CBS' Mitchell called Supreme Court decision on detainees "a victory ... in the war on terror"
On the April 2 edition of the CBS Evening News, the Evening News Sunday anchor Russ Mitchell said that the Supreme Court's refusal to hear an appeal from Guantánamo Bay terrorism suspects, who want to challenge their detention in court, "handed a victory to the Bush administration in the war on terror." But while the decision leaves standing, at this point, a provision in the Military Commissions Act of 2006 denying the right of noncitizens to challenge their detention -- a measure sought by Bush and approved in 2006 by the then-Republican controlled Congress -- to characterize it as a "victory ... in the war on terror" is to take a position on the merits of the bill and the Bush administration policy on fighting terrorism. In fact, the bill's contribution to U.S. efforts to fight terrorism is a matter very much in dispute. Many would argue that the denial of habeas corpus rights authorized in the bill ultimately harms U.S. efforts to fight terrorism, in that it "undermines America's moral authority," "is not what a great and good and powerful nation should be doing," and exposes Americans captured abroad to a comparable denial of basic civil and human rights.
As The Washington Post reported, the court's "decision leaves intact, at least for now, a measure passed at the administration's urging last year when Congress still was in Republican hands that denies Guantanamo Bay detainees the right to such habeas corpus petitions." But in issuing its decision, several "[j]ustices signaled ... that the high court eventually may hear the cases, filed by two groups of Guantanamo detainees." While Bush administration officials have reportedly stated they are "very pleased" with the court's decision, the Post also noted in its April 3 article that "[d]etainee advocates and several congressional Democrats criticized the court's decision":
"All we are asking for is the most fundamental ... right to go into court and say, 'Why are you holding me?' " said Michael Ratner, president of the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many of the detainees. "If they had a full and fair hearing, there would be hardly anyone left at Guantanamo."
About 385 detainees are imprisoned there now, and only a handful have been charged.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) issued a statement urging his Senate colleagues to pass a "bipartisan bill" to "restore habeas rights to non-citizens, including 12 million legal permanent residents living in this country." Leahy stated: "The Court's decision today underscores the need for Congress to act quickly to restore the fundamental habeas protections that were rolled back as part of last year's Military Commissions Act," adding, "Congress cannot sit back and wait for the courts to fix this problem." Leahy continued:
It is disappointing that there are not yet the four justices needed for the Supreme Court to consider the crucial issue of whether our Constitution allows Congress to deny detainees the habeas corpus rights that have been a cornerstone of American liberty since the founding of this Nation. I hope that the Court does decide before too long to consider the constitutionality of the habeas-stripping provision of last year's Military Commissions Act.
According to the Post, Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (PA) -- who, with Leahy, co-sponsored legislation to restore habeas rights -- also "called on his colleagues yesterday to 'act promptly' to adopt their bill."
Further, as Media Matters for America has previously noted, when the Senate passed the Republican-backed bill governing the detention, interrogation, and prosecution of terrorism suspects in 2006, numerous congressional Democrats explicitly disputed Bush's claim that it would make the country safer. For instance, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) predicted the bill would undermine U.S. efforts to fight terrorism, saying, "When we're sloppy and cut corners, we are undermining those very virtues of America that will lead us to success in winning this war." Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) pointed out that military lawyers have expressed concern about the effect of the legislation on the future treatment of captured U.S. soldiers: "We must remember what the Army Judge Advocate General told me at a Judiciary Committee hearing this summer: that the United States should set an example for the world, and that we must carefully consider the effect on the way our own soldiers will be treated." And Leahy asserted that, by approving the bill, "we allow the terrorists to win by doing to ourselves what they could never do and abandon the principles for which so many Americans today and through our history have fought and sacrificed."
From the April 2 edition of the CBS Evening News:
MITCHELL: Also today, the Supreme Court issued a unanimous ruling in another environmental case. The court backed a move to force utilities to install pollution control equipment at more than two dozen older power plants fueled by coal.
The justices also handed a victory to the Bush administration in the war on terror, rejecting an appeal from terrorism suspects at Guantánamo Bay who want to challenge their detention in court.
CBS really goofed up here. How could CBS agree that this is good for the war on terror. Especial since there is no war. Every one knows 9/11 was faked by Bush so he could invade Iraq for the oil. I mean Rosie said so.
Rosie doesnt define lefty opinion next strawman.
Solon
Oh come now, you know fire cannot melt steel.
Rosie is like my hero.
Great, send her fanmail, she STILL isnt a spokesperson for the left and your post was STILL a strawman argument
Actually the Supreme Court helped the terrorists.
It gives the enemy talking points as to why one should not talk to Americans.
