- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
What can you expect from people who can argue that the word and "has a disjunctive rather than a conjuctive" meaning, [and therefore that the UN resolution 1441 didn't mean what it said it meant] as Yoo did in his opinion to Addington:
December 7, 2002-Memo from OLC [Yoo] to Addington, [Counsel for Cheney] “You have asked whether the Government of Iraq will have committed a “further material breach” […] in SCR 1441 if it makes false statements or omissions in the declaration […] of WMD programs. Paragraph 4 finds that false statements or omissions in Iraq's paragraph 3 declaration and failure by Iraq to comply and cooperate with UNSCR 1441 would constitute a further material breach. We conclude that false statements or omissions by themselves represent a material breach of the Security Council resolution […because the word "and" in paragraph 4 has a disjunctive, rather than a conjunctive, meaning.]
http://judiciary.senate.gov/resources/documents/upload/010509OLCDoc-FurtherMaterialBreach.pdf
I am constantly reminded of the words of H. Dumpty:
‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said, in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.’
‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean so many different things.’
‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master - that’s all.’
On June 12, 2008 the Supreme Court in Boumediene v. Bush struck down a provision in the Military Commissions Act, ruling that the denial of the right to petition for habeas corpus is unconstitutional.
Some of the majority opinion:
Officials charged with daily operational responsibility for our security may consider a judicial discourse on the history of the Habeas Corpus Act of 1679 and like matters to be far removed from the Nation's present, urgent concerns. Established legal doctrine, however, must be consulted for its teaching. Remote in time it may be; irrelevant to the present it is not. Security depends upon a sophisticated intelligence apparatus and the ability of our Armed Forces to act and to interdict. There are further considerations, however. Security subsists, too, in fidelity to freedom's first principles. Chief among these are freedom from arbitrary and unlawful restraint and the personal liberty that is secured by adherence to the separation of powers. It is from these principles that the judicial authority to consider petitions for habeas corpus relief derives. […]
We hold that petitioners may invoke the fundamental procedural protections of habeas corpus. The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times. Liberty and security can be reconciled; and in our system they are reconciled within the framework of the law. The Framers decided that habeas corpus, a right of first importance, must be a part of that framework, a part of that law.
The determination by the Court of Appeals that the Suspension Clause and its protections are inapplicable to petitioners was in error. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is reversed.
