The Rude Pundit reminds us why it’s important to preserve Habeas Corpus
The 66 former Gitmo inmates profiled by McClatchy news demonstrate that very, very few of nearly 800 men detained by the United States were, in fact, killers of any sort. Indeed, some of them actively supported the U.S. against the Taliban and al-Qaeda: “In effect, many of the detainees posed no danger to the United States or its allies. The investigation also found that despite the uncertainty about whom they were holding, U.S. soldiers beat and abused many prisoners.”
While, like so many reports and investigations do these days, this only confirms what we already knew, we now can say that, in our American name, innocent people were held in cells, separated from their families, lives, and communities, interrogated, often being beaten and tortured, and they had no legitimate way of saying, “Yo, not a killer over here.”
When conservatives go ballistic over last week’s Supreme Court decision saying that detainees actually can challenge their detention, when John McCain calls it “one of the worst decisions in history,” they are saying that America should not be any better than its enemies, that innocence is a technicality, and that the powerless deserve their fates.