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By Brooks A. Mick, M.D.
Oct. 19, 2006 There has been much heat and little light over the discussion of the Geneva Conventions and their application to terrorism, particularly regarding Common Article Three, which the US Supreme Court decided, bizarrely, applied to the prisoners at Guantanamo Bay. Common Article Three, if anybody in the media or on the left wing blog sites had bothered to read it, specifically referred to combatants in a civil war. Certainly Common Article Three could not be stretched, even if made of rubber, to cover battlefield combatants fighting US troops in a foreign country. But the US Supreme Court, led by its extreme left wing folks and by Anthony Kennedy, intoxicated by his new "swing vote" status, stretched it like a watch in a Salvador Dali painting. The US Supremes were grabbing and taking powers which they did not reasonably have, the power to determine how we fight wars. In the process, they ignored all previous precedent. In prior wars, prisoners captured on the battlefield were held until the end of the conflict before being granted trials. Even after the war ended, the courts held that habeas corpus did not apply to the enemy combatants. The court refused to hear cases of alien enemy prisoners held outside the USA. (Johnson v. Eisentrager) In the Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita case, the court refused to review operations of military commissions. The US Supreme Court, in its grasping for new powers, ignored all these precedents and took for itself authority that wiser courts had left to the president and to congress, the bodies entrusted by the U.S. Constitution to formulate these policies. What the Court taketh, congress tooketh away with the recent law signed by President Bush. The Hamdan Decision which distorted and expanded the Geneva conventions, so beloved by the left wing, was thereby negated. Congress took off their gloves and gave the back of their hand to the Gang of Five who had grasped for power where former courts had realized they should not tread. The Hamdan Decision, if allowed to stand, would have severely rewritten the rules of warfare and severely handicapped our government in its efforts to find terrorists and prevent terrorist attacks. The left wing fanatics, whining about how the military commission bill removes a hallowed "right" to habeas corpus, should note that enemy prisoners, especially terrorists, had never had habeas corpus rights before. Thus no such "right" could be removed from them. The left wing fanatics should, as stated above, read Common Article Three of the Geneva Conventions--better yet, read ALL of the Geneva Conventions!--and understand how terrorists, fighting out of uniform, were never granted the "rights" that the left claimed they had. The military commission bill was right and proper and a necessary step in restoring to the president the ability to manage warfare. One should note, if interested in the Constitution, that it is the president whom the Constitution invests with this authority and responsibility, not the court system. Congress, usually a bunch of wimpish weasels who can't make a simple declarative statement even if threatened by the voters, bit the bullet this time and came out with some clear and definitive statements on the authority of the president to conduct warfare and defend the USA. In so doing, the delivered a stinging rebuke to the Gang of Five on the US Supreme Court. Take that, Stevens, Kennedy, et al. It's about time that someone told the courts that they are not all-powerful. ------------ About the author Brooks A. Mick: Physician, still practicing medicine but retired from the US Army. Write just for the fun of it, but working on novel in the vein of Tom Clancy's politico-military genre. Email: brooks15@cox.net Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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