Bush's Double Standard

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Wed, 2 Nov 2005 12:23:21 -0500

Bush's Double Standard

 

 

 

When it comes to the indictment of Dick Cheney's top aide, Lewis

Libby, George W. Bush reminds Americans that everyone is innocent

until proven guilty after receiving due process and a fair trial. But

Bush forgot to mention that his " rule of law " applies differently to

people he deems " terrorists " or " bad guys. " For them, there's a

presumption of guilt, no due process and indefinite imprisonment

without trial.

 

For the full story about Bush's double standards on justice, go to

Consortiumnews.com at http://www.consortiumnews.com .

 

Bush's Rule of Law

 

By Nat Parry

November 2, 2005

 

George W. Bush reacted to the indictment of Dick Cheney’s top aide,

Lewis Libby, with a startling assertion about the U.S. legal system.

“In our system,†the President declared, “each individual is

presumed innocent and entitled to due process and a fair trial.â€

 

While Bush’s statement was surely intended to remind the public that

Libby has yet to be convicted of a crime, it was remarkable to hear

Bush endorse the presumption of innocence and due process after all he

has done to erode those principles.

 

For four years, it has been a central legal precept of the “War on

Terror†that Bush has the absolute right to imprison anyone of his

choosing, including American citizens, who are then denied even a day

in court, let alone a fair trial or presumption of innocence.

 

While the “rule of law†is usually defined as the universal

protection of everyone equally under the law, Bush’s “rule of

law†seems to mean, “We rule, so we decide who’s protected by

the law.†Those protections are denied people whom Bush deems

“terrorists†or “bad guys.â€

 

Bush’s lip service to presumption of innocence, for example, must

have been cold comfort to Jose Padilla, a U.S. citizen held without

charges and without the benefit of his day in court since May 2002.

 

Padilla was arrested at Chicago’s O’Hare airport and accused of

plotting to set off a radiological “dirty bomb†in a U.S. city.

Bush unilaterally determined that Padilla was closely associated with

al-Qaeda and represented a “continuing, present and grave dangerâ€

to the United States.

 

Bush cited his powers as commander in chief in declaring Padilla an

“enemy combatant†and ordering him detained indefinitely at a

military prison in South Carolina. Bush said Padilla was a “bad

guy†and “he is where he needs to be, detained.â€

 

Padilla could be jailed for the duration of the war on terrorism, a

potential life sentence given the fuzzy goals and indefinite timetable

of the conflict. No trial is to be held.

 

Major Victory?

 

Padilla’s capture was initially portrayed by the administration as a

major victory in the “War on Terror.†Bush said there was a

“full-scale manhunt on†for other terrorists involved in the

alleged plot, but to date, no one else involved has been captured.

 

Later, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz said the Padilla bomb

plot amounted only to “some fairly loose talk†and “there was

not an actual plan†to attack U.S. cities. [Washington Post, June

13, 2002]

 

In other words, nothing concrete in the alleged plot had occurred.

Padilla had no bomb-making materials, no target, no operational

co-conspirators, no plan. Beyond assertions from administration

officials, there also was no evidence of Padilla’s guilt.

 

Yet, three-and-a-half years later, Jose Padilla remains locked up in a

South Carolina naval brig caught in a murky legal twilight zone.

 

In contrast to Libby’s presumption of innocence †" despite evidence

of his guilt cited in a federal indictment returned by a grand jury

†" Padilla has been presumed guilty despite a complete lack of

publicly available evidence. For Padilla, there is not even an indictment.

 

Bush has encountered some legal setbacks in his assertion of unlimited

power to jail anyone he wants, but he has managed to find enough

allies on the federal bench to keep Padilla behind bars and out of a

courtroom.

 

A U.S. District Court judge did rule that the President has no

authority to detain a U.S. citizen as an enemy combatant and deny that

person due-process rights. But this decision was overturned by an

Appeals Court ruling on Sept. 9, 2005, which cited the congressional

authorization to use force against al-Qaeda as implicitly granting

Bush the power to detain the enemy without bringing formal charges.

