Since the war we continue to fight against the Soviet Union is "secret", that means we needed another enemy--Al-Qaeda. The liberties we have lost at home are another result of this "secret" war with the USSR. Unconstitutional "anti-terror" legislation was sought as far back as the Reagan and Bush I administrations. They weren't fooled by Gorbachev's Perestroika, and saw what was coming down the pike.

If you remember, bombs started going off in buildings here in America soon after the "collapse" of the USSR in December 1991. The first bombing was the 1993 WTC false-flag operation, where we learned later in 1993 that the bomb that went off was actually made by the FBI!

See my June 3, 2009 article "The World Trade Center Attacks in Perspective" for clarification on this subject:

http://www.dnotice.org/

Dean Jackson/Editor-in-Chief DNotice.org
Washington, DC

http://www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/1-latest-news/1887-...

While we were all out doing our Christmas shopping, the highest court in the land quietly put the kibosh on a few more of the remaining shards of human liberty.

It happened earlier this week, in a discreet ruling that attracted almost no notice and took little time. In fact, our most august defenders of the Constitution did not have to exert themselves in the slightest to eviscerate not merely 220 years of Constitutional jurisprudence but also centuries of agonizing effort to lift civilization a few inches out of the blood-soaked mire that is our common human legacy. They just had to write a single sentence.

Here's how the bad deal went down. After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president's fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a "suspected enemy combatant" by the president or his designated minions is no longer a "person." They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever -- save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials.

This extraordinary ruling occasioned none of those deep-delving "process stories" that glut the pages of the New York Times, where the minutiae of policy-making or political gaming is examined in highly-spun, microscopic detail doled out by self-interested insiders. Obviously, giving government the power to render whole classes of people "unpersons" was not an interesting subject for our media arbiters. It was news that wasn't fit to print. Likewise, the ruling provoked no thundering editorials in the Washington Post, no savvy analysis from the high commentariat -- and needless to say, no outrage whatsoever from all our fierce defenders of individual liberty on the Right.

But William Fisher noticed, and gave this report at Antiwar.com:

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal Monday to review a lower court’s dismissal of a case brought by four British former Guantanamo prisoners against former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, the detainees’ lawyers charged Tuesday that the country’s highest court evidently believes that "torture and religious humiliation are permissible tools for a government to use."

...Channeling their predecessors in the George W. Bush administration, Obama Justice Department lawyers argued in this case that there is no constitutional right not to be tortured or otherwise abused in a U.S. prison abroad.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By agreeing, the court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court, which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act – a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" – did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law.

The lower court also dismissed the detainees’ claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants."

The Constitution is clear: no person can be held without due process; no person can be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. And the U.S. law on torture of any kind is crystal clear: it is forbidden, categorically, even in time of "national emergency." And the instigation of torture is, under U.S. law, a capital crime. No person can be tortured, at any time, for any reason, and there are no immunities whatsoever for torture offered anywhere in the law.

The four former detainees – Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith – filed their case in 2004 seeking damages from former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld and senior U.S. military officers for violations of their constitutional rights and of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits infringement of religion by the U.S. government against any person.

Their claims were dismissed in 2008 by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when that court held that detainees have no rights under the Constitution and do not count as "persons" for purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Last year, the Supreme Court granted the men’s first petition, vacated the Court of Appeals decision and ordered the D.C. Circuit to reconsider its ruling in light of the Supreme Court’s historic decision in Boumediene v. Bush, which held that Guantánamo is de facto U.S. territory and that detainees have a constitutional right to habeas corpus.

On remand, the D.C. Circuit reiterated its view that the Constitution does not prohibit torture of detainees at Guantánamo and that detainees still are not "persons" protected from religious abuse. Finally, the Court of Appeals held that, in any event, the government officials involved are immune from liability because the right not to be tortured was not clearly established.

"Center for Constitutional Rights Senior Attorney Shayana Kadidal, co-counsel on the case, told IPS, "In many ways the opinion the Supreme Court left standing today is worse when one gets past the bottom line – no accountability for torture and religious abuse – and digs into the legal reasoning."

"One set of claims are dismissed because torture is said to be a foreseeable consequence of military detention," he said. "How will the parents of our troops captured in future foreign wars react to that?"

As Dr. Martin Luther King said, a time comes when silence is betrayal.

Apathy Supports the Status Quo

Jon Gold's thoughts are heartfelt and to the point as are the other comments. We have to ask ourselves, or more importantly, we have to ask the media what it means to Support theTroops? We have this empty slogan thrown in our face all the time by false patriots and false Christians. We are told that our troops are over there in the Middle East and all around the world protecting us and defending our liberties and freedoms. If that is the case then why don't we have the freedom of open public dialog here in the land of the free and home of the brave? Why will the media not speak of the many unsettled issues surrounding Sept 11, 2001? Why, if there is nothing to hide, will they not allow any meaningful discussion in the media? If Bush and Cheney and the NEOClowns are above suspicion in the 9-11 attacks then having open discussion would only exonerate them but it's obvious the truth is being hidden from the gullible, distracted public.

Having open media and open public dialog about 9-11 would suport the troops by assuring that indeed our rights to free speech are being defended. Having open dialog and media access by 9-11 truth seekers would also meet the first requirement of the media, that it be entertaining. Surely they can't say that people are just not interested in hearing a well documented, well referenced, well substantiated, well witnessed account of the means, motive and opportunity surrounding the biggest mass murder in American history? They fact they will not allow open discussion in our publicly owned media dishoners the troops and the reason they are sacrificing their lives, minds and souls for us. The fact the media won't allow 9-11 discussion violates the principals for free market enterprise that they so love to espouse. The fact the media will not allow meaningful discussion and open public dialog about the events leading up to, including and after the day of infamy, proves that indeed the US media is owned and operated by corporate interests that financially benefitted from the attack on America and the subseqauent wars and makes them complicit in the cover up of the biggest mass murder in American history. The heads of the MSM should be brought up on Treason charges, aiding and abetting.