James A. Chamblee
Guest
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 Posted:
Fri Nov 12, 2004 4:35 am Post subject:
Bush Regime Rebuked on Human Rights |
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Subject:
Bush Regime Rebuked on Human Rights
Date:
Thu, 11 Nov 2004 08:49:03 -0800
From:
"Gandalf Grey" <gandalfgrey@infectedmail.com>
Organization:
Valinor International
Newsgroups:
alt.current-events.clinton.whitewater,
alt.current-events.wtc.bush-knew,
alt.impeach.bush, alt.politics, alt.politics.bush,
alt.politics.liberalism,
alt.society.liberalism, talk.politics.misc
http://www.americanprogressaction.org/site/pp.asp?c=klLWJcP7H&b=245446
Administration Rebuked on Human Rights
November 9, 2004
A federal judged ruled decisively against the Bush administration's
legal
approach to terrorism yesterday. U.S. District Court Judge James
Robertson
concluded, "President Bush had both overstepped his constitutional
bounds
and improperly brushed aside the Geneva Conventions," when he
established
military tribunals at Guantanamo Bay to try detainees as war criminals.
The
ruling forced an abrupt halt to the government's most expansive military
tribunals since WWII.
The Bush administration's military tribunals violate America's
fundamental
sense of legal fairness. Judge Robertson ruled that the commission's
set up
by the administration did not give defendants a fair shot at defending
themselves and allowed the government to use secret evidence and unnamed
witnesses to make its case. Robertson found that no American court could
operate without "the right to confront one's accuser and the evidence."
Ignoring international human rights accords puts our own soldiers at
risk.
One of the primary reasons the U.S. originally ratified the Geneva
Conventions was to protect American soldiers. Judge Robertson concluded
that
in placing detainees outside the reach of these international human
rights
standards, the Bush administration weakened "the United States own
ability
to demand application of the Geneva conventions to Americans captured
during
armed conflicts abroad."
We can not win the hearts and minds of those abroad if we ignore our own
democratic standards at home. The administration should stop trying to
find
ways to get around human rights standards and stand up for basic
American
principles. The fight against terrorists must be resolute but also
principled if it is to truly defend what America represents to the
world.
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