 

Though the Appeals Court backed Bush, the ruling is likely not the

final word, since the case is expected to reach the U.S. Supreme

Court, where several Supreme Court justices have expressed anxiety

about Bush’s position.

 

But Bush may have found a new ally on the high court in Chief Justice

John Roberts, who has shown great deference to Bush’s presidential

power as a U.S. Appeals Court judge.

 

On July 15, 2005, just four days before George W. Bush nominated him

to the Supreme Court, Roberts ruled as part of a three-judge appeals

court panel against judicial review for Salim Ahmed Hamdan, a detainee

in the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay.

 

Hamdan was labeled an “enemy combatant†because he allegedly was

the personal driver of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. While not

accused of a specific crime against U.S. citizens, Hamdan, like all

Guantanamo detainees, was denied access to U.S. courts and stripped of

rights guaranteed to prisoners of war under the Geneva Convention of 1949.

 

Joining two other judges †" A. Raymond Randolph, appointed by George

H.W. Bush in 1990, and Stephen F. Williams, appointed by Ronald Reagan

in 1986 †" Roberts sided with George W. Bush’s administration in

ruling that the Geneva Convention “does not confer upon Hamdan a

right to enforce its provisions in court.â€

 

Furthermore, the court ruled that presidential action cannot be

constrained by “judicially enforceable rights†in treaties signed

by the U.S. government. The court also endorsed Bush’s plan for

having special military tribunals try and even condemn to death

so-called “enemy combatants.â€

 

Roberts and the two other judges agreed with Bush’s argument, too,

that since al-Qaeda is not a state and doesn’t comply with the rules

of international armed conflict, its “members†don’t qualify for

any protections under domestic or international law.

 

What that means is that Bush gets to decide who’s a “member†of

al-Qaeda and have that person locked up indefinitely. The accused is

presumed guilty of al-Qaeda “membership†and is not entitled to

due process or a fair trial.

 

Libby Contrast

 

Unlike Lewis Libby, who will almost certainly be free on bail pending

his trial and any appeals of a conviction, some detainees at

Guantanamo Bay in Cuba have been held for nearly four years without

charges or a day in court.

 

Yet it’s not clear who has done more damage to U.S. national

security †" Libby, who helped expose a covert CIA officer and her

counter-proliferation operations or detainees at Guantanamo, some of

whom may have just been in the wrong place at the wrong time or may

have been handed over to Americans by Afghanis seeking a reward.

 

Without due process or objective review of evidence, there is no way

to know which of the Guantanamo detainees might have committed some

crime or might represent a genuine threat †" and which ones are

unjustly accused, trapped in some nightmarish netherworld.

 

At Guantanamo, prisoners are subjected to harsh interrogations and

must earn every “privilege†by cooperating with their interrogators.

 

Even earning the right to wear a white jumpsuit, rather than their

original orange jumpsuit, requires detainees to provide information to

interrogators about friends and associates who might be involved with

al-Qaeda.

 

Nothing about this treatment conforms with the Geneva Convention,

which requires a prisoner of war “to give only his surname, first

names and rank, date of birth, and army, regimental, personal or

serial number, or failing this, equivalent information.â€

 

Prisoners can’t be subjected to “physical or mental torture, nor

any other form of coercion†in order to extract information,

according to the Convention. “Prisoners of war who refuse to answer

may not be threatened, insulted, or exposed to any unpleasant or

disadvantageous treatment of any kind,†the rule states.

 

Yet, American interrogators routinely threaten prisoners at Guantanamo

and employ physical and mental abuse. These techniques include

physical beatings, stripping prisoners naked, and using dogs to

frighten them, according to human rights groups and press accounts.

[see, for instance, Washington Post, March 1, 2005.]

