Dems grow spine; oppose Military Commissions Act

By Joshua Holland
Posted on November 17, 2006
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/44437/

The Hill:

Gearing up for a major clash with the Bush administration and Republicans in Congress, several key Senate Democrats are planning to overhaul the newly minted legislation governing military tribunals of detainees.

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), who is running for president and who, come January, will be the second ranking Democrat on the International Relations Committee, introduced legislation today that would amend the existing law.

"The bill goes back and undoes what was done," Dodd told The Hill. Dodd was one of the top critics of the military tribunal bill the GOP hashed out with the White House and was signed into law last month.

Dodd's bill, which currently has no co-sponsors, seeks to give habeas corpus protections to military detainees; bar information that was gained through coercion from being used in trials and empower military judges to exclude hearsay evidence they deem to be unreliable.

Dodd's bill also narrows the definition of "unlawful enemy combatant" to individuals who directly participate in hostilities against the United States who are not lawful combatants. The legislation would also authorize the U.S. Court of Appeals for the armed forces to review decisions made by the military commissions.

Moreover, Dodd seeks to have an expedited judicial review of the new law to determine the constitutionality of its provisions.

Dodd is the first Democrat to take aim at the controversial military tribunals bill. But Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), the incoming Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, also said that he is in the process of drafting "major changes" to the legislation.

Among the planned changes are instituting habeas corpus rights for detainees and looking into the current practice of extraordinary rendition.

Leahy is among several other Democrats, including incoming Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who are concerned about the practice of sending suspected terrorists to countries other than the United States for imprisonment and interrogation.

The incoming chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), said he is going to look into the rendition process.

"I'm not comfortable with the system," Levin said earlier this week. "I think that there's been some significant abuses which have not made us more secure, but have made us less secure and have also perhaps cost us some real allies, as well as not producing particularly useful information. So I think the system needs a thorough review, and as the military would say, a thorough scrubbing."

Congress rushed through the terror-detainee legislation before its election break in response to a Supreme Court's ruling earlier this year that Bush exceeded his authority by establishing military tribunals to try detainees without congressional authorization.

As I pointed out in an earlier post, this isn't being driven by public opinion. A CNN poll last week found that 39 percent of Americans think the administration has gone "too far in restricting civil liberties" and 59 percent think it's struck a good balance or not gone far enough.

It’s a principled stance and Dodd and others will no doubt be attacked by the right for taking it. So the senate needs to hear from voters about how important these efforts are. You can contact your senator here. Please take a few minutes and do so, and forward this on to people you know.

Joshua Holland is a staff writer at Alternet and a regular contributor to The Gadflyer.
© 2006 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/joshua/44437/