Obama Pundit

by C. William Chattin

In what can only be described as my worst fears of the Boumediene decision realized, U. S. Representative Mike Rogers has told The Weekly Standard that the Obama Administration has instructed U.S. military and intelligence personnel to Mirandize foreign fighters (including suspected members of Al-Qaeda, the Taliban and other jihadists) apprehended on foreign territory.

Boumediene v. Bush was the landmark Supreme Court case, decided last June (5-4), that – apparently for the first time in the history of Western Civilization – made the writ of habaes corpus (the right to seek redress from a U.S. Court) available to aliens captured and held outside the sovereign territory of the Crown (i.e., the state/government).  Boumediene, the petitioner, was being held at the Gitmo detention facility, which is part of the sovereign territory of Cuba, and held by the U.S. pursuant to a long-term lease.

The Bush Administration had taken great pains to select a location and build the prison at Gitmo in order to keep it outside the reach of U.S. Courts.  The Boumediene decision brought the detainees at Gitmo within the reach of U.S. Courts.  My concern at the time was not for the right being granted to detainees to seek redress from U.S. Courts, but for the questions left open, to wit: what other rights were thus accorded?  Would detainees get the rights of all U.S. citizens, i.e., rights under the Bill of Rights, recently-minted privacy rights, etc.?

Well, according to what Rep. Rogers says he saw on his fact-finding mission to Afghanistan, the Obama Administration has stepped to the plate and giving all new “detainees” Miranda warnings:

“I was a little surprised to find it taking place when I showed up because we hadn’t been briefed on it, I didn’t know about it. We’re still trying to get to the bottom of it, but it is clearly a part of this new global justice initiative.”

As every red-blooded American knows, a Miranda warning (so named for the 1966 Supreme Court decision, Miranda v. Arizona) is the reading of rights required of police officers and other law enforcement officials in the United States to advise suspected criminals in police custody in the United States of their rights in the United States.  Of course, the individual “Miranda” rights — the right to remain silent, to be warned their words may incriminate them, to counsel, etc. –  are tied to rights under the Fifth and Sixth Amendments.

Beyond the practical concerns of actually reading these rights overseas, it’s rather disturbing that the Obama Administration feels that jihadists are imbued with rights under the U.S. Constitution.  Clearly, they do not view the ongoing struggle in Afghanistan and Pakistan as a war, but as a multi-million square-mile police action.