The Anti-Manichaeist

After Bush went to the Senate Floor personally, the Senate voted 51-48 to reject ”an amendment that would have restored the rights of foreign suspects deemed as enemy combatants and mostly held at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to challenge their detentions.”

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania had made the amendment, saying that ”the right to challenge one’s detention was fundamental in American law, and that the Supreme Court would reject the plan if the right were stripped.”

“This is wrong. It is unconstitutional. It is un-American,” said Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the committee’s top Democrat. “It is designed to ensure that the Bush-Cheney administration will never again be embarrassed by a United States Supreme Court decision reviewing its unlawful abuses of power.”

The arguments against the bill seem to hinge on the procedural clutter it would cause to deal with all those complaints by detainees.  And the long and short is that…

Bush managed to transform a series of setbacks into an apparent victory on an issue Republicans intend to use in campaigns that will determine control of Congress.

My personal thoughts are that it will require individuals willing to move the public on this issue.  One possibility that comes to mind would be for individuals to publicly submit themselves to the sorts of tortures that are now legal for our gov’t to use against “terrorist detainees”.  I think what we are doing needs to be made concrete in more people’s minds. 

dlw