McCain-Lieberman Bill Would Turn U.S. Into A Dictatorship

By James Donahue

If Constitutionalists thought the Bush Patriot Act was troublesome, consider a proposed new bill just introduced by Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman. This suggested piece of anti-terrorism legislation, dubbed the Enemy Belligerent, Interrogation, Detention and Prosecution Act, would allow the military to detain U.S. citizens without trial indefinitely and purely based on suspected activity.

It is perhaps the scariest bill yet to be brought to the floor of the Senate in this writer’s lifetime. It grossly ignores Constitutional law, giving the military the power to arrest and confine suspected Americans and deny them due process. Not only that, but it can all happen within the United States borders, not on foreign soil during wartime..

One blog writer said “the essence of the bill aims to completely destroy the concept and practice of due process, shoot America in the face, and throw it straight off the cliff. The writer warned that if, by some wild chance that the bill ever becomes law, it would quickly turn the United States into a “banana republic-style dictatorship.”

The McCain-Lieberman act would create a federal law so broad that it would usurp all local, state and federal law enforcement for military purposes, thus giving the President the ultimate authority.

Under the bill, any person merely suspected of being an “enemy belligerent” can be arrested and held without Miranda warnings. They can be interrogated and indefinitely imprisoned at the call of military interrogators, the FBI, CIA, DNI, Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, certain Congressional committees and the President.

The law would also prohibit the judicial branch of government from jurisdiction in these cases. Instead, it gives the President the ultimate and final power of authority.

One might think our elected legislators would never seriously consider such a bill. But their collective behavior . . . or misbehavior . . . since the 9-11 attacks and the antics of Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and the entire Bush Administration, makes us think that anything might be possible.

It is almost as if we have a government operating out-of-control. But looking closely at all of the infighting and just who is doing what to whom, we perceive a wizard hiding behind the curtain. What we are saying that unseen and very powerful and well-financed forces are pulling the strings in Washington, and steering this nation on a perilous course designed to benefit the few, and leave the rest of the nation grappling in the muck.