Bill of Rights Defense Campaign

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Working with communities to uphold the Bill of Rights
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Dissent Is Patriotic

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee's e-mail newsletter

August 2008, Vol. 7, No. 7

In this issue:

Please support BORDC's work to defend the Bill of Rights! Contribute funds or stock online, or mail a check or money order to:

Bill of Rights Defense Committee
8 Bridge Street, Suite A
Northampton, MA 01060

Waste, Not Justice: The Hamdan Tribunal

On August 6, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the defendant in the first war crimes trial in the U.S. since World War II, was convicted of material support for terrorism. His sentence of five-and-a-half years, delivered the following day, was a rebuke to the Bush administration, which sought a 30-year sentence. With credit for time already served in the Guantánamo Bay detention center, Hamdan will be eligible for release in just five months.

Hamdan was not convicted on all charges, however. In fact, he was acquitted of all the original charges brought by the government, including conspiracy to aid a terrorist organization. Congress added “material support,” never previously considered a war crime, to the war crimes list when it passed the Military Commissions Act (MCA) in 2006.

What did Hamdan do to provide material support for terrorism? He acted as Osama bin Laden’s driver and bodyguard, which the panel of six hand-picked military officers that convicted him believed he did “knowing that by providing said services or transportation he was directly facilitating communications and planning for acts of terrorism.” However, as The New York Times reported, his lawyers argued at the trial that Hamdan, a Yemeni with only a fourth-grade education, was simply trying to support his family:

Defense lawyers argued that there was no evidence that Mr. Hamdan, a Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, was involved in planning any Qaeda operations or had advance knowledge of the specifics of any planned attacks. They claimed that his role as a driver was just a job for a father of two who “had to earn a living.”

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks and another Guantánamo Bay detainee, stated in written testimony submitted at the tribunal that Hamdan was “primitive,” “not fit to plan or execute” al Qaeda’s terrorist activities, and didn’t share bin Laden’s ideology.

Despite all the evidence showing the insignificance of Hamdan’s role in al Qaeda, the battle for his freedom may not be over yet. According to the Associated Press,

The Defense Department insists it has a right to hold "enemy combatants" who are considered to pose a threat to the United States — even those cleared of charges or given short sentences in the military tribunals at Guantanamo.

The military officers who convicted and sentenced Hamdan are angry that the administration can simply ignore their decision; as one put it, “After all the effort that we put in to get somebody a fair trial…and then to say no matter what we did it didn't matter—I don't see that as a positive step.” The fact that Hamdan may not go free when his sentence is up in December—despite calls from the people who convicted him that the sentence be respected—casts even more doubt on the fairness of the military tribunals.

With the Hamdan trial over, the government’s next step is prosecuting Omar Khadr, a Canadian who was just 15 years old in 2002 when he is alleged to have thrown a grenade that killed a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan. In an interrogation video released by the government, Khadr says he was inside a house at the time of the incident, not in the firefight.

The government has spent vast amounts of time and resources preparing for these tribunals, including securing passage of the MCA so that it could charge lowly drivers and potentially innocent teenagers with “war crimes.” It is clear that neither the resources spent on these tribunals nor the hollow victory of Hamdan’s short sentence are in the interest of national security. These efforts are for show; they do not make our country safer.

This wastefulness is just another illustration of why we so desperately need a People’s Campaign for the Constitution. The government’s actions have shown that they have an egregious disregard not only for our civil liberties and constitutional protections, but also for our safety and our taxpayer dollars. We, the people, must come together from across the political spectrum and stand up to our government. We must remind them that their job is to uphold the Constitution and protect us from terrorism, yes, but also from unchecked government power. We must make our congressional representatives feel the pressure of a national movement as well as local coalitions in their home districts. We must hold them accountable for using resources wisely, not to detain and prosecute innocent people who had little or nothing to do with perpetrating terrorist acts, but to increase our nation’s security without sacrificing the freedoms that make America the great country it has always been.

People's Campaign for the Constitution News

Coalition Partner Organizations

The People’s Campaign benefits from national, regional, and local coalitions and from organizations coming together to provide local outreach and support as well as resources and ideas on the national level. BORDC is pleased to announce that the following national organizations have recently joined as campaign partners:

We also are pleased to have the support of several regional, statewide and local organizations. See a list of all our partner organizations. Please invite organizations to which you belong to join the People’s Campaign as partners. Whether the organization works on one, a handful, or all of the constitutional issues that the People’s Campaign can address, it can benefit from taking part in the broadest possible coalition to help bring our government into compliance with the U.S. Constitution. Organizations and individuals can sign up here.

Guest Bloggers

The People's Campaign for the Constitution's blog has just gained some new contributors. As momentum builds at the local level, the PCC blog provides a forum for local organizers to share strategies, reports and views from their local campaign efforts. If you want to connect online with other local organizers working to build coalitions to hold their members of Congress accountable to their constitutional oaths and to share ideas on how to strengthen our common work, blog on!

Regional Partner Moves Local Campaign Forward

Strength Through Peace, a People’s Campaign partner organization in Colorado, sent a list of questions on issues related to the "war-on-terror" to Colorado’s candidates for U.S. Senate and for the contested House seat for Colorado’s 4th Congressional District. The responses they have received (from three candidates so far) can be found here. As the People’s Campaign coalition within that district grows, those and other questions related to Congress members’ obligations to uphold the Constitution can be put forth to the candidates in the form of community-wide demands, in a public forum that shows the candidates the diversity as well as the numbers of constituents who are calling for full restoration of constitutional rights and protections.