The terrorists can scare potential informers by reminding them that Americans will throw you in prison beat you torture you and won't even let you know why they are holding you in prison. Scary Americans stay away from them.
The Supreme Court is just another heck of a job Brownie.
I wonder how Iran's British prisoners are being treated right now...
Better than the Gitmo "enemy combatant detainees"?
(I also wonder if I now owe Fox News royalties for the use of their patented question mark technique.)
Does Deeznuts think Iran is better than America? some say "yes"!
To be honest, this sounds more like a misstatement than an editorial position on the part of CBS. That said, I'm glad that Media Matters is covering this statement, as it has too long been accepted without skepticism that a victory for the President is good for the country.
You're right. This is a political victory for Bush and his fellow troglodytes, but it is not a victory for the Constitution, the rule of law, or America's standing in the world. I know that he-man war mongers don't care about such quaint notions, but they are supposed to be what our soldiers are fighting for. We're supposed to be the good guys, aren't we?
Habeas Corpus is older than the Constitution. It goes back to before the Magna Carta. I dont see how ANY country can claim to have a fair legal system without it
The Habeas Corpus secures every man here, alien or citizen, against everything which is not law, whatever shape it may assume.” –Thomas Jefferson to A. H. Rowan, 1798. ME 10:61
“Freedom of the person under the protection of the habeas corpus I deem [one of the] essential principles of our government.” –Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural Address, 1801. ME 3:322
"I consider [trial by jury] as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, 1789. ME 7:408, Papers 15:269
I just think this a sad day for America. What ever happened to our lofty principles?
Isn't this issue about ripeness at this point? I was under the impression that the SC decided not to hear this case because all other avenues had not be exhausted at this point?
Yes. This was not a decision with respect to the Constitutional right of habeas corpus. This was merely a decision with respect to when an appeal to SCOTUS is appropriate. SCOTUS is saying "not yet."
Have to agree; the report seems merely to be pointing out that the decision is a win for the administration's way of prosecuting its agenda. I don't see anything here to the effect that it is intrinsically good for the nation.
If Bush likes it, it's good for the war on terror. The Republicans are strong on national security. Guiliani is the Hero of 9/11.
Somebody stop me...
Maybe it's a typo. It is a victory in our "war of terror". Thank you, Borat.
This habit of reporting the Commander in Chimp getting his way as an objective victory in the war has been happening more often lately.
Reminds me of the Terry Schiavo case, where anything to the advantage of the side that wanted to keep her body hooked up to the machines was reported as a "Victory for Terry".
this is what bush has brought us to. being seen as an arrogant bully who does what it wants. i think everyone would allow some leeway on this issue if he were not making the claim that he is the absolute regent. he and he alone decides. on the other hand the two environmental decisions were welcome news.
I like Rosie, I do, but she isn't the most factual individual in the world. She is a comedian, she doesn't know everything, and in some instances i fear she isn't intellectually curious enough. But its absurd to view her as a speaker of the left, though i must say 80% of what she says I tend to agree with.
Her view on the melting of steel is true and false. Yes it is true that fire cannot melt steel. The temperatures required to reduce steel to a liquid state are much higher than what can be provided by a trash bin fire or a rocket-fuel fire (as was the case with 9/11). However, steeldoes loose considerable strength when heated to high temperatures. With the aid of a blow torch, steel can be heated to a proper temperature so as to bend and screw and loop an flatten (with th ehelp of a mallet) into any shape one pleases.
Being a Building technology student, I know that if steel becomes too hot, it will bend and collapse under the weight of the concrete floors above. One reason steel is fireproofed is to slowdown this heating process so that we havetime to put out the fire before the steelbecomes too hot.In the case of a burning airplane, less time is available than usual.
It is a very common misunderstanding that steel is completely safe from the affects of high temperatures.
*sniff*sniff*
I smell a concern troll.
Please do not start me on the question of the undeniably melted steel - still molten 4 weeks after the collapse - in the sub-basement! And the few seconds of jet-fueled fire warming those 56-in x 33-in masses of steel even a single degree, at the core of each beam; or the impossibility of "content-fueled" fire even reaching 7-800-degree temps for more than minutes in any area, although so remote from the central core columns, that heating those would be about the same as your fireplace heating the moon. I really don't wish to have to re-educate those who have accepted the media dismissal of all doubts or questions about the physics or engineering of 9/11, one at a time, forever.
You aren't re-educating someone who has accepted what the media says. You are trying to change the education of someone whose job it will be to design, build, and plan the next generation of buildings within cities.
I will ask you one question. If fire could not become hot enough to loose tensile strength, then why fireproof it. It is usually considered improbable enough to not expect a buildign to withstand a nuclear attack, so, if not to, prevent damage to a building via unctrollable fire, why fireproof steel?
