The new law vaguely bans torture -- but makes the administration the arbiter of what is torture and what isn't. It allows the president to imprison indefinitely anyone he decides falls under a wide-ranging new definition of unlawful combatant. It suspends the Great Writ of habeas corpus for detainees. It allows coerced testimony at trial. It immunizes retroactively interrogators who may have engaged in torture. Here's what Bush had to say at his signing ceremony in the East Room: "The bill I sign today helps secure this country, and it sends a clear message: This nation is patient and decent and fair, and we will never back down from the threats to our freedom." But that may not be the "clear message" the new law sends most people. Here's the clear message the law sends to the world: America makes its own rules.

The neoconservative gang was anxious to see Gerhard Schroeder leave office, but Angela Merkel could be a much bigger headache, since she is seen (so far) as having a much more independent position (outside the Schroeder - Chirac - Putin axis).

Last week, President Bush signed into law a measure removing detainees' right to file habeas corpus petitions in the US federal courts. On Friday, the administration asked the Supreme Court to make this retroactive, so nullifying about 220 cases in which prisoners have contested the basis of their detention and the legality of pending trials by military commission.

The evidence to date overwhelmingly makes clear that jihadi terrorists are provoked by American weakness, not the harshness of American policies. (...) When [former Syrian president] Hafiz Assad leveled Hama, he went out of his way to show the devastation on TV for a reason--jihadi terrorists are intimidated by brutality greater than their own. On the other hand, our humanitarian interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo have won us no credit in jihadi terrorist circles. These are not people you can cozy up to. They treat friendly gestures with contempt.

Torture and indefinite detention without trial at Guantanamo have been hot topics in Washington in recent weeks. Senator McCain wants to categorically ban torture, while Vice President Cheney wants to give the CIA the right to torture.  The Senate is looking for a compromise, writes the Washington Post:

By linking a provision to deny prisoners the right to challenge their detention in federal court with language restricting interrogation methods, senators hope to soften the administration's ardent opposition to McCain's anti-torture provision -- or possibly win its support.

The federal courts ruled in favor of many detainees, like Murat Kurnaz. The administration then went to the Court of Appeals.

NOVEMBER 10TH, 2005: SENATE VOTES AGAINST ACCESS TO FEDERAL COURTS

The Senate did not want to wait for the ruling of the Court of Appeals and voted 49 to 42 for the Graham Amendment that would undermine the habeas corpus principle and the previous Supreme Court ruling concerning judicial oversight. 350 law professors oppose the amendment and argue

This Amendment, as currently drafted, seeks to eliminate existing habeas corpus jurisdiction over petitions now pending as well as those to be filed by detainees at Guantánamo Bay. We write because we believe this course of action unwise and contrary to the most fundamental precepts of American constitutional traditions. (…)

The Graham Amendment would dramatically erode our core constitutional commitment to separation of powers. The Amendment consigns the protection of fundamental human liberties to unilateral executive determination under which the Executive chooses the prisoners, chooses the charges, chooses the judges, chooses the punishment – and cuts off judicial review of its determinations. We should not forget the Framers' insight, expressed so eloquently by James Madison in the 47th Federalist Paper, that the "accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands … may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny."