Monday, March 10, 2003

Terrorism and civil liberties. If you accept, as most do, that the war on terrorism justifies wider powers of surveillance and detention, then two principles still need to be applied. First, the government's new powers should, where possible, be enacted in clearly-worded terrorism laws, passed by Congress. Second, wider powers should be balanced by wider review. Spies, now less constrained, should be more answerable for their actions; suspects, deprived of their lawyers for longer periods, should eventually have more opportunity to present their case to a judge and, where possible, a jury; and the whole process should be subject to political and judicial review. [The Economist]   3:29:12 PM

France Will Vote Against Iraq Resolution. The French leader said he would not support military action until the inspectors explicitly tell the U.N. Security Council that they cannot fulfill their objective of certifying that Iraq is free of weapons of mass destruction. [AP World News] The problem, Mr. Chirac, is that by refusing to place hard deadlines on Iraq, you basically guarantee that at some point the inspectors will come back and state that they cannot fulfill their objective. If there is a war in Iraq, the United States and France will share the blame. The U.S. will be to blame for its haste, and France will be to blame for its unwillingness to hold Iraq accountable with any sort of timetable for disarmament.   3:26:08 PM