Monday, October 23, 2006

I Told You So!

 

Since 9/11 the PATRIOT Act has been used in numerous cases involving American citizens, including strip club owners, toy store proprietors, the homeless, owners of websites, writers, artists, photographers, and common criminals.

Section 802 of the PATRIOT Act is specifically aimed at US citizens and announces any crime as "domestic terrorism". Citizens can be held without a trial as "Enemy Combatants". The 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in January 2003 that U.S. citizens can be stripped of their citizenship and held as enemy combatants.

Therefore any legislation passed by Bush automatically applies to American citizens because, as the Washington Post reported, after 9/11 Bush announced his "parallel legal system" in which he could declare any individual on the planet an enemy combatant and order their summary execution.

"The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say."

The trick being played on the American people in falsely assuring them that they are not the target is simple to decode. The Act states that it only applies to enemy combatants yet the President and his legal advisors like Alberto Gonzales have routinely announced that the President has the power to strip Americans of citizenship and declare them to be enemy combatants. The "enemy combatant designation" was ascribed to U.S. citizen Jose Padilla who was interned in a Navy brig for over three years with no charges against him.

Top legal experts and scholars are nearly unanimous that the Military Commissions Act does affect American citizens.

Source: Black Listed News

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