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Simon Phipps's personal commentary

American Desaparecidos? [SocioPolitico]

Yesterday's lead in the Washington Post (if you need a log-in to read it, try the printer version) makes for terrifying reading. Try this for size:

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

and:

Probably the most hotly disputed element of the administration's approach is its contention that the president alone can designate individuals, including U.S. citizens, as enemy combatants, who can be detained with no access to lawyers or family members unless and until the president determines, in effect, that hostilities between the United States and that individual have ended.

Now, the paranoid amongst us have already been noting the accumulating evidence that the Bush administration wants to act like 007 (except without the sophistication or, indeed, the martinis) or Blofeld. But what's especially frightening about this report is that, for the first time that I've seen, the admininistration has gone on the record describing and defending the actions instead of pretending that any evidence for their use is exceptional or exaggerated. This seems to put the US one step away from finally trashing Franklin's comment that "They that give up liberty for safety deserve neither" and creating more American Desaparecidos. Meanwhile, while making the law more exacting in some areas, the US Attorney-General is encouraging government officials to bend and break it when the Freedom of information act is involved.

posted at 4:53 PM (UK) | |