 

Attorney Julia Tarver, who represents 10 of the detainees at

Guantanamo, said “The level of hopelessness in the camp has reached

a point where our clients are literally vowing they have no other

choice but to die.â€

 

To protest their indefinite detentions, endless interrogations and

daily abuse, over 150 Guantanamo prisoners have engaged in a hunger

strike which started Aug. 8, 2005.

 

The strikers are demanding their legal rights under the Geneva

Convention, adequate food and shelter, clean water, the right to

challenge their detention before an independent commission, and an end

to physical and psychological abuse.

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross has warned that the

hunger strikers face irreparable damage or death. But instead of

addressing the detainees’ demands, the U.S. military is attempting

to break the hunger strike by inserting tubes up the noses of strikers

and forcing food into their stomachs.

 

According to Amnesty International and human rights lawyer Clive

Stafford Smith, who represents 42 of the hunger strikers, the

emaciated prisoners are shackled to their beds to stop them from

removing the tubes.

 

Detainees have described how the tubes are forcibly inserted into

their noses by riot guards and are then taken from one detainee and

inserted into another without any sanitization, with the bile and the

blood still on the tube from the previous detainee. The practice

allegedly has led to some detainees vomiting blood.

 

Sweeping Authority

 

At the heart of Bush’s “rule of law†is the rejection of any

independent court evaluation of the rationale behind holding a

specific individual as an “enemy combatant.â€

 

Without judicial review, the U.S. government doesn’t need to present

any objective evidence to show that a person really does belong to

al-Qaeda, an organization that doesn’t issue membership cards and is

considered by many experts to be an amorphous group of like-minded

individuals.

 

Indeed, some of those held in Guantanamo, such as the British Tipton

Three, were eventually released after establishing that they were

simply caught up in indiscriminate sweeps in Afghanistan.

 

The Bush position also holds that once designated as al-Qaeda members,

individuals have no legal protections against torture. The Bush

administration has dismissed provisions of the Geneva Conventions as

“quaint,†has offered legal rationales that justify torture in

cases of “military necessity,†and more recently has eschewed U.S.

duties under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

 

The Covenant requires all signatories to submit reports on their

compliance with the treaty every five years to the United Nations. The

U.S. report, submitted on Oct. 21, was years overdue, and even then

was incomplete, declining to mention U.S violations of the treaty that

occurred in places like Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

 

At a hearing to discuss the report with human rights organizations and

non-governmental organizations, the State Department maintained that

the United States has never accepted the treaty’s application beyond

U.S. borders, and therefore does not feel compelled to comply with it

in those situations.

 

The Covenant, however, makes it clear that “No one shall be

subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or

punishment,†and speaks in universal terms of “every human

being,†clearly not confining itself solely to domestic law.

 

Although the Covenant provides that countries may “in time of public

emergency which threatens the life of the nation … take measures

derogating from their obligations†under the Covenant, it

specifically states that there are a number of obligations that cannot

be ignored, including the prohibitions against torture and other ill

treatment.

 

McCain Proposal

 

In a recent military spending bill, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., himself

a POW during the Vietnam War, led an effort to force the Bush

administration into compliance with international and domestic laws

against torture.

 

The spending package included a ban on torturing detainees in U.S.

custody regardless of their nationality or physical location.

 

In response, the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney,

launched a campaign to pressure the House of Representatives to open a

loophole for CIA covert agents to engage in torture.

 

Cheney and CIA Director Peter Goss have suggested language that would

exclude from the ban counterterrorism operations by agencies other

than the Defense Department †" such as the CIA †" “if the

President determines that such operations are vital to the protection

of the United States or its citizens from terrorist attack.â€

 

In an Oct. 26 editorial, the Washington Post criticized Cheney for

“pursuing an initiative that may be unprecedented for an elected

official of the Executive Branch,†namely, “proposing that

Congress legally authorize human rights abuses by Americans.â€

 

The Post called Cheney “an open advocate of torture†and warned

that this advocacy is more than a theoretical defense of presidential

power.

