By OcJim
President Barack Obama just signed the National Defense Authorization bill which will continue the funding of our troops stationed throughout the world, but what is attached to it raises my ire and disgust.. It is something totally unrelated and disconnected from the function of the defense bill, the continued authorization to imprison — under military custody — anyone considered an enemy to the United States, but not only to imprison him or her, but also to hold the accused without charges of a crime or without a day in court.
Since the first Patriot Act, hastily passed 45 days after 9/11, surveillance activities have been ramped up as never before, giving the FBI the authority to issued National Security Letters (NSLs) without court orders to obtain personal information through phone records, computer records, credit history, and banking history.
Between 2003 and 2006, the FBI issued 194,499 NSLs that led to 1 terrorist-related conviction, something that would have occurred without the Patriot Act. Over 34,000 law enforcement and intelligence agents had access to these phone numbers.
Now the purpose of the Patriot Act, and this latest power given to the president, is to protect us against terrorists. Right?
Wrong, sucker!
Almost 4,000 of the “Sneak and Peek” searches the Patriot Act allowed in 2010 were 76% drug-related, 24% other, and < 1% terror-related. All of that violation of our rights for an almost non-existent yield of terrorist targets. In the overlap of “drug-related” and present in the “other” are activists involved in democratic movements, demonstrating against violation of human rights by government and corporations, for example.
Are you getting the picture? What is the Patriot Act really being used for?
In effect, the Patriot Act has given this power to President George W. Bush and President Barack Obama since passage of the first Patriot Act in 2001. The Defense Authorization Bill makes it permanent law. Both the Patriot Act and the current bill violate the Bill of Rights, specifically the 4th through the 6th and the 8th Amendments.
The 4th Amendment guards against illegal search and seizures, the 5th, against imprisonment without charges against you, the 6th, for a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury, the 8th, forbids excessive bail or fines and cruel and unusual punishment.
The Bill of Rights has been upheld – save a few paranoid instances — for all accused throughout our history. Times of war is an exception for combatants in the 5th Amendment but torture has never been condoned by our leaders, something forbidden under the 8th Amendment, except under George Bush and Barack Obama. Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Bush are still free to brag about and defend torture even now.
Apart from accused non-American terrorists, we still have torture and suspension of rights for American citizens, imprisoned US Army soldier, Bradley Manning, for example. Held for 11 months in solitary confinement, stripped naked for part of that time, he has not been allowed visitors. He has been accused of leaking classified material to Wikileaks, much regarding embarrassing information for the Bush and Obama administrations, one involving American soldiers murdering innocent Iraqi citizens. It appears that much of the information was classified; how much political and how much harmful to the US is not known. The fact remains that solitary confinement for 23 hours out of 24 is torture, and no trial for 11 months under those conditions violates the 6th Amendment.
Now with the latest bill that President Obama signed, any of us is a prime target for indefinite imprisonment with possible torture and no speedy trial. Actually the laws calls for no trial.
Let me give you a hypothetcal, actually quite possible happening, for any average citizen:
Rita and Amita are single parents, living side by side in a duplex in Davenport, Iowa. They have helped each other out by babysitting each other’s kids when in a pinch, Amita took Rita’s toddler, Brian, when Rita had to take her older son, Fred, to the hospital when he broke his arm, and Rita kept Amita’s child, Natar, when Amita had to pick up her unemployment check to buy groceries.
Amita showed Rita a picture of her older son, Batar, who was still in Iran with Amita’s ex-husband. One day Amita came crying, saying that her uncle offered to send Batar to the US after her ex-husband died. She was short $300 for plane fare. Grateful for Amita’s past help, Rita supplied the money, giving Amita a cashier’s check that same day.
Two weeks later, the military police arrested Rita and Amita and hauled them off to a brig in a military installation. No one was told what happened to them. A courtesy call was made to grandparents about the location of the children but no other disclosures were provided.
No charges were filed and both languished in prison. The military police considered Rita an enemy combatant because she gave $300 to a terrorist group in Nigeria through Amita. No one listened to Rita’s explanation. Their children became wards of the court. Information gathered was through FBI surveillance against Amita because she is Arab and Rita, because she is a friend.
Few of us have been impacted by these infringements on our rights, but that doesn’t mean it will not happen, especially considering the unconstitutional surveillance traffic it already justifies, and the fact we are still doing it ten years after 9/11.
Our government is still violating the Bill of Rights in the US Constitution, and by a Democrat who condemned Bush’s violation of our rights, and a constitutional scholar to boot.
How bitterly ironic is that?
