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Bush Rules
Mark Benjamin and Walter Shapiro write in Salon: "Despite the far-reaching implications of the legislation, the Senate galleries were virtually empty throughout the day, while most news coverage treated the congressional debate as of far more transient importance than the recent television confrontation between Bill Clinton and Fox TV host Chris Wallace. Many legislators had only a shaky understanding of what was in the Senate bill since its provisions were still being revised, after consultation with the White House, Tuesday night. As California Democratic Sen. Dianne Feinstein complained in a Tuesday interview, 'I don't understand this rush other than to make it very political. This is a huge thing that our people are going to have to live by . . . It is important not only that it works, but that it also be just.'"
Dahlia Lithwick , writing in Slate, marvels that senators working in avowed ignorance of what precisely the administration has been doing are now approving legislation that they themselves don't understand.
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"For the five years since 9/11, we have been in the dark in this country. This president has held detainees in secret prisons and had them secretly tortured using secret legal justifications. Those held in secret at Guantanamo Bay include innocent men, as do those who have been secretly shipped off to foreign countries and brutally tortured there. That was a shame on this president.
"But passage of the new detainee legislation will be a different sort of watershed. Now we are affirmatively asking to be left in the dark. Instead of torture we were unaware of, we are sanctioning torture we'll never hear about. Instead of detainees we didn't care about, we are authorizing detentions we'll never know about. Instead of being misled by the president, we will be blind and powerless by our own choice. And that is a shame on us all."
Here's just one example of what's in the bill that few people are aware of. Yale professor Bruce Ackerman writes in a Los Angeles Times op-ed: "Buried in the complex Senate compromise on detainee treatment is a real shocker, reaching far beyond the legal struggles about foreign terrorist suspects in the Guantanamo Bay fortress. The compromise legislation, which is racing toward the White House, authorizes the president to seize American citizens as enemy combatants, even if they have never left the United States. And once thrown into military prison, they cannot expect a trial by their peers or any other of the normal protections of the Bill of Rights.
"This dangerous compromise not only authorizes the president to seize and hold terrorists who have fought against our troops 'during an armed conflict,' it also allows him to seize anybody who has 'purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States.' This grants the president enormous power over citizens and legal residents. They can be designated as enemy combatants if they have contributed money to a Middle Eastern charity, and they can be held indefinitely in a military prison."
The Coverage
Tom Brune writes in Newsday with a look at the big picture: "Under detainee legislation Congress is poised to enact, President George W. Bush will not be required to dramatically change much about the way he has gone about pursuing, capturing, questioning and imprisoning suspected terrorists, experts said yesterday.
"In fact, experts said, the president's hand actually would be strengthened because for the first time he would have the explicit backing of Congress, which former Justice Department attorney David Rivkin called 'a political buy-in' to Bush's approach to the war on terror. . . .
"Duke University law professor Scott Silliman said he believes the bill actually enhances the president's authority, by shielding the CIA from charges for any past abuses and allowing Bush to define the tough alternative interrogation methods the CIA can use.
"Yet, if enacted into law, as expected, lawyers for detainees already have talked about challenging it in the courts, creating the prospect of a return to the Supreme Court, with the outcome uncertain."
But in most of today's papers, it was just another day on the Hill.
Carl Hulse and Kate Zernike write in the New York Times: "Congress took major steps on Wednesday toward establishing a new system for interrogating and trying terror suspects as the House approved legislation sought by President Bush and the Senate defeated efforts to alter the measure.
