Hope and change
President Obama told human rights advocates at the White House on Wednesday that he was mulling the need for a “preventive detention” system that would establish a legal basis for the United States to incarcerate terrorism suspects who are deemed a threat to national security but cannot be tried, two participants in the private session said.
Obama seems to be a continuation of Bush. Hell, even Glenn Greenwald is noticing that too.
May 22nd, 2009 at 9:04 am
I *twitch* hate to say it but the UN *retch* should be on the lead of this one.
The UN is “behind” the agreement that defined combatant versus noncombatant, but they left it at the point that someone actively fighting or participating in the field during war while not in uniform could be summarily executed, “behind” meaning they didn’t exist at the time but the previous parallel to it’s function. There’s a giant hole in Hague and Geneva concerning this.
Alternatively we could just follow the standard and pop ’em all in the back of the head when the battle’s over, but then we lose the intelligence data.
Now, where the fear lies with the “preventative detention” scheme is making sure that language is included excluding it from ever being applied to American citizens.
May 22nd, 2009 at 11:00 am
Obe Wan Kinobe says: “This is not the change you were hoping for.”
May 22nd, 2009 at 2:52 pm
He’s trying to figure out what to do with all those veterans returning from Iraq.
May 22nd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
“preventative detention” meaning us. Any citizen that disagrees with government policy. Problem is it will be applied to American citizens. The DHS already deemed us enemies of the state so why not go all the way? After all he needs a new system for all the oath keepers in the military and “right wing extremists”.
May 22nd, 2009 at 8:00 pm
There’s a huge non-sequitur in here: “suspects who can’t be tried”
OK, as that regards ANYONE who lives under the Constitution, you can’t be a “suspect” unless a crime has been committed. If there’s no crime, there’s no suspect and no basis for detention of any kind (except for kooks, medically). That’s where drstrangegun’s protection is: we simply have to make sure that this only applies off our shores, where the Constitution doesn’t count. It can’t apply here, that would directly violate the 4th Amendment, since without a crime, no warrant can be written and NO probable cause exists.
Over the years, the Feds have defined some perfectly ordinary behavior as crime (see “hate speech”), but unless we want to give the dot.gov the right to inter us like they did to Japanese-Americans after Pearl Harbor, we’d better see to it that this only applies during war, and off our shores.
May 22nd, 2009 at 10:29 pm
“suspects who can’t be tried”
Remember that old saw:”You have nothing to fear if you haven’t done anything wrong.”
It’s now expired.