Please share with us what your local group is doing to put legislators and candidates on record as supporting or sacrificing our constitutional rights. Write to us at info (at) bordc.org.

Congress's Days Are Numbered: Take Advantage!

The FISA Amendments Act is the latest in a too-long list of reasons why Congress members need to spend more time in their districts hearing from their constituents and less time in Washington, DC, passing legislation they think their constituents want or will accept.

Fortunately for us all, in an election year like this one, members of Congress spend more time campaigning in their districts, which means more opportunities for you and your community to give them a dose of reality from voters face-to-face. (They are in a district work period right now.) The better you organize yourselves and your message, the more effective you’ll be. The certainty that the administration will also change makes this election year an especially good time to demand full restoration of our constitutional rights.

The People’s Campaign for the Constitution is about bringing the community together around the unifying message that the Constitution belongs to the people, and that government officials—including members of Congress—are obliged to uphold it. A sample list of demands is among the many resources we’ve put in our organizer’s toolkit to help you get started.

Calendar of opportunities

  • Congress’s in-district work period: August 9 through September 8
  • Democratic National Convention: August 25-28
  • Republican National Convention: September 1-4
  • Target start date for House’s pre-election break: September 26
  • Election Day: November 4

Congress’s pre-election break and the “lame duck” period following the election are perfect times for your community or congressional district to show its legislators and any challengers where it stands on civil liberties issues and to find out and publicize the candidates’ positions on those issues for other voters.

Constitution Day, September 17. The anniversary of our Constitution is a great time to build local support for the People’s Campaign for the Constitution and to demand that all candidates restore constitutional rights. Visit BORDC’s Constitution Day page for educational suggestions, including scripts for Constitution Day public service announcements (PSAs). If you’ve started a local People’s Campaign, use the occasion to write your own PSA urging people to join your coalition. Remember that every school that receives a portion of its funding from the U.S. government must put on a Constitution Day program. Use our resources to find opportunities to help schools near you, including adult education centers, put on their Constitution Day programs and bring brochures or flyers about the People’s Campaign for the Constitution with you.

Book Reviews

The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals

The Dark Side, by investigative journalist Jane Mayer, lays out the roles that Vice President Dick Cheney and his advisor, David Addington, played in setting administration policies for capturing and interrogating detainees. It is a beautifully written, well-researched must-read for anyone who wants to understand how the U.S. slipped from a nation that played an essential role in the adoption of the Geneva Conventions to a nation known to violate those conventions, how the administration’s secret adoption of torture as a policy contributed false evidence of an Iraq connection to the terrorist attacks by Al Qaeda to justify attacking Iraq, and much more.

Sadly, it is a story of power that silenced or incapacitated the many members of government, the military, and the intelligence community who knew better but were powerless to do the right thing for the U.S. and for the world. Hopefully the book’s revelations will move our country and the next administration toward higher ground. Doubleday, 2008.

We Will Be Heard: Voices in the Struggle for Constitutional Rights Past and Present

The photographs convey as much as the words in Bud and Ruth Schultz's latest book, We Will Be Heard. In the eyes of Maher Arar, whose arresting portrait fills the cover, we can see not only his betrayed ideals and the depth of his suffering, but also the wearying awareness and acceptance of the need to continue the struggle for his basic civil rights year after year. Apparently because his name was on a "terrorist lookout list," Arar was detained by FBI and Immigration and Naturalization agents at JFK airport on September 26, 2002, after a vacation in Tunisia. Although he had absolutely no terrorist connections, his ordeal lasted over a year and included "extraordinary rendition" to Syria for brutal imprisonment and torture.

Some of the people in this book may be familiar to us, but most are near-unknowns who, like Maher Arar, were overtaken by events that at first seemed outlandish and incredible, but turned out to be devastatingly real. For many, the result of their struggles has been a lifelong commitment to civil rights: American born Fred Korematsu, who refused to comply with the U.S.’s Japanese internment order in 1941, filed an amicus brief on behalf of Guantánamo detainees more than sixty years later in 2003.

The photographs alone make this book worth owning, but the self-portraits in each of the featured individuals’ words—one for each year from 1916 to 2005—create an inspiring witness to those who continue to hold this country to its highest ideals. Merrell, 2008.

BORDC News

BORDC Seeks Intern

BORDC is again seeking interns for the 2008-2009 school year. We will be hiring as many as two interns to work 8 to 10 hours per week at our main office in Northampton, MA. If you are interested in applying for an internship, or if you know someone who might be, please visit http://www.bordc.org/employment/intern.php for details on internship responsibilities and qualifications. To apply, send a cover letter and resume to info(at)bordc.org or 8 Bridge Street, Suite A, Northampton, MA 01060. We are currently accepting applications for internships for the full school year as well as for the fall semester.

Subscribe to Our Daily News Digest

Hundreds of BORDC's supporters responded to our recent announcement about our daily digest of links to news articles concerning civil liberties issues. If you would like to try it out, you may sign up to receive our news digest as a once-daily email. You may also view the featured articles at your convenience by subscribing to BORDC's RSS feed to add the articles to your live bookmarks. As always, you may unsubscribe at any time.

Editor: Nancy Talanian, Director
Managing Editor: Barbara Haugen, Administrator
Contributing Writers:
Ben Grosscup, Campaign Coordinator
Amy Ferrer, Web and Publications Coordinator

Bill of Rights Defense Committee
8 Bridge St., Suite A
Northampton, MA 01060

Web: www.bordc.org/
Email: info (at) bordc.org
Telephone: 413-582-0110
Fax: 413-582-0116