ed strongman they appointed president in December 2000 does not have the unqualified right to arrest people without charges and put them in a dungeon forever -- at least not without allowing his victims to float up briefly in some conveniently undefined judicial "process." Not necessarily "a regular civilian court," mind you -- maybe a military tribunal, the justices suggested helpfully. And the defendants will be presumed guilty unless they can somehow prove themselves innocent -- with only limited, government-monitored contact with their attorneys. But at least the Bushists will have to produce a scrap of paper now and then to justify their body-snatching operations.

Except, of course, for the countless people now being "disappeared" in secret CIA prisons around the world or "rendered" to the rape rooms and torture pits of Bush's foreign tyrant pals. These wretched souls fall entirely outside the scope of the Court's rulings, which apply only to those areas where the United States holds "territorial jurisdiction," such as Guantanamo Bay, legal website Scotus.com reports. Doubtless there will now be a mass dispersal of the Guantanamo captives to the CIA gulag and other foreign parts. In fact, the newly "sovereign" client state of Iraq -- run by the unelected CIA terrorist and ex-Baathist stalwart, Iyad Allawi, now busy preparing martial law for his "liberated" people -- could prove invaluable in this regard.

The Supremacists also upheld the L'il Commander's self-bestowed right to use his "enemy combatant" popgun -- a sinister novelty, wholly without precedent, which allows him to zap captives into a legal limbo where neither U.S. law nor the Geneva Conventions apply. But they did place some restrictions on how far Junior can spray his little zapper, apparently limiting it to those actually captured on a battlefield -- at least for now.

For this week's decisions are only a brief respite. The Court's barrage of complex, multilayered opinions left plenty of wiggle room for White House weasel-worders to continue their pursuit of unbridled presidential power. After all, the Regime has publicly defined the entire world as the "battlefield" of the war on terror. "Enemy combatants" are everywhere, and Bush's arbitrary power to bestow this mark of Cain on anyone he pleases was not rejected in principle by the Court, which practically begged the Regime's rubber stamps in Congress to come up with some "enabling acts" to sanctify the Leader's tyrannical longings. Bush's authoritarian claims will simply be slapped with a new coat of paint -- a nod to limited judicial review, some butt-covering legislation -- then trotted out again.

Still, at this advanced stage in the long decay of the American Republic, even a crumb of liberty is better than no liberty at all. The Court, jealous of its prerogatives -- and perhaps piqued at Bush's attempt to hog all the terrorist-bashing fun for himself -- has, temporarily and partially, hobbled the Regime's vigorous march toward 21st-century fascism. For this relief, much thanks. Of course, our gratitude might have been greater if the justices hadn't illegally foisted the tinpot tyrant on the nation -- and the world -- in the first place. Although they've now given their creature a light rap on the knuckles, Bush can hardly be blamed for following their example of partisan lawlessness.

Meanwhile, behind all the somber headlines and earnest commentary on the Court's decisions, behind the glittering public facade of august institutions locked in noble agon over constitutional principle, the Bush Regime's true reality -- the ugly world of "black ops" -- keeps grinding on unabated. Here, in this dank, subterranean realm, where drug-running warlords, private armies, silent assassins, mafia chieftains, terrorist gangs, heads of state and Establishment worthies all mingle in a fog of crime, collusion and double-cross, the law is a dead letter. Here, no courts challenge Bush's most brazen appropriation of unrestrained power -- the arbitrary, unchecked, unbalanced power to kill anyone on earth, without charges, without trial, without warning.

As we've reported here for years (since Nov. 2, 2001, in fact), just after the Sept. 11 attacks Bush initiated a series of executive orders giving himself the authority to order the death of anyone he deems a terrorist -- or even a "terrorist suspect." No hearing or evidence or notice is required for this dread judgment; there is no oversight, no appeal. In 2002, he extended this arbitrary license to kill to lower-ranking CIA agents, who can strike on their own initiative and even add targets -- including U.S. citizens -- to the hit lists without any presidential supervision, The New York Times reports.

