Here and There

Two fairly unrelated comments, but lest I post twice, I thought I'd try to combine them.

- First up, this exchange from yesterday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, which I first noticed in the comments to this post on Balkinization. You can find a full transcript of the exchange here . In fairness, I think the AG might just have been acting petulant, but still, the statement on is face is shocking. Also, the emphasis added is mine:

Specter: Now wait a minute, wait a minute. The Constitution says you can't take [habeas] away except in the case of invasion or rebellion. Doesn't that mean you have the right of habeas corpus?

Gonzales: I meant by that comment that the Constitution doesn't say that every individual in the United States or every citizen has or is assured the right of habeas corpus. It doesn't say that. It simply says that the right of habeas corpus shall not be suspended.

Is that chilling or what? The Attorney General of the United States is not convinced that the Constitution guarantees the right of habeas corpus to every American citizen. I realize some might quibble with me that he said the Constitution doesn't explicitly say that, and that he might personally think that all citizens unequivocally do have that right, but to me, the fact that he would even hint that there is any ambiguity on this point is shocking.

This is particularly disturbing when read in conjunction with the MCA , an act which some legal experts (look here, here, and here) have read to allow the President to designate American citizens as unlawful enemy combatants, and thereby deny them any habeas rights. While that provision would likely be interpreted as unconstitutional, it's disturbing enough on its face that the Administration sought such a provision to be included in the act in the first place. When you couple that with a statement like the one AG Gonzales made yesterday......well, the above notwithstanding, I'm pretty much speechless...

- Interesting bit number 2: this editorial by Charles Krauthammer. In it, he lays out what I think is an intriguing case for a "Plan B" in Iraq which would involve essentially withdrawing American troops to the safe parts of Iraq and forcing the Iraqi government to deal with the mess in Baghdad and Anbar on their own, should they refuse to engage on President Bush's newly-minted "Plan A".

If you think that withdrawal from the country might be harmful to our national interest (I'm personally on the fence about this), Krauthammer's Plan B might be a very effective way to motivate the Iraqis without completely relinquishing our ability to protect out interests (assuming, of course, that our physical presence affords us such an ability in the first instance). There has been some suggestion in pieces like this one that some senior military officials think given the current plan, the Shiite militias will just lay low for a few months, while the US force is increased, and leave us with no one to fight but the Sunnis. Then later, once we reduce our force, the militias can return unfettered. This would allow them to protect their monetary and political gains without giving up too much.

This Plan B would make the militias do the heavy lifting. Of course, a major objection to this idea should be that it essentially makes us complicit in what is likely to be, at best, major sectarian strife, and in the worst case, full-scale sectarian cleansing. We would be all the while on the sidelines, just waiting to move back in and put the pieces back together. After all we've done to turn Iraq upside-down, this seems a little like throwing salt in the wound, but it might be better, both morally and strategically, than pulling out altogether.