World News | Forum | UK News | USA News | Global News | Political News | Sci-Tech News | War & Terrorism News | Sports News | Multimedia | Set Homepage
Forum
Latest News
RINF Forum
Translate: Translate to EnglishÜbersetzen Sie zum Deutsch/GermanПереведите к русскому/RussianΜεταφράστε στα ελληνικά/GreekVertaal aan het Nederlands/Dutchترجمة الى العربية/Arabic中文翻译/Chinese Traditional中文翻译/Chinese Simplified한국어에게 번역하십시오/Korean日本語に翻訳しなさい /JapaneseTraduza ao Português/PortugueseTraduca ad Italiano/ItalianTraduisez au Français/FrenchTraduzca al Español/Spanish

Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How We Treat “Enemy Combatants”

Saturday, March 24th, 2007

Jacob G. Hornberger

The case of accused terrorist Jose Padilla is moving toward a jury trial on April 16 in U.S. District Court in Miami. It is still unclear whether the presiding judge in the case, Marcia Cooke, will order an evidentiary hearing on Padilla’s motion to dismiss the charges based on the government’s outrageous pre-trial conduct while Padilla was in military custody as an “enemy combatant” in the “war on terror.” (Under post-9/11 jurisprudence, the government has the option of treating accused terrorists either as “enemy combatants” or as federal-court defendants.)

The government is doing everything it can to prevent the American people from learning what the U.S. military did to Padilla during his three years of pre-trial confinement. In fact, U.S. officials are doing the same thing with respect to “enemy combatants” that the CIA has been holding for years in its secret overseas prisons. They say the prisoners should not be permitted to reveal what the CIA has done to them because to do so would threaten “national security.”

Meanwhile, the American people are walking through all this with an ambivalent numbness. Frightened after 9/11 over the prospect that “the terrorists” were coming to get them, many Americans were either silent or supportive when U.S. officials assumed the most powerful dictatorial tool possible — the power to arbitrarily take people into custody, torture them, and even execute them after a kangaroo proceeding. What never occurred to many Americans was that the military would have the authority to exercise this dictatorial power on them.

Not surprisingly, federal officials now want to keep Americans from learning the full extent of the federal government’s post-9/11 power over them. That’s why they used their plea bargain with John Walker Lindh, the “American Taliban,” to prohibit him from revealing what they did to him while he was in pre-trial military custody. That’s why they’re fighting fiercely in the Padilla case to keep Americans from learning what they did to Padilla. That’s why they’re claiming “national security” to prevent accused terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammad and other CIA prisoners from describing the waterboarding and other “alternative” forms of interrogation to which they have been subjected.

Unfortunately, all too many Americans still don’t want to know what U.S. officials don’t want to tell them. It’s much easier to continue walking in blind numbness and reassuring themselves with, “It can’t happen here. This is America.”

As the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck pointed out, mental health involves an unwavering commitment to reality at all costs. Any hope of restoring a healthy, balanced, and free society requires that Americans fully confront the revolutionary changes that 9/11 has wrought in our nation, including everything that the government now has the power to do to Americans.

Reality is that the U.S. military now wields the power to take anyone, including American citizens, into custody as “enemy combatants” in the “war on terror” and to do everything to them that the CIA and the Pentagon have done to other “enemy combatants.”

Reality is the power to subject American and foreign “enemy combatants” to extreme isolation and sensory deprivation over long periods of time. That’s what those eerie blacked-out goggles and earmuffs on Padilla were all about.

Reality is the government’s power to subject “enemy combatants” to waterboarding and similar forms of “alternative-interrogation techniques.”

Reality is the government’s power to inject substances into “enemy combatants.” (Padilla says it was LSD they injected into him while the military says it was actually an inoculation against the flu.)

Reality is the government’s power to not account for “enemy combatants” who have disappeared after being taken into custody. As Human Rights Watch attorney Joanne Mariner recently wrote, there are many “enemy combatants” who are believed to have once been in CIA custody and who are now unaccounted for.

President Bush recently said that to combat terrorism, the federal government needs to continue spreading freedom around the globe. What he obviously meant was the “freedom” of the CIA and the Pentagon to continue taking “enemy combatants,” both Americans and foreigners, into custody, treating them accordingly, and then keeping what they do to them secret from the American people and the world.


Have Your Say: Shssh! Don’t Tell Americans How We Treat “Enemy Combatants”
Please read our posting guidelines before posting.
Alternatively you can discuss this report here.