 

“The CIA is holding an unknown number of prisoners in secret

detention centers,†where the White House has approved harsh

interrogation techniques for some detainees, including

“waterboarding,†which simulates drowning; mock executions; and

the deliberate withholding of pain medication, the Post said.

 

In a report in early October, the group Human Rights First reported

that more than 100 detainees have died in U.S. custody since 2002.

According to the group’s research, the Army has identified 27 of

these cases that were suspected or confirmed homicides, and at least

seven cases in which detainees were tortured to death.

 

Universal Accountability

 

The abusive practices of the U.S. government over the past few years

have led the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights to

conclude that “high-ranking U.S. officials, both military and

civilian, are responsible for war crimes.â€

 

CCR filed a criminal complaint with the German Federal Prosecutor’s

Office under the doctrine of universal jurisdiction, which provides

for the prosecution of suspected war criminals regardless of their

location or where the violations took place.

 

The complaint requested a comprehensive investigation into the role

played by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Attorney General Alberto

Gonzales, and nine other high-ranking U.S. officials in the torture

and abuse of detainees held in Iraqi prisons.

 

The complaint prompted Rumsfeld to cancel a trip to Germany, where he

was supposed to take part in a security conference in Munich. He made

clear to the German government that he would not attend unless it

quashed the legal action. When the Germans refused to do so, Rumsfeld

declined to attend.

 

It remains to be seen whether the German investigation leads to any

substantive revelations or indictments, but recent history offers the

Bush administration some cause for concern. A prosecution by a Spanish

court led to the indictment and house arrest of former Chilean

dictator Augusto Pinochet in December 2004, for crimes committed

during his 17-year rule.

 

Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger also has had to be

careful where he travels. In May 2001, the criminal brigade of the

French police served Kissinger with a summons. He was called to the

Palais de Justice the following day for questioning about the deaths

of five French citizens during Pinochet’s rule in Chile. Kissinger

declined the invitation and left Paris immediately.

 

In the spring of 2002, Spanish Judge Baltasar Garzon wanted to

question Kissinger for his role in supporting Pinochet. Chilean Judge

Juan Guzman also submitted 30 questions to Kissinger about his

relationship with Pinochet, questions which Kissinger didn’t answer.

Chilean courts issued a warning that they might seek his extradition

if he continued his refusal to respond.

 

Though Kissinger hasn’t been apprehended for his alleged role in

crimes committed in Chile, Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia, the legal moves

against him send a warning to U.S. officials that they are not

entirely immune from international law.

 

As documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney argued, “One of the advantages

of globalization is that it has brought people closer to the idea of

universal accountability.â€

 

The idea of universal accountability took a step forward last week,

when Mexico became the 100th nation to join the International Criminal

Court, which was established to prosecute war criminals around the

world. ICC president, Judge Phillippe Kirsch, said, “Universality

remains one of our key objectives.â€

 

A majority of countries now belong to the ICC, with only four Latin

American countries not yet members. All the European Union states,

except the Czech Republic, have ratified the treaty.

 

The United States, however, maintains its opposition to the

international court and continues to negotiate bilateral agreements

with other countries to protect Americans from being charged with war

crimes before the ICC. The Bush administration has cited fears of

“politically motivated†prosecutions.

 

Ignoring the Rules

 

Domestically, the Oct. 28 indictment of Libby †" Vice President

Cheney's chief of staff †" on charges of obstruction of justice,

perjury and making false statements to FBI agents is another reminder

to the White House that it can’t operate with complete impunity.

 

The rule of law †" as it is classically defined †" applies the same

legal standards to the powerful as well as the powerless. It does not

let the well-connected pick and choose which laws apply. It grants the

lowliest defendant the same constitutional protections as the

high-and-mighty.

 

Under the rule of law, anyone can be held accountable and everyone

gets to assert his or her rights. As Bush said after Libby’s

indictment, “each individual is presumed innocent and entitled to

due process and a fair trial.â€

 

However, Bush’s version of the rule of law has a special proviso: he

gets to decide if and when those legal protections are cast aside.

 

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