This runaway murder racket is no secret; Bush himself openly boasted about it in his 2003 State of the Union address. After detailing the number of terrorists he had arrested, he laughingly told Congress that an unspecified number of other "terrorist suspects" -- just suspects -- "were no longer a problem." The assembled statesmen roared their approval. No public official, in Congress or the courts, has ever challenged Bush's breathtaking assertion of life-and-death sway over the entire world.

So yes, we're glad that the Supreme Court has put a few weak fetters on some of the more blatant aspects of Bush's rampant Caesarism. But the rotten state of the Republic -- its once-proud people scrambling for crumbs in the fetid mud of Bush's Murder Incorporated -- is not something any patriot can celebrate on Independence Day.

Annotations

Jurisdiction in Padilla and Rasul Cases

Scotus.com, June 27, 2004

No Presidential Monopoly on War Powers

Scotus.com, June 27, 2004

Bush Has Widened Authority of CIA to Kill Terrorists

New York Times, Dec. 15, 2002

Manhunt [Targeted Killing]

The New Yorker, Dec. 16, 2002

The Secret World of US Jails

The Observer, June 13, 2004

Secret US Jails Hold 10,000

The Independent, May 13, 2004

Secret World of U.S. Interrogations

Washington Post, May 10, 2004

US Torture in Afghanistan

The Guardian, June 23, 2004

U.S. Defends 'Stress and Duress' Tactics Used on Terrorism Suspects in Secret Overseas Facilities

Washington Post, Dec. 26, 2002

President George W. Bush: State of the Union Speech

The White House, Jan. 28, 2003

CIA Weighs 'Targeted Killing' Missions

Washington Post, Oct. 27, 2001

CIA Worked in Tandem With Pakistan to Create Taliban

The Times of India, March 7, 2001

Special Ops Get OK to Initiate It's Own Missions

Washington Times, Jan. 8, 2003

Bush's 'Apex' of Unlimited Power

Consortiumnews.com, June 15, 2004

Fugitive Gun-Runner Makes Good in Iraq

Antiwar.com, May 21, 2004

A US License to Kill

Village Voice, Feb. 21, 2003

Our Designated Killers

Village Voice, Feb. 14, 2003

The Enemy Within

The Observer, Oct. 27, 2002

US Ships al Qaeda Suspects to Arab States

Christian Science Monitor, July 26, 2002

The BCCI Affair

Report to the Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate, December 1992

Inverted Totalitarianism

The Nation, May 19, 2003

Bush Gets Checked and Balanced

Salon.com, June 289, 2004

From Texas to Abu Ghraib: The Bush Legacy of Prisoner Abuse

Common Dreams, May 10, 2004

Drug War Led Bush Astray Before 9/11

Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2004

CIA Takes on Major Military Role: 'We're Killing People!'

Boston Globe, Jan. 20, 2002

A Tortured Debate

Newsweek, June 21, 2004

CIA Harsh Tactics On Hold; Extraordinary Interrogation Techniques Approved by White House

Washington Post, June 26, 2004

The Thirty Year Itch

Mother Jones, March 1, 2003

America's Secret Armies

US News & World Report, Nov. 4, 2002 issue

The United States Vs. John Poindexter

Final Report of the Independent Counsel for Iran-Contra Matters, August 4, 1993

CIA Admits 'Tolerating' Contra Drug Trafficking

Consortiumnews.com, June 8, 2000

Reporter's History of CIA-Afghanistan Link Chilling

Houston Chronicle, April 23, 2004

Sorrows of Empire: Militarism, Secrecy and the End of the Republic

Chalmers Johnson, book excerpt, Verso Books, 2004

Afghan Warlords Killing at Will

The Age (Australia), Feb. 1, 2003

Afghan Military Tied to Drug Trade

Christian Science Monitor, Sept. 4, 2003

Warlords' Crime: Secrets of an Afghan Mass Grave

"Common Dreams, Feb. 9, 2004

Rule of the Rapists

The Guardian, Feb. 12, 2004

The Other War

The New Yorker, April 12, 2004

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