Dare We Call It Tyranny?

Sheldon Richman, MWC NEWS

The American people’s response to President Bush’s "war on terror" should be … terror. The administration, sometimes with Congress’s complicity: * is preparing for a 50-year stay in Iraq, complete with 14 military bases and an embassy larger than the Vatican. (Can there be a better recruiting program for al Qaeda?) * has abolished habeas corpus, the principle that for centuries has protected people from arbitrary confinement, for noncitizens declared to be "enemy combatants." (While the federal courts have upheld the abolition of habeas corpus for detainees at Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere overseas, fortunately an appellate court has just ruled against the administration in the case of a legal U.S. resident, Kahlah al-Marri, arrested in the United States, a ruling the administration is appealing.) * unilaterally claims the power to use "enhanced interrogation techniques" — torture — on suspected terrorists and to turn them over to foreign governments known to torture prisoners. This has been done to persons later cleared of wrongdoing...

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