Jonathon Turley and Glenn Greenwald seem like fear mongers too. Look at this passage from Turley :
The changes were the inclusion of some meaningless rhetoric after key amendments protecting citizens were defeated.
The provision merely states that nothing in the provisions could be construed to alter Americans’ legal rights.
Since the Senate clearly views citizens are not just subject to indefinite detention but even execution without a trial,
the change offers nothing but rhetoric to hide the harsh reality.
So here is is actually saying that the bill does not change the Senate’s current views on detaining citizens. So if the Senate viewed US Citizens as potentially subject to indefinite detention before the bill like he is saying-and if it does, it is clearly under only highly specific circumstances-then it is unclear how this bill somehow represents a sort fo huge movement towards an out and out police state where the military is arresting citizens anytime the govt says it doesnt like them. Even Turley here is stating that the bill does not do anything to change the Senate’s current position on detaining Citizens. Which means that someone detained by the miltary would be able to contest, in trial, whether or not they are included in the provisions and whether or not existing law allows for them to be detained, possibly indefinitely, without trail. And he ends it with “hide the harsh reality”, not very helpful in explaining why we should be thinking that we are becoming a police state. Since it can certainly be argued that existing law requies US citizen detainees to a trial and a lawyer-and SCOCUS has ruled numerous times that it does.
This is all a red herring to distract us from something else, because this bill does NOT do what its detractors are saying it does. Here’s some information I posted on a friend’s Facebook profile last night. He happens to be a Ron Paul supporter, and he was in hysterics over this law.
First Post: I don’t know the details, but I’m reading the final bill passed by the House and Senate conference committees and submitted to the president, and this is what it says in section 1022:
(b) APPLICABILITY TO UNITED STATES CITIZENS AND LAWFUL
RESIDENT ALIENS.—
(1) UNITED STATES CITIZENS.—The requirement to detain
a person in military custody under this section does not extend to citizens of the United States.
(2) LAWFUL RESIDENT ALIENS.—The requirement to detain a person in military custody under this section does not extend to a lawful resident alien of the United States on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States, except to the extent permitted by the Constitution of the United States.
Second Post (posted after he rebutted by saying that my first post was only about section 1022, but that 1021 was the section that allowed for the indefinite detention of US citizens):
I see this in section 1021, James:
(b) COVERED PERSONS.—A covered person under this section is any person as follows:
(1) A person who planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored those responsible for those attacks.
(2) A person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces.
And this...
(e) AUTHORITIES.—Nothing in this section shall be construed to affect existing law or authorities relating to the detention of United States citizens, lawful resident aliens of the United States, or any other persons who are captured or arrested in the United States.
So, hysterical ranting aside, it appears that to be covered by the Counterterrorism aspect of this law allowing for indefinite military custody, a person has to have “planned, authorized, committed, or aided” the events of 9/11/2001, or harbored those responsible, or been a member of al-Qaeda or the Taliban or provided support or assistance to them, and this does not apply to cititizens or lawful resident aliens of the United States.
What am I missing?
Additional Post (after much argument back and forth): From MotherJones - a very left-leaning website:
So what exactly does the bill do? It says that the president has to hold a foreign Al Qaeda suspect captured on US soil in military detention—except it leaves enough procedural loopholes that someone like convicted underwear bomber and Nigerian citizen Umar Abdulmutallab could actually go from capture to trial without ever being held by the military. It does not, contrary to what many media outlets have reported, authorize the president to indefinitely detain without trial an American citizen suspected of terrorism who is captured in the US. A last minute compromise amendment adopted in the Senate, whose language was retained in the final bill, leaves it up to the courts to decide if the president has that power, should a future president try to exercise it. But if a future president does try to assert the authority to detain an American citizen without charge or trial, it won’t be based on the authority in this bill.
So it’s simply not true, as the Guardian wrote yesterday, that the bill “allows the military to indefinitely detain without trial American terrorism suspects arrested on US soil who could then be shipped to Guantánamo Bay.” When the New York Times editorial page writes that the bill would “strip the F.B.I., federal prosecutors and federal courts of all or most of their power to arrest and prosecute terrorists and hand it off to the military,” or that the “legislation could also give future presidents the authority to throw American citizens into prison for life without charges or a trial,” they’re simply wrong.
Additional Post: The only sections I find relating to this in the law are sections 1020 and 1021, and then some information in the following sections relating to the review process. I do not see anything like what is being discussed in the blog James linked. There CERTAINLY is nothing in this law that allows indefinite detention of US citizens or anyone captured on US soil. I think the section on authorities that I posted from section 1020 defers to previous law as a determination as to whether someone can be detained. That’s what Mother Jones is talking about up above when they say that this bill “leaves it up the courts to decide...” That’s a far cry from saying that this bill allows the indefinite military detention of US citizens or those caught within US borders.