SIVACRACY.NET

Eric Alterman and Paul McLeary offer:

... Most alarming, however, are sections 3032 and 3033 of the bill, which call for what amounts to the legalization of the outsourcing of torture to foreign countries. As part of this plan, the bill also throws out the concept of judicial review for the arrest and detention of terror suspects (or any foreign national for that matter); essentially giving the director of Homeland Security carte blanche to expel foreign nationals from the United States while denying them almost any form of due process.

Section 3032 withdraws the United States from a key provision of the U.N. Convention Against Torture (signed and ratified under our last two Republican presidents), which outlaws the deportation of a non-citizen "to another State where there are substantial grounds for believing that he would be in danger of being subjected to torture." Under Hastert's bill, immigration officials would be able to deport foreign nationals for whatever reason they see fit (again, devoid of judicial review), shipping them back to the country from which they fled, even if they are under the threat of torture or murder. The provision also turns the rule of law on its head by placing the almost impossible burden of proof on the deportee to provide evidence that he or she would be tortured if returned to his or her point of origin.

Section 3033 goes even further, allowing immigration officials to return the foreign national to "any other country whose government will accept the alien," giving the director of Homeland Security the unassailable right to ship a foreign national anywhere in the world he wishes – including countries not so squeamish about torture as the United States, all absent the watchful eye of the law of civilized nations. Normally, persons subject to such arbitrary arrest and relocation would have recourse to the U.N. Convention Against Torture, which outlaws such deportation, but under Hastert's bill, the suspect would be subject only to the discretion of U.S. officials and the authorities of the country to which they were transported. This process, known as "extraordinary rendition," as the American Bar Association says in its public opposition to the bill, "not only violates all basic humanitarian and human rights standards, but violates U.S. treaty obligations which make clear that the U.S. government cannot avoid its obligations under international law by having other nations conduct unlawful interrogations in its stead. This practice not only violates our own cherished principles as a nation but also works to undermine our moral leadership in the eyes of the rest of the world."

Just how did we reach this point? Are Americans really willing to go along with a suspension of all of our beliefs and traditions when a president or a congressman waves a "terrorist" flag in our faces? ...