NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

By Barry Lando

03/05/07 "ICH"  -- - You have to read the New York Times editorial for Sunday, March 5th.  It’s a list  of measures the Bush administration has put in place over the past five years that taken together add up to an astonishing attack against what we used to consider America’s most basic constitutional principles.

The Times calls for Congress to take immediate action to reverse the situation.  The editorial, however, should be calling for Congress—and the media– to do much, nuch more.

Bush’s Draconian  measures range from the suspension of habeas corpus to warrantless eavesdropping to the right of  the president to decide what constitutes torture, to prisons where hundreds face indefinite detention without any charges being brought against them, to other even more secret CIA facilities filled with “ghost prisoners” for whom the CIA has never accounted;and, of course, ”extraordinary rendition”, where detainees are packed off to face torture at the hands of America’s less savory allies..  At the same time, American  courts are being closed to legal challenges to these outrageous actions. 

If the list weren’t indeed from the Times, one might have thought it was fiction: an updated version of Orwell’s 1984. 

The Times rightly demands that Congress act to reverse this assault on democratic liberties. But the demands should go further. 

Congress– and the media– should be looking at how this attack on what we used to consider fundamental principles of American democracy-how this attack was possible. How was it carried out?  We should be analyzing why and how the American Congress—and, let’s face it—most of the media caved in so abjectly to the Bush/Cheney scare tactics. How could such bedrock principles as habeas corpus have been so cravenly and quickly jettisoned?  Where were the newspaper editors? The TV magazine shows? What about the legal profession? And where were those political leaders now in the race to be the next president?

It’s not enough for a new congress controlled by the Democrats to reverse gears, and attempt to undo the damage. There have to be some lessons learned for everybody. Otherwise, the next time round—and it’s very probably there will be a next time round—will be even worse.    

Visit Barry Lando's blog http://barrylando.com

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