From our ABC

US Senate passes new detainee laws
The US Senate has passed controversial new guidelines on detaining and prosecuting "war on terror" suspects, over the objections of opponents who say the measure seriously curtails detainees' rights.

The laws will allow new military tribunals to be set up to try detainees being held in the Guantanamo Bay prison camp in Cuba, including Australian David Hicks.

The Senate vote, which was passed 65 to 34, comes a day after its approval by the House of Representatives.

It also follows a personal appeal from US President George W Bush to lawmakers on Capitol Hill for the swift passage of the legislation.

The legislation has become a major battleground in the national debate, pitting measures to safeguard the country from terrorism against the need to protect civil liberties.
---------
etc

Yes Gus & it would seem that this sad & disgusting event has roused considerable public objection, even in bushit’s fearful land of latter day fundamentalist Christian facsistas ………

‘Here’s what happens when this irresponsible Congress railroads a profoundly important bill to serve the mindless politics of a midterm election: the Bush administration uses Republicans’ fear of losing their majority to push through ghastly ideas about antiterrorism that will make American troops less safe and do lasting damage to our 217-year-old nation of laws – while actually doing nothing to protect the nation from terrorists. Democrats betray their principles to avoid last-minute attack ads. Our democracy is the big loser.

Republicans say Congress must act right now to create procedures for charging and trying terrorists – because the men accused of plotting the 911 attacks are available for trial. That’s pure propaganda. Those men could have been tried and convicted long ago, but President Bush chose not to. He held them in illegal detention, had them questioned in ways that will make real trials very hard, and invented a transparently illegal system of kangaroo courts to convict them.

It was only after the Supreme Court issued the inevitable ruling striking down Mr Bush’s shadow penal system that he adopted his tone of urgency. It serves a cynical goal: Republican strategists think they can win this fall, not by passing a good law but by forcing Democrats to vote against a bad one so they could be made to look soft on terrorism.’

Rushing Off A Cliff

our way of life …..

‘The US Senate is cutting a deal with President Bush to make America a banana republic. Last week, three senators reached an agreement with the White House that will de facto permit the CIA to continue torturing people around the world. And the deal will prevent anyone – including Bush administration officials – from being held liable for the torture.

This is latest sign that our elected representatives in Washington believe that the federal government deserves absolute power over everyone in the world.

Former Secretary of State Colin Powell warned recently that Bush’s efforts to gut the Geneva Conventions would cause the world to "doubt the moral basis of our fight against terrorism.”’

The United States of Barbarism

laying down with dogs …..

‘Consequently, the United States now presents itself as what amounts to the globe's largest and most powerful rogue state - a nuclear-armed superpower capable of projecting military force to the furthest corners of the earth, acting utterly without legal or moral constraint whenever the president proclaims it necessary. The idea that striking such a posture on the world stage will serve our long-term interests is daft. American power has, for decades, rested crucially on the sense that the United States can be trusted and relied upon, on the belief that we use our power primarily to defend the community of liberal states and the liberal rules by which they conduct themselves rather than to undermine them.

An America prepared to casually toss out the most fundamental principles of international humanitarian diplomacy - along with basic human decency and the rule of law as side helpings - is not a country others are going to want to cooperate with. It will constitute a threat to their interests and values. Nor will it be a country blessed with a lot of accurate intelligence. As Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky has pointed out, an intelligence service shot-through with demands that it torture people "degenerates into a playground for sadists," the service itself "an army of butchers" skilled at terrorizing its victims but hardly capable of unravelling complicated investigations.’

The United States Of Torture