By now, most of you have probably heard about the latest Bush administration plan to deal with detainees at Guantanamo Bay and other military prisons — hold them forever without bringing them to trial.
Administration officials are preparing long-range plans for indefinitely imprisoning suspected terrorists whom they do not want to set free or turn over to courts in the United States or other countries, according to intelligence, defense and diplomatic officials.
The Pentagon and the CIA have asked the White House to decide on a more permanent approach for potentially lifetime detentions, including for hundreds of people now in military and CIA custody whom the government does not have enough evidence to charge in courts.
We don’t have evidence to try them in court, but we want to put them under permanent arrest without pesky details such as “trials” or allowing detainees to offer a “defense.” My favorite part of the Bush administration’s still-evolving policy, however, deals with the CIA moving detainees around to military prisons in other countries that aren’t terribly concerned with habeas corpus.
One approach used by the CIA has been to transfer captives it picks up abroad to third countries willing to hold them indefinitely and without public proceedings. The transfers, called “renditions,” depend on arrangements between the United States and other countries, such as Egypt, Jordan and Afghanistan, that agree to have local security services hold certain terror suspects in their facilities for interrogation by CIA and foreign liaison officers.
The stunning part of this, aside from the abhorrent human rights angle, is that we’re looking around to countries that don’t care about civil liberties or due process, which will lock up suspects indefinitely without a trial or legal representation. But here’s the kicker: we’re now one of those countries.
By simply transferring our prisoners to countries that have the due process laws we like (i.e., none), we’re asking countries like Egypt, Jordan, and Afghanistan to do the dirty work the Bush administration wants to do but can’t under our pesky Constitution.
To their credit, at least some lawmakers aren’t crazy about the idea.
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sunday dismissed as “a bad idea” a reported U.S. government plan to keep some suspected terrorists in custody for their lifetime, even if there was not enough evidence to bring them before a judge.
Both Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that the proposal, reported in Sunday’s Washington Post, was unconstitutional.
“There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process … if you’re going to detain people, whether it’s for life or whether it’s for years,” Levin said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Detaining individuals for life without judicial review “is a bad idea,” Lugar said on the same program. “So we ought to get over it, and we ought to have a very careful, constitutional look at this.”
The Washington Post report on this noted that the State Department is involved with the planning for these indefinite detentions. Yet, when asked about it yesterday, Colin Powell said, “I am not familiar with that and I can’t talk to it.” When reminded that his cabinet agency is a part of this, Powell added, “I just don’t have the facts on that one.”
To which I wanted to ask, “Why not?”