Obama Administration Fights On To Retain Authority of 'Indefinite Detention' without Trial

[Bonobo]

2. Indeed. They are on the wrong side on this one for sure.

http://www.thenation.com/article/168040/military-detention-journalists

Military Detention for Journalists

The important question of whether the military may hold US citizens and foreign nationals in indefinite detention came to a head recently in two important forums: a federal court in Manhattan and the House of Representatives. On May 16, US District Judge Katherine Forrest ruled unconstitutional an important section of the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2012, finding that it threatened US citizens with military detention for First Amendment–protected speech and associations. Two days later, taking up the NDAA for 2013, the House rejected a rare bipartisan proposal to bar the military detention of people apprehended on US soil. At the same time, it approved language that appeared to mandate that all foreign nationals who can be tried in a military commission must be tried there rather than in civilian criminal court.

These developments underscore the remarkable fact that more than ten years after the September 11 terrorist attacks, the scope of the government’s power to use military authority to lock up human beings indefinitely remains fundamentally unclear. Indeed, it was that very ambiguity that led Judge Forrest to rule an important part of the NDAA unconstitutional. There is undoubtedly a legitimate place for military detention in the context of an armed conflict, so long as it conforms to the laws of war. But it is deeply disturbing that a decade into the conflict with Al Qaeda, there remain serious doubts about the extent of that awesome authority. Still more troubling is the apparent fact that the government is unwilling to erase those doubts.

The federal lawsuit challenged Section 1021 of the NDAA, which authorizes the indefinite military detention of people who are “part of or substantially supported Al Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces.” Chris Hedges, Noam Chomsky, Daniel Ellsberg, and several other journalists and activists sued, claiming that the law was so overbroad and vague, they feared that their writings and associations might lead the government to lock them up in military detention.

At first glance, their fears may seem unfounded. In the decade since 9/11 the government has held only two US citizens in military detention in connection with the conflict with Al Qaeda, and both were alleged to have done much more than write an article or interview a terrorist. Yaser Hamdi was captured in 2001 on the battlefield in Afghanistan, carrying a weapon and accompanying a Taliban regiment. Jose Padilla, apprehended on arrival at O’Hare Airport in 2002, was said to be a member of Al Qaeda who had come here to commit a terrorist attack. Even Hedges’s and Chomsky’s harshest critics are unlikely to view them as being situated as Hamdi and Padilla are.