The Consortiumnews.com

Editor's Note: Below are readers' comments about our stories on the Military Commissions Act of 2006:

To the editor,

G'day from Australia,

I've been following with interest the developments regarding the military
commissions. There's quite a bit of interest here as the Australian David
Hicks has been locked up in Gitmo for 5 years now without a trial. Have read
a lot of stuff about the previous commissions deemed illegal (of which these
new ones are much worse) and how blatantly unfair they are, way before any
of this. An interview with Hicks's military lawyer here the other month
indicated there were new commissions in the wings, but I never dreamed it
would have come to this.

I can't believe this has happened. How could this happen? This is a sad day
not only for America, but for all democracies of the world. No longer is
America a shining light to follow, but a dirty smear to avoid. History will
remember this as one of the darkest times in its history. Any morality it
claims to have to the outside world has been buried in the train wreck of
the Bush Presidency. This goes way beyond any so called "get tough" policy
against terrorists in other lands. It is state approved torture, and an
attack by the gov on its own citizens and their democratic rights. It is an
attack on democracy itself. All Bush's words about Freedom are now no more
than Orwellian Doublespeak.

What's baffling is the national yawn about it all that you can just about
hear from here. I hope to god that Americans will wake from their slumber in
Nov.

Peter,
Sydney, Australia.

PS. You can read the transcript or listen to the entire interview with
Hicks's lawyer Major Michael Mori here:
http://www.abc.net.au/tv/enoughrope/transcripts/s1709428.htm
14th August 2006.

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I have been steaming over this "legislation" for some time, but the more I read it, the more it seems that the first people qualifying for Bush's draconian punishment would be himself, his family and many of his friends. Have they not made sure that considerable sums of money find their way to the pockets of the Saudi Royal Family and that some members of that family then send funds to terrorist groups? Bush seemed quite open to handing control of American port security to a Dubai company, although the government of that country routed money to the 9-11 hijackers. This Administration has no problem carting off detainees to black sites located in countries that may be guilty of state-sponsored terrorism - provided those countries can also provide the "debriefing services" we are barred from using ourselves. I am reminded by a psychologist friend that paranoid totalitarian rulers are highly prone to what is called "projection;" in other words, they constantly accuse others of the motives and practices they themselves are guilty of. I am afraid the GOP will again steal the election and we will never truly find out just how incestuous the Terrorist Club really is.

pojoaque1

Your article was the best at explaining things to lay-people, in this case - the dangers of the MCA.

These are scary times, but we made it past the "Alien and Sedition Act" before we had a long history of individual rights behind us, and I believe if we all do our part, we'll beat this too.

~Glenn
--

Thank you for writing that piece. It really lays it on the line in a way that none of the other pieces I have seen do it. Clearly, this Congress and this Administration would have been a bunch of Loyalists in 1776. They don't get it.

Madison Avenue propaganda has drown out the fundamental argument at the bottom of our political discourse: Liberalism = Democracy and Conservatism = Absolute Monarchy. It always tends that way. And the reason it works that way is that historically Conservatism = Power and the Powers That Be are greedy. And after the rhetoric and political posturing is boiled down to the bare bone, it is obvious from which party is trying to expand the voter franchise and which party is trying to restrict voter eligibility. That's a major give away. (That's not to say that the Democrats aren't often co-opted, nor to say that the Democrats have always represented the little guy. Obviously, in the early years of our country, the Southerners were Democrats and Northerners were Republicans. I wish there were truly a progressive third party.)

Ly in upstate NY

Robert Parry says that October 17, 2006 should be seen as the reverse of July 4, 1776. Ive already got one of those; December 12, 2000, the date Bush v. Gore was issued by the Supreme Court.

Kevin J. Keefe, Washington, DC

To the Editor:
Listen carefully. George W. Bush is a bully. He lives with the insecurity
and fear of the bully. He knows that fear works, and coercion works against
those who accept his suggestion that they are victims. A bully can't fool
all the people all the time, he can fool most of the people most of the
time, but he can't fool enough of the people enough of the time keep them
blind and subservient to his pomposity and threats.
The W. stands for Wimp. What do the wimpcons do when they are called out?
They gather together and make greater threats.
Shame on us for being afraid of the bullies, the Ayatollahs, the warlords in
North Korea, Iran, the Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America, and
specially here at home. Fear is the enemy, not the terrorism of bullies. The
cure is self respect and rejection of any political-religious belief system
that aids and abets the authority of bullies.

Morton Kurzweil, Margate FL