We fireproof steel because fire can reduce the strength of steel to teh point of bending and buckling under the weight of the floors above. IF we fireproof for the case of generic "cigarette in the trash pin test", where we assume that most fires in a skyrise would start from someone throwing a cigarette in a waste basket, then surely the continuous burning of rocket fuel should warrant concern.
Also, if you do not believe that prolonged exposure to rocket-fuel ablaze is enough to challenge the structural integrity of steel. Not just the massage column structure but also the beam/girder structure, then why would an explosion, which is essentially similiar to rocket-fuel burning but only the time factor is decreased to provide an immediate impulse, why would an explosive do the trick?
LYN19875371,
Obviously, your education in "building technology" is not yet complete. Surely you will be taught that "prolonged" exposure to fire means that it would take more than an hour to cause a 110-story building to collapse in perfect free-fall. Jesus- you can't really believe what you wrote!
It took about 45 minutes for the tower to go down. Not quite an hour. One explanation is that the affects of immediate crash resulted in layers of fireproofing blasting off the main support column that was struck.
The towers did not collapse instantly, it took a while.
This isn't about ideology its about fact.
lyn, it's funny how the obvious is rejected, and the theory for which there is no proof is accepted. the central columns were obviously affected by the crashes of the planes, because they were located near the emergency staircases. those staircases were obviously badly damaged and blocked, and the proof is that almost without exception the people in the floors above the crashes were not able to escape. but we are supposed to believe that the huge amount of explosives which would have been required to bring down those buildings was planted and detonated without anyone observing anything.
Note that I did not argue that fire could not lessen the strength of steel, nor it's structual integrity - although both seem vastly exaggerated in the mainstream accounts of the collapses of those three towers, I doubt the official explanation of those collapses, among other things, because of the puddling of molten steel - that is, liquid or semi-liquid steel, in the sub-basements of two of the towers: still molten, 4 weeks after the collapses.
Possible explanation arises, long afterwards, in potential conversion of kinetic energy of the collapses themselves, into thermal energy, i.e., conservation of energy. However, it is quite implausible to argue content-fires as related to or in significant part, contributory to, the fall of the huge central columns, specifically because those columns were by design, far removed from any area with contents. Again, try heating the moon with your fireplace, if you wish to demonstrate the chances of max-temp 800-deg content fires even measurably excalating the core temperatures of the many 54"x 22" [I note that I typed 56"x33" previously - bad memory, or typo, or combination] columns - the dimensions at the lower strike - from distances never less than 30 ft, and often much greater. Even those content fires appear to have been over-emphasized, given the video focus that shows smoke, but even in shots into the interior, rarely flame - but certainly I would agree, there was some combustion of contents.
Blueprints
Although the jet fuel burns hotter, that fire was quite brief - seconds to minutes, depending on your credulity. So, since the gravity-bearing portion of the structure is that central column-set, dismissed in the FEMA and NIST releases as "service core", although the essential vertical support of the structure; and we cannot reasonably posit thermal degradation sufficient to cause collapse of those columns - WTF?
gosh, "escalating" woulda been better?
The "facts" of the conspiracy theory are directly addressed here:
http://wtc.nist.gov/pubs/factsheets/faqs_8_2006.htm
Why does anyone want to continue this conspiracy nonsense? It doesn't serve the engineering community nor the public to misrepresent the WTC engineering issues. It distracts from the plethora of real issues created by 6 years of neocon governance. But most of all, it gives the Bush adminstration waaaay (tongue in cheek) too much credit!
Certainly don't wish to give Bungle too much credit. So, I will STFU for now, despite questions unaswered by NIST and FEMA. I finally found a rebuild of the Gov site with the FEMA reports, and the FEMA imprint, so I am re-reading materials I downloaded some years ago (lost with a failed hard drive, 2 years ago.) FEMA provides more information than NIST, but there are over 10MB of files, so proceed with caution if you dial for access.
I don't buy all their explanations, don't like their dismissal of the central core columns as a "core service area", which disguises the fact that those columns represented the vertical bearing capacity of the design; and find much in the FEMA reports to dispute; but I will STFU. If only they, or their delegates - had preserved the forensic evidence and were willing to provide details, rather than misdirections and misinformation, I could perhaps even suppress my instinctive reaction to this same Gov't. that assured us of WMDs - though I still didn't see anything about the molten steel, in a quick skim.
Right, it is time for me to STFU, isn't it? Oh, before I go, just exactly what harm are my expressions of doubt wreaking on you, and yours? Is it the simple discomfort of having your cherished beliefs questioned? Is the absence of order, of stability, in your trust for your media and Gov't. at the root of the problem? Or is it the sheer betrayal of innocence, if it were discovered that "they" had lied to you? You know, just in case it isn't merely 9-11, I would appreciate knowing what sorts of questions to avoid in the future, which doubts must be suppressed, that we might preserve your equilibrium.
