheard, how many conversations they overheard, what they did with the material, what purported justification there was."

Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., a member of the Judiciary Committee, said, "This shocking revelation ought to send a chill down the spine of every American."

Vice President Dick Cheney and Bush chief of staff Andrew Card went to the Capitol Friday to meet with congressional leaders and the top members of the intelligence committees, who are often briefed on spy agencies' most classified programs. Members and their aides would not discuss the subject of the closed sessions.

The intelligence official would not provide details on the operations or examples of success stories. He said senior national security officials are trying to fix problems raised by the Sept. 11 commission, which found that two of the suicide hijackers were communicating from San Diego with al-Qaida operatives overseas.

"We didn't know who they were until it was too late," the official said.

Some intelligence experts who believe in broad presidential power argued that Bush would have the authority to order these searches without warrants under the Constitution.

In a case unrelated to the NSA's domestic eavesdropping, the administration has argued that the president has vast authority to order intelligence surveillance without warrants "of foreign powers or their agents."

"Congress cannot by statute extinguish that constitutional authority," the Justice Department said in a 2002 legal filing with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review.

Other intelligence veterans found difficulty with the program in light of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, passed after the intelligence community came under fire for spying on Americans. That law gives government - with approval from a secretive U.S. court - the authority to conduct covert wiretaps and surveillance of suspected terrorists and spies.

In a written statement, NSA spokesman Don Weber said the agency would not provide any information on the reported surveillance program. "We do not discuss actual or alleged operational issues," he said.

Elizabeth Rindskopf Parker, former NSA general counsel, said it was troubling that such a change would have been made by executive order, even if it turns out to be within the law.

Parker, who has no direct knowledge of the program, said the effect could be corrosive. "There are programs that do push the edge, and would be appropriate, but will be thrown out," she said.

Prior to 9/11, the NSA typically limited its domestic surveillance activities to foreign embassies and missions - and obtained court orders for such investigations. Much of its work was overseas, where thousands of people with suspected terrorist ties or other valuable intelligence may be monitored.

The report surfaced as the administration and its GOP allies on Capitol Hill were fighting to save provisions of the expiring USA Patriot Act that they believe are key tools in the fight against terrorism. An attempt to rescue the approach favored by the White House and Republicans failed on a procedural vote.

© 2005 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Learn more about our Privacy Policy.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/B/ ... 6-20-26-05


Now, to the withholding of people for years
this article may be a "bit" biased, and not exactly about "american citizens" but this seems to be bush's idea of "freeing the iraqi's"

18,000 Iraqis illegally held in jails and prison camps
By Richard Phillips
22 April 2004

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On April 8, Condoleezza Rice shamelessly declared that the Bush administration and its allies were “helping the people of Iraq and Afghanistan to build free societies...to spread the blessings of liberty and democracy as alternatives to instability and terror.â€Â

Recent statements by human rights groups and news reports provide further evidence that Washington’s version of “liberty and democracy†in Iraq is a Nazi-style reign of terror aimed at suppressing all opposition to its illegal neocolonial occupation. In fact, the eruption of a nationwide insurgency against US and coalition forces over the past three weeks came after a year of escalating violence and military provocations, with midnight-to-dawn raids, torture, assassinations, mass detentions and other breaches of the Geneva Conventions an everyday occurrence.

According to the Baghdad-based Organisation for Human Rights, at least 18,000 Iraqis are now being illegally held in jails and prison camps. In a country of only 25 million, these figures are staggering and represent the incarceration of 1 in every 1,380 Iraqi citizens. Moreover, during December, American troops were arresting 100 Iraqis per dayâ€â€a rate that will have increased dramatically during the past month as operations intensified against the local population.

Referred to as “security detainees†by the US military, the prisoners are held without charge and denied access to lawyers, family and friends for months on end. Most of those incarcerated have been arrested during raids by coalition troops who storm houses, smashing down doors and windows and trashing household furnishings, televisions and other property. In many cases, armoured vehicles and Humvees or troops using high-powered ammunition or explosives seriously damage the homes.

After “securing†the raided property, troops generally handcuff and hood all men and boys before transporting them to the nearest military base for preliminary interrogations. The detainees are then taken to the nearest US-controlled prison. These include Abu Ghraib, infamous for torture and executions under Saddam Hussein; Camp Cropper at Baghdad International Airport; al-Shaab Stadium; Camp Bucca, near Un Qasr in southern Iraq; and other jails in Habbaniyah, Nasariya, Tikrit and Baquba.

The US-based Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT), a human rights organisation, has confirmed these Nazi-style techniques.

CPT released a report last month based on the testimony of 72 detainees and their families. It revealed that most of the detentions involved acts of violence, such as: “[H]ouse raids using excessive force against unarmed civilians; theft and destruction of personal property; lack of legal representation or clear judicial process for detainees; mistreatment, including torture of detainees during interrogation and in prison camps; withholding of information about detainees’ whereabouts and well-being from the detainees’ families and/or Iraqi and international human rights organisations.â€Â

Like those held by the US in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the jails have been described as legal and physical black holes where prisoners are not formally charged with any offence and can be held indefinitely. Some of those arrested had previously been jailed for opposing Hussein’s Baathist regime; others kidnapped by US forces have simply disappeared.

