Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel in the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, discusses the temporary legal injunction prohibiting enforcement of some provisions in the NDAA, specifically the indefinite military detentions that could apply to American dissidents like Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg; the vague definitions of “support for terrorism” and “associated forces,” which basically mean whatever the government wants them to; why most members of Congress are willing to destroy civil liberties to look tough on terrorism and win reelection; imagining the consequences if other countries dared to assassinate Americans based on secret evidence and an undisclosed legal standard; and the US’s hypocritical message to the developing world about the superiority of civilian trials to military ones.
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