ACLU Express Outrage As Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Into Law
Posted on October 17, 2006
image thanks to 186K per second
So Bush signs the bill into law that will allow terrorists to be interrogated harshly, as they should be, and allow many top Al Qaeda agents to be brought to justice through military tribunals. “It is a rare occasion when a president can sign a bill that he knows will save American lives,” Bush said.
President Bush signed legislation Tuesday authorizing tough interrogation of terror suspects and smoothing the way for trials before military commissions, calling it a “vital tool” in the war against terrorism.
Bush’s plan for treatment of the terror suspects became law just six weeks after he acknowledged that the CIA had been secretly interrogating suspected terrorists overseas and pressed Congress to quickly give authority to try them in military commissions.
“With the bill I’m about to sign, the men our intelligence officials believe orchestrated the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent people will face justice,” Bush said.
With this the ACLU are having a good old-fashioned moonbat hissy fit, calling it one of the worst civil liberties measures ever enacted in American history.
To highlight concerns with the act, the ACLU took out a full page advertisement in today’s Washington Post, calling itself “the most conservative organization in America.” Since its founding, the ACLU has fought to conserve the system of checks and balances and defend the Bill of Rights.
I must admit this was pretty clever of the ACLU to call itself the most conservative organization in America. It is good to see they at least have a sense of humor about things. However, the rest of the ACLU’s whining about “torture” such as shirt grabbing of terrorist scum to get critical info is more along the lines of the ACLU we know and love to hate.
The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, ACLU Executive Director:
“With his signature, President Bush enacts a law that is both unconstitutional and un-American. This president will be remembered as the one who undercut the hallmark of habeas in the name of the war on terror. Nothing separates America more from our enemies than our commitment to fairness and the rule of law, but the bill signed today is an historic break because it turns Guantánamo Bay and other U.S. facilities into legal no-man’s-lands.
“The president can now – with the approval of Congress – indefinitely hold people without charge, take away protections against horrific abuse, put people on trial based on hearsay evidence, authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses, and slam shut the courthouse door for habeas petitions. Nothing could be further from the American values we all hold in our hearts than the Military Commissions Act.”
Pirate’s Cove has an excellent rant:
Yet again, the ACLU proves that they do not understand who the Constitution applies to. A hint for them: it applies to Americans and those applying for citizenship, not foreigners caught fighting in Afghanistan wearing no uniform who would be happy to cut American heads off with rusty saws.
Nance Pelosi, the presumptive next Speaker of the House, shows that Braying Asses do not get the War On Terror:
“Democrats want terrorists who kill Americans tried, convicted and punished through a constitutionally sound process that will be upheld on appeal. That goal will not be achieved by the bill President Bush signed into law today.”
In other words, given house arrest and aroma therapy.
Also, it is funny how many Moonbats think things like this apply to them. Have they renounced their US citizenship, and gone to fight against the US on a battlefield?
Once again the ACLU think they are the ones to define “American Values”. Thank God that isn’t true. The tough interrogation techniques which were revealed to include things such as belly slaps, loud music, and shirt grabbing are far from torture and have proven to be vital tools in getting information from top terror leaders. The ACLU’s outrage that its prospects for enemy combatant future plaintiffs has been cut is what it really comes down to. People caught on the battlefields have no reason to tie up the American courts. This bill is a much needed tool in our fight against Islamofacist fanatics, and will no doubt result in saving American lives. But if its good for America, you can count on the ACLU to be against it.
» Filed Under ACLU, News, War On Terror
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11 Responses to “ACLU Express Outrage As Bush Signs Terror Interrogation Into Law”
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Once again the democrats show they prefer to handle terrorism as a criminal act and not an act of war.
I haven’t had a chance to read the final bill, but it appears that many of the significant provisions are not limited strictly to non-citizens.
Jay, please cite the portion of this bill that defines “unlawful combatant” as being a “foreigner” “on a battlefield.”
I know you didn’t write the above quotes, but you did reference them, so I believe the burden is on you to demonstrate the the provisions are limited to the situations that you the quotes allege.
This isn’t as laughable as you think. If you equate “conservative” with “republican”, they rarely qualify as conservative, but the true definition of conservative is “Favoring traditional views and values; tending to oppose change.”
By this definition, it truly is “conservative” of them to oppose this bill.
Jeff, why not read the bill?
What defines an unlawful combatant…for those that think this bill takes away habeus corpus for everyone..that is ridiculous! And no, Bush does not get to decide who is an unlawful combatant…a tribunal assigned that job must do so.
Watch for the word alien to help define things here:
By the way, alien is an anonym of citizen.
Oh wait…another lie of the ACLU exposed. They said, “…authorize trials that can sentence people to death based on testimony literally beaten out of witnesses”…
Thanks for the link. I didn’t have time earlier, but I’ve read it now.
The bill is better than I thought, but I still have a few concerns.
Eh, kinda. The language is pretty open ended.
The executive has full authority to create the tribunal that decides the defendant’s status. That could be abused very easily.
The constitution covers legal aliens as well as citizens. It seems like certain provisions of this act would abridge the rights of an accused legal alien.
Language like this is scary. What if the law isn’t followed? What if portions of this aren’t constitutional? Heck, how can it even be constitutional for the two branches to neuter the entire judicial branch?
Well actually if you read the Constitution, the legislative power does have the check over the judicial to limit its jursidiction…which is exactly what your quote displays.
We must have checks on the judicial branch as well.
Jay,
They have a whole lot more control of the judiciary than just controlling their jurisdiction.
They can impeach a sitting judge which basically means they can override any judicial decision they want by impeaching enough of the justices that made it, and then having the President appoint ones that will make the opposite decision.
They determine who sits on the federal courts and therefore send a message of what is acceptable and what is not.
They can regulate the federal judiciary so they can change the number of Justices on the Supreme Court and other courts, though they can not change the judges pay.
They can restructure the lesser courts which if you have ever been at a job that has restructured you will know it can make quite a difference.
They also control the purse strings on the judiciary and unless they want to make their decision from a cave, or an abandoned warehouse, can influence things.
In short Congress chooses not to control the judiciary for their own reasons which are probably political in nature.
Jeff Molby,
“The constitution covers legal aliens as well as citizens.”
You are incorrect because it specifically states that one of it’s purposes is to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” . It leave the protection of aliens either legal or illegal, up to the mercy of Congress.
This is a security issue that involves an attack on U.S. soil, so Congress has the right to withdraw the protection of habeas corpus from even American citizens according to the U.S. Constitution. The question is whether or not the attack and related security threat is sufficient provocation for them to do so, and to what extent such protection should be removed.