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Petronius -> RE: Jose Padilla convicted (8/18/2007 5:50:21 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: luckydog1
This is new shit to deal with, and it takes time. The procedures have not been figured out yet.
There is no "new shit." There's only old crime. The procedures were long ago figured out. They're listed in Federal Law and the code of federal procedures.
Right wing authoritarians throughout history have invented the idea of something new or something especially horrible to rationalize their attacks on freedom.
quote:
Congress needs to set up a system to deal with non state, non Geneva covered people making war on the USA.
First, wars are conducted by, and only conducted by, nations. There are no simple "people making war on the USA."
Second, Congress has already covered the issue: there are no "non state, non Geneva covered people." Various Geneva Conventions cover everybody. Under them, persons involved in conflicts are either protected from criminal prosecution as lawful combatants, or can be prosecuted under the regular criminal laws. There's no such category as an "unlawful combatant" who has no protection at law.
Thus the broad National Alliance conspiracy that led to the terrorist bombing of the Oklahoma Federal Building may mark the members and supporters as "unlawful combatants." It doesn't justify holding them outside the USA; it does justify trying them for conspiracy just as Padilla was tried.
The Catholic clergy supporting abortion clinic bombing (as opposed to the clergy that did not) can't be "rendered" to a third country; they can be tried for supporting terrorism just as Muslim clergy are tried.
The Klansmen who bomb churches can't be denied their rights as "unlawful combatants;" they just get tried under regular criminal law since they lack protection as Prisoners of War.
We don't need special laws and procedures. The existing ones work just fine.
Yet despite all the talk from Bush supporters of a "war on terrorism" and the need for new laws, new procedures, "rendering" and the like, I don't know a single one who says "let's get all the terrorists including the abortion clinic bombers, the neo-Nazis, and the Klan."
On the other hand, I think it increasingly clear that the propaganda hype from the Bush supporters about a "liberal / Muslim" conspiracy is nothing more than the Nazi's "communist / Jewish" conspiracy updated by modern authoritarians to terrify modern paranoids.
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