This is really ugly stuff. The Bushies want the ability to imprison anyone, including citizens, indefinitely. Such prisoners would have no access to civilian courts and their rights would be hugely restricted. The government does not need to produce actual evidence either. Nope, just a governmental say-so that you might be linked to “terrorism.” and off you go into a Gitmo forever. This is blatantly unconstitutional. an obvious attack against dissent, and should concern everyone.
AMERICAblog has been blogging about this. Haven’t seen it on many other blogs as yet (it’s still a new story.) This bill is so fascist that everyone needs to mobilize against it. Me, you, everyone.

I don’t often use the word “fascist.” In this case though, it applies. A bill like this targets everyone. The target is the Left now. It could just as easily be the Right under another administration. No, I do not believe it would only be used against actual terrorists. Plus, it gives the government way too much easily abused power to silence those who disagree with them.

Bush submits new terror detainee bill
U.S. citizens suspected of terror ties might be detained indefinitely and barred from access to civilian courts under legislation proposed by the Bush administration, say legal experts reviewing an early version of the bill.

White House proposal would expand authority of military courts
Under the proposed procedures, defendants would lack rights to confront accusers, exclude hearsay accusations, or bar evidence obtained through rough or coercive interrogations. They would not be guaranteed a public or speedy trial and would lack the right to choose their military counsel, who in turn would not be guaranteed equal access to evidence held by prosecutors.

An early draft of the new measure prepared by civilian political appointees and leaked to the media last week has been modified in response to criticism from uniformed military lawyers. But the provisions allowing a future expansion of the courts to cover new crimes and more prisoners were retained, according to government officials familiar with the deliberations.

Let’s ALL work together to make sure this repressive freedom-hating bill gets killed, and quickly.

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The Democrats have issued a unity statement that pretends to oppose the Iraq War. While I’m cheered they’ve finally managed agreed on something, their statement, even if implemented, would do little if anything to actually end the war.

In their words, Democrats now favor a “phased redeployment of US troops from Iraq.”

Redeployment:

To move (military forces) from one combat zone to another.

Um, so how does sending troops from one combat zone to another result in bringing them home? Inquiring minds want to know. But the larger point is the “phased” part. They are deliberately vague on what that means. Plus there’s always the proviso that should “situations” on the ground change, then the withdrawal would be postponed.

The Democrats also say that some troops will of course remain, and focus on “counterterrorism, training and logistical support of Iraqi security forces, and force protection of U.S. personnel.”

Thus, the Dems want to keep troops there while saying some should come home except, y’know, for those who need to stay. The new US mission sounds quite a lot like the current mission, doesn’t it? Plus, the poor dears still think “Iraqi security forces” can be trained to clean up the mess the US created - except when they’re shooting at each other and at Americans, that is. Oh, that pesky civil war and those darned insurgents, why won’t they just do what Democrats inside the DC Beltway Bubble want them to do?

Nowhere in their statement is anything about the Iraqi people. It’s all about the US, about how the current war makes the US look bad, so we need to do something to clean up the public image of the US. A spritz of room freshener, perhaps? But there’s not a peep about the thousands of dead Iraqi civilians or the destroyed infrastructure of that country or the obvious fact that virtually all Democrats accepted Bush’s lies and voted for the war. Nope, Democrats won’t be speaking about any of that.

Instead they will try to suck the energy out of the growing antiwar (and immigration rights) movements in the country into the Democratic Party where it will be defused and neutered. This pretend antiwar statement from them is a clear example of Democrats performing their historic role of diffusing dissent while pretending to embrace it.

See you August 12.

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From those crazed left wing radicals at the Wall Street Journal

This is not to say that it will lose the war, or that the war was unwinnable to start with. But if it keeps going as it is, Israel is headed for the greatest military humiliation in its history. During the Yom Kippur War of 1973, Israelis were stunned by their early reversals against Egypt and Syria, yet they eked out a victory over these two powerfully armed, Soviet-backed adversaries in 20 days. The conflict with Hezbollah–a 15,000-man militia chiefly armed with World War II-era Katyusha rockets–is now in its 21st day. So far, Israel has nothing to show for its efforts: no enemy territory gained, no enemy leaders killed, no abatement in the missile barrage that has sent a million Israelis from their homes and workplaces.

More puzzling was the Israeli cabinet’s decision last week against launching a full-scale ground invasion.

It’s not puzzling at all. A ground war means an unacceptably high death and casualty rate for the Israeli military, something they want to avoid by fighting from the air alone. But the air-alone strategy doesn’t work, as Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have shown. In all of those, the US said they could win using bombing alone. They were wrong. So is Israel.

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