For Those Who Think They Are Still Free

Last week, Congress passed the Military Commissions Act which effectively dissolved many of the rights that we Americans believe that we still possess. The bill grants the Bush administration the power to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged terrorists and their supporters. The scary part is, anyone in the world (Americans included) may at any time be classified as an "unlawful enemy combatant", seized, and detained. The bill also appears to have dissolved all rights of habeas corpus as well, bringing to mind the Japanese internment camps instituted by our government during WWII in which 120,000 Japanese civilians (2/3 of which were American) were detained without trial in military camps located across the country.

Are we so naive to believe that mass internment cannot happen again? It is documented fact that the United States now holds more than 14,000 detainees in prison camps located in Iraq, Guantanamo, Afghanistan, and countless other locations. All of these prisoners can be held indefinitely without trial based upon secret evidence of which they have no access to. And, thanks to other various post-9/11 bills all signed by President Bush, these prisoners can all be legally tortured in order to uncover evidence which they may or may not have.

Of course, the mass practical joke that we call the media would not inform us of these matters, for why should the public be well-informed? If they were, the powers that be would no longer have the ability to slowly but surely reclaim all of "freedoms" that we still are so sure belong to us.