Sixty-five-year-old Amal Salim Madi told Agence France-Presse that US soldiers arrested her three sons in October. “The Americans said they were taking my sons off for an hour of questioning. We have not seen them since.â€Â

In a typical incident, US soldiers raided a home in Al Ewadiyah, a Baghdad suburb, last December. The inhabitantsâ€â€the mother and brother and sister of the home ownerâ€â€were forced to stand in the street in their bed clothes for five-and-a-half hours while 20 soldiers ransacked the house looking for weapons and resistance members. Nothing was found, but the brother was arrested.

The next day, soldiers returned, admitted that they had been given incorrect information but demanded to know the whereabouts of the owner’s brother-in-law. Unable to find him, they seized the owner’s sister. Iraq’s Coalition Provisional Authority and US military commanders claim to have no information on the whereabouts of those detained.

Last month, Mahmoud Khodair told the media that American soldiers kidnapped him after smashing into his basement apartment. He was accused of supporting Iraqi resistance fighters and held without charge for six months before being released. He has never been given any explanation why he was arrested or released.

Khodair, a 55-year-old cafe owner and released detainee, was forced to sit on his knees in the sun for 10 hours before his first interrogation. He claims that 14 million Iraqi dinars (about $10,000) was stolen from his home during his arrest. “Nothing has changed since Saddam,†he said. “Before, the Mukhabarat [Hussein’s secret police] would take us away, and at least they wouldn’t blow down the door. Now, some informant fingers you and gets $100 even if you’re innocent.â€Â

Although the US refuses to provide detailed information on the conditions inside its network of prisons, interviews with those fortunate enough to have been released reveal a nightmarish world where intimidation, death threats and torture are routine.

According to a March 21 Newsday article, Sadik Hamid al-Marsumim, a 26-year-old Baghdad construction worker, was beaten and forced to stay on his hands and knees for two hours while his guard used his back as a chess table. Al-Marsumim was then ordered to transfer sewage with a tablespoon from a full barrel to an empty one.

“The Americans said they were going to build a new Iraq, full of freedom and dignity,†he said. “Where is the respect for human rights in what they did?†Al-Marsumim was incarcerated for five-and-a-half months without charge before being released.

Newsday also reported the case of Abdul Kahar Mehdi, a 30-year-old assistant engineering teacher. US soldiers shot the family dog during a December raid on his village and then killed his 70-year-old father.

“After bursting through the door, Mehdi said, soldiers handcuffed him, a brother and his father, Mehdi Jamal al-Duraj, a retired government land surveyor. They thrust plastic bags over their heads and tightened them around their necks,†the newspaper reported.

“Within seconds, Mehdi said, he heard his father gasping for air. ‘My father was screaming, “I can’t breathe! Help me!†and I was begging them to loosen the bag,’ said Mehdi, who said he addressed the soldiers in English. ‘But the soldiers responded, “Shut the ..... up,†and hit me in the chest with the butt of their weapon.’

“After several minutes, Mehdi said, he could no longer hear his father breathe or move. ‘I heard a soldier call on a radio and say, “The .... old man may be dead.†US military officials apologised for his father’s death and in February gave Mehdi a letter stating they were investigating,†the newspaper said.

Last month, the US Army admitted that six soldiers have been charged with dereliction of duty, cruelty and maltreatment, and assault and indecent acts with anotherâ€â€the military’s term for sexual abuseâ€â€at Abu Ghraib prison. They are among 17 soldiers from the 800th Military Police Brigade, including a battalion commander and a company commander, suspended from duties over incidents that occurred in November and December.

A week before Washington announced that the six MPs were being investigated, the US Army recommended that a marine reservist accused of killing an Iraqi prisoner not face charges or any military hearing. A second officer involved in the death is alleged to have punched, karate-kicked and dragged by the throat a prisoner in his custody.

Though the Army has refused to provide any details about the six MPs currently under investigation, it is believed that the incidents occurred some time during or after prisoners began rioting at Abu Ghraib on November 24. Three Iraqi prisoners were killed and eight seriously injured during the riots.

The soldiers face an Article 32 hearing that will decide whether the military will prosecute. It is unlikely, however, that the case will see any serious action taken against the soldiers. American troops cannot be tried in civil courts for killing civilians in Iraq. Local courts are forbidden from hearing cases against US soldiers or other foreign forces after the US-controlled governing body in Baghdad issued a directive last June.

Several human rights groups have compared conditions in US-controlled Iraqi prisons with Guantanamo Bay. In fact, Major General Geoffrey Miller, the former head of Guantanamo Bay, has recently been appointed deputy commander for detainee operations in Iraq.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2004/apr20 ... -a22.shtml

now heres a citizen, held.

