Bush Admin setting up 'a parallel legal system' / America slips into Fascism

national | miscellaneous | news report Sunday December 01, 2002 14:45 by a bowler for columbine

I know this is Ireland IMC - but please take notice America is slipping into fascism. A fire is buring in America and we are trying to put it out, but such things tend to affect the rest of the planet. sorry.

In Terror War, 2nd Track for Suspects
Those Designated 'Combatants' Lose Legal Protections

By Charles Lane
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, December 1, 2002; Page A01

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

more at
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58308-2002Nov30.html