Juan Cole is rocking, today!

[Dhalgren]

He has a section on his website dealing with Gitmo and talking about Biden wanting it closed and why it was established in the first place.

"Once it was established that these Muslims could be treated in this way, Bush would be a sort of absolute monarch over all such detainees (remember that some of them might be innocent for all we know) And then gradually others could be added to the category of the "rights-less." The Patriot Act II envisages stripping Americans of their citizenship for supporting terrorist organizations. Without citizenship, they would not be afforded the protections of the Constitution. And gradually, in this way, the American nationalist Right would be able to circumscribe that pesky Bill of Rights, which so interferes with Executive (i.e. Royal) Privilege. The legal minds on the American Right have clearly been annoyed with the Bill of Rights for some time and the speed with which they foisted the so-called PATRIOT Act (makes it kinda hard to oppose, calling it that, huh?) on an unwary Congress, which had no time to read it, suggests that they had a lot of these ideas on the shelf ready to go.
Guantanamo Prison should be closed because it was conceived as the beginning of the end of the American Republic."

I trust Dr. Cole more than any other commentator regarding what is really happening in Iraq and the Middle East - he knows his stuff.

I don't agree with everything Juan says, but when he his dead on, he is dead on.

[JohnyCanuck]

1. Land of the free and home of the brave becomes a fond memory now

Police State USA
by Dr. Norman Livergood.

<snip>

The signs are unmistakable; the Bush regime is waging a "war against dissent," rapidly moving the United States to a total police state.

American citizens had assumed that the Patriot Act and the FBI Guidelines assured that only foreign aliens could be placed in military detention centers, unprotected by the U.S. constitution. But on June 10, 2002, an American citizen was declared by Bush, without due process, to be an "enemy combatant" and to have no constitutional protections. This American citizen was thrown into a naval brig in South Carolina.

Of course, Abdullah al Muhajir, a U.S. citizen also known as Jose Padilla, has been branded a "known terrorist" with ties to al Qaeda, so almost no one is speaking out against this abrogation of constitutional procedures. A reputed "terrorist" who is said to have been building a "dirty bomb," Padilla, a New York-born man of Puerto Rican descent, is assumed to be beyond the pale, not worthy of judicial prerogatives. But what happens when Bush or the FBI brands you as a "terrorist" because you appear to be a dissenter, denying you your constitutional rights as a U.S. citizen?

Attorney General Ashcroft explicitly stated that terrorists do not deserve constitutional protections. all they deserve are "courts" of conviction, not justice. Unfortunately, in this creeping police state, who does and doesn't receive justice is determined by Bush and his underlings.

http://www.new-enlightenment.com/police_state.htm

[Dhalgren]

2. This is what we are really fighting against.

People have got to realize that it isn't "just politics". When Bush and his gang are called fascists it isn't just hyperbole, it's real. These aren't just "crazy jingoists" we are dealing with, they are hardcore fascists, who aim at the total subjugation of the nation. We are completely out of luck if we view our current situation in any other light...

[enough]

3. Clear as a bell.

"... any attempt to create a category of human beings to whom the protections of the law do not apply is an attempt to undermine the Republic."

[Dhalgren]

4. That statement is so succinct and true

that it is hard for me to understand how any one could fail to grasp it.