Saturday, May 30, 2009

Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal

Facts and myths about Obama's preventive detention proposal
"(1) What does 'preventive detention' allow?
It's important to be clear about what 'preventive detention' authorizes. It does not merely allow the U.S. Government to imprison people alleged to have committed Terrorist acts yet who are unable to be convicted in a civilian court proceeding. That class is merely a subset, perhaps a small subset, of who the Government can detain. Far more significant, 'preventive detention' allows indefinite imprisonment not based on proven crimes or past violations of law, but of those deemed generally 'dangerous' by the Government for various reasons (such as, as Obama put it yesterday, they 'expressed their allegiance to Osama bin Laden' or 'otherwise made it clear that they want to kill Americans').
That's what 'preventive' means: imprisoning people because the Government claims they are likely to engage in violent acts in the future because they are alleged to be 'combatants.'"

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