'...one of the principal benefits of the Libyan War, at least from the standpoint of U.S. officials: the indefinite continuation of the U.S. government’s anti-terrorist powers that have accompanied its decade-long “war on terrorism.”'

The Benefit of Obama’s War on Libya
by Jacob G. Hornberger

Lost within the “humanitarian” rationale that President Obama and his liberal cohorts have provided for the U.S. Empire’s war on Libya is one of the principal benefits of the Libyan War, at least from the standpoint of U.S. officials: the indefinite continuation of the U.S. government’s anti-terrorist powers that have accompanied its decade-long “war on terrorism.”

Such powers include the search and seizure provisions of the Patriot Act, the enemy- combatant doctrine, indefinite detention, kangaroo military tribunals, Gitmo, secret overseas prison camps, kidnapping, rendition, torture, denial of due process, and body groping and porn-scanning at the airports.

Just like the Middle East dictatorships, the U.S. government is not about to relinquish such powers willingly, even though they have been in existence for some 10 years. President Obama, with the full support of the U.S. military, the CIA, Homeland Security, and both liberals and conservatives in Congress, will come up with every possible rationale as to why it is necessary for federal officials to continue retaining such powers indefinitely into the future, perhaps even as long as the many decades that the Middle East dictatorships have wielded such powers.

Recall Hosni Mubarak, one of the many U.S.-supported dictators in the Middle East. His anti-terrorist powers included the power to arbitrarily search people’s homes and belongings, to arrest suspected terrorists without judicial process, to detain suspected terrorists indefinitely without a trial, to torture suspected terrorists for information or confession, and to even execute suspected terrorists without a trial.

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http://www.fff.org/blog/index.asp