On second thought - Nah. I don't think I can extinguish either the doubts or their expression. Sorry, my bad for leading you on.
Nice rant. However, your claims have about as much credibility as Pat Robertson's claim that Hurricane Katrina was God's wrath for Ellen Degeneres being a lesbian. They're also about as helpful.
I'm not surprised you won't shut up, anymore than MMFA's articles regarding Pat have shut him up. Had that been my main objective, I wouldn't have bothered. Instead, perhaps others will appreciate the link to facts and well reasoned explanations.
Have a nice weekend.
Please point out to me any major portion of any of my posts that promulgate a "conspiracy"? I honestly don't recall any, but may have tossed off some one-liner at the Bungloids. What I do attempt to point out, and even now maintain, is that you do no better job of refuting any of those questions and doubts, than do NIST or FEMA. Both make claims that defy visible evidence; and both avoid those questions they cannot answer (such as, why not preserve the forensics? Was it pure coincidence that FEMA was having a convention 2 blocks from the site, so as to be able to get people there to control the evidence?). Consider me an advocate of the position that the event has not been sufficiently or satifactorily explained; and that *I* acknowledge both: the miniscule likelihood that it ever will be so, and that I will continue to doubt until it is so.
Instead, apparently lacking any capacity to refute, or even to rebut, or most certainly, to answer, you flame on and proceed ad hominem. You even manage to compare me to Pat Robertson! Ugggh! But even you must admit, nowhere do I drag in any Deus, ex machina or otherwise; purely my doubt that you and the media and the Gov't. have the story of 9-11 right, and the reasons supporting my doubt. You seem bent, somehow, on changing the subject to my personal inadequacies. (Numerous, no doubt, and odious; but, sort of irrelevant.)
Hey, more adept critics than you have retired without scorching me, and besides, firing at me prevents you from having to acknowledge your own doubts, I suspect. In some part, then, I can take credit for your enjoyment of sufficient comfort, to allow you to continue your abuse of those whose questions you.cannot.answer?
For one (and *I*, at least, know the "proposed", but rather sketchily supported, answer), what of the molten steel? Since none of your discussion has managed to address that, could we hear your thoughts? Something to do with idiotic reliance on equivalence to "TRILLIONS of WATTS" of energy in the fires? Pshaw! Overstated by a level of magnitude, and a vast problem achieving application of any of the energy released, to any of the vertical support. Oh, and those "TRILLIONS of WATTS" never visibly even burned through a single level of floor, even though much better able to apply that energy vertically to the floor above, than horizontally across long distances, to 47 columns of steel, each 54"x22" and redundantly networked to each other and enough lateral steel to heat-sink all of those "TRILLIONS of WATTS" and remain relatively cool.
Why no attention (I have yet to find any, at least) to the primary heat-breakage of building-fire glass, in the presence of those "TRILLIONS of WATTS" of thermal energy? The only reference to glass breakage seems to be in the context of the initial jet-fuel "fireball" as a pressure-inducing - almost, but not quite explosive - event. Why not? Well, mostly because the "contents-fueled" fires did not reach the heat-generating temperatures to break the glass, as was notable in video of areas subject to fire, but not in the immediate path of the plane strikes. The glass breaks almost 400 degrees C lower temperature than the steel begins to lose integrity.
So, my advice to you (free, and worth every cent) is to position your head comfortably beneath a foot or so of sand (I'll bet that is not the first image that popped into your mind, of where I believed your head might belong) and resume your acceptance of tripe from those authorities, just because it would be preposterous that they would deceive you in order to hide their own uncertainties when confronted with the unimaginable.
so anyone who disagrees with you is naive about the goverment and the media? it couldn't be that they just don't buy a conspiracy here to blow up the buildings?
The problem with Mitchell's statement is that it carries a hidden bias, one so thoroughly internalized that it hardly seems noticeable: The assumption that a "victory" for Bush is a "victory" in "the war on terror." It equates Bush with that "war" and thus by implication Bush's opponents with being opponents of that "war."
Thus, oppose Bush and you support, or at least do not oppose, the terrorists.
How could the report have been improved? Here are two ways:
- "The Supreme Court gave Bush a victory in a case reflecting the on-going dispute over the proper balance between Constitutional rights and national security in the war on terror."
- Or change the second half to "the on-going dispute over the best way to pursue the war on terror."
That would be an even-handed way of saying it, Larrye-
The equal and opposite, however, would be more like "Constitution and fundamental principles of The United States handed another defeat at the hands of the Bush administration today...".