RSS TrackBack URL


Related News

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 24th, 2007 at 8:52 pm and is filed under War & Terrorism News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
Hey Ashley! Last post by paul w @ 06:02 AM

Heisman, BCS on line when Sooners meet Red Raiders Last post by Knight of the Word @ 04:45 AM

As 'new World Order' Shapes Up, Fear Is That An Anti-christ Spirit Will Control It Last post by Knight of the Word @ 04:21 AM

Meditation May Protect Your Brain Last post by ZingPao @ 02:51 AM

911; Inside Job Or Not Last post by ZingPao @ 02:46 AM

More Cooking Last post by ZingPao @ 01:02 AM

Vancouver's Radical Approach to Drugs: Let Junkies Be Junkies Last post by ZingPao @ 12:23 AM

GM says board doesn't see bankruptcy as option Last post by ZingPao @ 12:08 AM

Walnut Trees Emit Aspirin-Like Chemical to Deal With Stress Last post by Nostalgia @ 11:55 PM

Gore on Obama: 'Redeems the Revolutionary Promise of Our Declaration of Independence' Last post by ZingPao @ 11:49 PM

Go to Forum | Latest Topics

Forum

Network This Report

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Digg
  • StumbleUpon
  • Slashdot
  • Reddit
  • YahooMyWeb
  • Fark
  • Netscape
  • Furl

Email This Page To A Friend
Latest Headlines

RINF Advertising Archive
TOP NEWS DISCUSSIONS
LATEST NEWS DISCUSSIONS
LATEST FORUM TOPICS
Antisemitism: A Web of Denial

Extrajudicial Assassinations As Official Israeli Policy

The Third Clinton Administration

Obama advisers: Bush era war criminals will walk

British travellers could be banned from flying to America

Is a recession good news for the BNP?

New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog Food

Hillary Clinton wavers over Barack Obama job as Bill's finances are investigated

Scottish Parliament votes out ID cards

Debate on War Crimes and Torture: Should High Government Officials Be Investigated and Prosecuted

Neal commented on:
Debate on War Crimes and Torture: Should High Government Officials Be Investigated and Prosecuted
My stand would have to be “No” ;....
Continue Reading & Reply

Ivan Popovich commented on:
Antisemitism: A Web of Denial
SR & PA above are perfect illustrations of the problem. Unspecified “everyone knows”...
Continue Reading & Reply

Mike Ticho commented on:
The Third Clinton Administration
You took the words right out of my mouth. A couple of years back, one commentator warned against a...
Continue Reading & Reply

josef svejk commented on:
Fifth Columnist
The people who want to reduce the world population by 80% are the proponents of the New World Order.Google the Georgia...
Continue Reading & Reply

Activism & Protest News | Business News | Civil & Human Rights News | Environmental News | Media News | Globalisation News | Web Development News
ADVERTISEMENTS
SITE MAPS
Web Desing & Hosting UK , USA, Europe

WOWEB - Web Design

FAST GATEWAY - Web Hosting

INFOTX - Web Hosting Guides and Resources


ASHLEY GUEST HOUSE - Morecambe Guest House


Skin up marijuana cannabis weed forum
Linux Web Hosting

Never Be Lied To Again!

Subliminal Secrets Exposed

Holographic Creation: Your Own Reality


Masonic Secrets Revealed


What You Aren't Supposed To Know


Conspiracy DVDs Cheap DVDs
Debt Consolidation
7/7 Activism News Afghanistan Alternative-Energy Art Barack Obama BBC Big-Brother Bilderberg Biometrics Bush CCTV Censorship CIA Climate-Change Cover-Up Cults Culture Database-State David-Hicks David-Ray-Griffin Debt Democrats Demos Drugs Education Entertainment Environmental News EU False-Flag FBI Fraud Free-Speech Freemasons G8 Global-News Global-News Globalization Guantanamo Health-News History ID-Cards Internet Iran Iraq Israel John McCain Law Marches Media News MI5 MI6 Microsoft Military MoD Money Music NASA Neocons New World Order NSA Oil Pakistan Podcast Police-State Political News Propaganda Reviews RFID RINF Rumsfeld Science Science & Technology News Secrecy Security Slavery Space Sports Spy Spying Stephen-Lendman Technology Terrorism Tony-Blair Torture TV UK-News UN USA- USA-News Video Voting war War & Terrorism News Warfare Web Development News White-House Wolfowitz World_News Yahoo
2003 - 2005 Archives | 2005 - 2007 Archives | 2007 - 2008 Archives | Current Archives | Past Version
About | DVD Store | Opinion | Reviews | Special Guests | Webmasters
The views expressed in the RINF news wire and newsletter are the sole responsibility of the author (s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the webmaster.
RINF.COM: Breaking News & Alternative Media is Copyleft - Copy & Distribute Freely. News Forum