Backstabber Report

Barack Obama Assaults Civil Liberties – Imprisonment Without Trial

While America partied in the new year, President Obama and our Representatives have corrupted our Constitution. The wheels are in motion that will result an unbelievably frightening future for citizens in this country. Nobody is paying attention and our government controlled media seems to be taking little notice, or even attempting to inform the American public that one of their most basic of liberties found in the Bill of Rights no longer exists.

President Barack Obama signed the NDAA law (National Defense Authorization Act), with a provision allowing our government to indefinitely detain citizens of the USA without a trial. To those who voted for Obama and believed his rhetoric when he ran for the presidency in 2008, he has back stabbed not only them, but all Americans who believed in the United States Constitution.  Obama signed one of the greatest rollbacks of civil liberties in the history of our country and citizens of this country have no idea what it means to them, or their children’s future under Authoritarianism.

The military certainly does and even they aren’t in agreement with Obama’s signature on the new law. Some military leaders understand how it can be abused.

Recently two retired four-star Marine generals called on the president to veto the bill in a New York Times op-ed, deeming it “misguided and unnecessary.”

“Due process would be a thing of the past,” wrote Gens Charles C. Krulak and Joseph P. Hoar. “Current law empowers the military to detain people caught on the battlefield, but this provision would expand the battlefield to include the United States and will hand Osama bin Laden an unearned victory long after his well-earned demise.”

Obama broke his promise not to sign the law. He said previously that he would not support any law which denied an American citizen a right to a speedy trial. He even attached a statement that he really does not want to detain citizens indefinitely (see the text of the statement here).

Obama has used the excuse that he signed the bill out of necessity to keep our troops funded. The White House told citizens that the president would not sign the NDAA because of the provision of indefinite detention of American citizens. That lie ended after Bill sponsor Senator Carl Levin (Democrat, Michigan) went to the floor and disclosed that it was the White House that insisted that there be no exception for citizens in the indefinite detention provision.

The claim of signing the bill to fund the troops makes the entire scheme to create a dictatorship even more disgusting. Our government is now funding the troops that fights for democracy and freedom with a bill that takes away the freedom of it’s citizens They are now funded and fighting to consolidate authoritarian powers in the president. Obama has stated he never intends the provision of detention to be used against an American citizen. That may be fine during his presidency, but what of the next president… or the next after that. If a law exists on the books it can and will be used one day.  It is not the use but the right to use such powers that defines authoritarian systems.

Just as Obama used the military to assassinate an American citizen, Anwar al-Awlaki without a trial in the Middle East by use of a drone attack, at some point a President will justify the use of this law. With regard to Anwar al-Awlaki, he was known to be an al-Qaeda leader who gave fiery anti-American speeches. He may even have  been involved in the planning of attacks. However, he was an American citizen and received a death sentence by our government without a trial. That is the scary part – Most of us may see him as getting what he deserved, but he should have received it after a trial by jury. Without such a trial, any American citizen can be subject to elimination without a trial… if the government deems it so.

Back to the newest law of indefinite detention. Mainstream media news has virtually failed to mention it. Many news outlets spin it as the White House wants it spun. Just as they did when reporting Bush’s belief that waterboarding was not torture.

On the NDAA, the Obama administration has fought any challenges in the courts to review indefinite detention. Most experts agree that such indefinite detention of citizens violates the constitution, but considering our Supreme Court’s recent rulings it is quite possible that those who would believe a corporation is a “person” might conceivably believe the Bill of Rights is no longer relevant to it’s citizens.

Some will state that this Bill does not apply to American citizens due to the mandatory detention requirement (section 1032). The trouble with this argument is that 1032 is only the screening language for the next section, 1031, which offers no exemption for American citizens if the military is authorized to indefinitely detain people without charge or trial.

Obama could have refused to sign the bill and the Congress would have rushed to fund the troops. Instead, as confirmed by Senator Levin, the White House conducted a misinformation campaign to secure this power while portraying the president as some type of reluctant absolute ruler, or, as Obama maintains, a reluctant president with dictatorial powers.

Some say the end of the world is due in 2012. While we don’t know about the world, we do see that the end of the American “way of life” and civil liberties has now ended.