Jose Padilla: No Charges and No Trial, Just Jail

by Robert A. Levy

Robert A. Levy is senior fellow in constitutional studies at the Cato Institute.

Jose Padilla is the U.S. citizen who supposedly plotted to detonate a "dirty bomb." Since his capture -- not on the battlefields of Afghanistan or Iraq, but at Chicago's O'Hare Airport -- he has not been charged with any crime. Yet, for more than a year, Padilla has been held incommunicado in a South Carolina military brig.

Padilla's indefinite detention, without access to an attorney, has civil libertarians up in arms. That's why the Cato Institute, joined by five ideologically diverse public policy organizations -- the Center for National Security Studies, the Constitution Project, the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, People for the American Way, and the Rutherford Institute -- filed a friend-of-the-court brief in Padilla v. Rumsfeld, now pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York.

Consider this specious logic, endorsed by the Bush administration: Under the Sixth Amendment, the right to counsel does not apply until charges are filed. The government has not charged Padilla. Ordinarily, U.S. citizens cannot be detained without charge. But the administration has avoided that technicality by designating Padilla as an "enemy combatant," then proclaiming that the court may not second-guess his designation.

Essentially, on orders of the executive branch, anyone could wind up imprisoned by the military with no way to assert his innocence. That frightening prospect was echoed by J. Harvie Wilkinson, the respected and steadfastly conservative chief judge of the Fourth Circuit. In a case involving another U.S. citizen, Yaser Hamdi, Wilkinson warned, "With no meaningful judicial review, any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant could be detained indefinitely without charges or counsel." Judge Wilkinson upheld Hamdi's detention but pointedly noted that Hamdi's battlefield capture was like "apples and oranges" compared to Padilla's arrest in Chicago. "We aren't placing our imprimatur upon a new day of executive detentions," Wilkinson cautioned.

An unambiguous federal statute and the U.S. Constitution both prohibit the executive branch from doing to Padilla what it is now doing. More than three decades ago, Congress passed Title 18, section 4001(a) of the U.S. Code. It states, "No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress." Today, we have not had from Congress any statute that authorizes Padilla's detention.

Yes, Congress enacted the PATRIOT Act, which says that non-citizens suspected of terrorism can be detained, but only for seven days. After that, they have to be released or charged, unless the attorney general certifies every six months that they present a security risk. Two months earlier, Congress had passed a resolution empowering the president to use all necessary force against the 9/11 terrorists. But that resolution surely did not give the administration unfettered discretion to detain citizens without charge. If it had, then the ensuing PATRIOT Act would have afforded more protection to aliens than to citizens. In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, that proposition is incredible.

Reasonably construed, Congress' resolution on the use of military force triggered the president's commander-in-chief authority. He could then order seizure of enemy soldiers and detention of persons found in a zone of active combat. But he could not order the imprisonment, without charge, of an unarmed non-soldier far from active combat, especially a U.S. citizen on our own soil.

Nor is the administration justified in its reliance on Ex parte Quirin, the Supreme Court case involving eight Nazi saboteurs, one of whom was an American citizen. The executive branch acted in Quirin in accordance with congressional authorization. The eight Nazis were represented by counsel, charged, tried, and convicted. Here, by contrast, Padilla has been denied any chance to defend himself. He has seen no lawyer; he has not been charged, much less tried and convicted. And he has been imprisoned notwithstanding a 30-year-old statute that expressly forbids the unauthorized detention of U.S. citizens.

Padilla may deserve the treatment he is receiving -- perhaps worse. That is not the point. When Americans are taken into custody, they have the right to retain an attorney. Congress must first set the rules. Then an impartial judge, not the president, should make the ultimate decision as to whether the arrest and imprisonment comport with the Constitution. James Madison, in Federalist No. 47, put it succinctly: "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands ... may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."

This article was published in the Chicago Sun-times, Aug. 11, 2003.

http://www.cato.org/dailys/08-21-03.html

now, because this is getting huge, I will just post you some links

http://www.iwtnews.com/guantanamo_justice
http://www.socialistalternative.org/justice29/22.html
http://www.americanvoice2004.org/askdave/29askdave.html
http://www.mcrcnet.org/Reports/2004/062 ... 2004.htm#8


And of course, some statistics from the INS

Facts: INS Special Registrations

Number of people registered as of May 11, 2003: 82,581

Number of Notices to Appear issued: 13,153

Number of people detained overall: 2,761

Number of people still detained: 158

Number of people deported: 2 (although many took voluntary departure and many are still in proceedings)

Number of people charged with terrorism related crimes: 0

Figures provided by the INS at a meeting held on May 20, 2003, in
Washington, D.C.


Ohh gee golly, I pforgot to brign up the whoel thing with Bush sayign torture IS nescessary. Anyone remember that? or is it all good because its busH?

I hope I gave proof for a majority of what I posted. I spent what, 15 minutes on google, MAX? If it wasn't christmas eve, be sure there would be alot more. However, I think this post is long enough. Hopefully this time you read it through, before comenting like the ones in the science vs religion thread..