America lost: Congress votes to legalize war crimes and bolster a military dictatorship
Saturday, September 30, 2006 by: Mike Adams

If you haven't been watching the political arena lately, you may not have noticed that the U.S. Congress last week handed President Bush a bill that, if signed, would spell the end of America as we know it.

Called the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the bill abandons the Geneva Convention (formed after Hitler's atrocities in WWII), legalizes the torture of U.S. citizens, suspends all civil rights for prisoners and allows the President to declare virtually anyone to be an "enemy combatant" -- artists, writers, scientists, protestors or anyone who does not agree with the pro-war stance of the current regime.

It would also retroactively grant blanket immunity to all U.S. military personnel who have committed war crimes under the Geneva Convention. Such immunity would extend to present and future war crimes as well. In other words, the United States will now officially harbor and support war criminals. In the context of international law, the United States is effectively declaring itself to be a criminal state that will respect no international law.

Just as frighteningly, the new Act would utterly nullify the courts and make it illegal for the judicial branch of government to interfere with the imprisonment and torture of anyone, thus affecting a dangerous power shift from the judicial branch of government to the executive branch.

Hitler followed the same strategy in centralizing his own power, and by nullifying the courts while taking over the media, he was able to propagandize his war, arrest all dissenters, and concentrate power in his own hands. The ultimate result was an unjust war and a humanitarian disaster that haunts the world to this day.

The United States is now firmly on the same path. These are dark times for our nation, and future historians will no doubt look upon this historic vote as the trigger that thrust the United States into a full-fledged police state, complete with secret arrests, government spying on citizens, and the mysterious "disappearance" of those who dared to speak out against the dictator.

more at the above link

[ 30 September 2006: Message edited by: sephardic-male ]

[ 01 October 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

On topic: America lost the war on terror as soon as they started decimating their civil liberties in the name of security. Osama won as soon as they started doing that. And the more the American public runs scared and lets the idiots they voted into power wreck the country because they're too cowardly to stand up for their liberties, the more "the terrorists have won". The more people the Americans and their allies kill abroad, the more their surviving relatives and friends will turn to extremist organizations out of anger and a desire for revenge, and the stronger they make their enemies.