House Passes Military Commissions Act, With Authorization for Arbitrary Indefinite Detention

Here's the bill, H.R. 6166 (pdf), was passed by the House today, complete with authorization for arbitrary, indefinite detention. Here is the rundown on how each House member voted, including some notable defectors from both parties from the party lines.

Some Constitutional law experts have already emphasized the point that this bill, as it was changed in the House before passage, appears to give administration-appointed combatant status review tribunals authority to designate anyone at all an unlawful enemy combatant, making anyone vulnerable to indefinite, arbitrary detention.

Look at sections 948a and 948d(c), on pages 3 and 8 on the above pdf file. An enemy combatant is defined in either of two ways, the second being "a person who, before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, has been determined to be an unlawful enemy combatant by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense." (Section 948a.)

Once that determination is made, it is dispositive, i.e. it is settled or determined as final: "A finding, whether before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense that a person is an unlawful enemy combatant is dispositive for purposes of jurisdiction for trial by military commission under this chapter." (Section 948d(c).)

So an enemy combatant is anyone the tribunal appointed by the administration says is an enemy combatant - end of story. Other parts of the act specifically remove the right to speedy trial, etc. Presto, there you go: authorization for arbitrary, indefinite detention.

Is it any wonder that Charles Taylor adopted the GOP's "enemy combatant" rhetoric to crack down on dissidents in Liberia, to the complete neglect of law and order? Such a nice fit for dictatorships.

The administration and its mouthpieces like John Cornyn love to accuse anyone who worries about any standards of law and order of coddling the enemies, without ever acknowledging a possible distinction between being accused of being a terrorist and actually being a terrorist. I guess the wording in the House bill just accurately reflects that equivalence in the minds of its proponents: accusation equals guilt - the same standard all to familiar from the Inquisition and the trials for witchcraft.

Never mind that a large majority of the people held at Guantanamo were not captured by U.S. forces at all, but turned in by locals in exchange for hefty bounties, and many of whom have been definitively shown and acknowledged to have been perfectly innocent. This bill cures what the administration has apparently seen as the grave defect of those persons' innocence coming to light.

Although the House has already passed this grave offense to the core ideals of America, the Senate is taking it up for debate. The current Senate version, though bad enough, still does not have the worst provisions that were added to the House bill in its final maneuvers. Now is the time to rain down our concerns on the members of the Senate. Call them, email them, fax them, let them know the abuses this bill would allow, and urge them not to pass it - either to make dramatic changes, or far better, just to hold the thing up for the short while it would take to keep this odious bill from going anywhere before the coming recess. I've already called my senators. Now is the time. It's hard to think of a single worse blemish on the history of the U.S. House of Representatives than its passage of this bill today. Don't let the Senate make the same mistake.