Losing freedom

To the editor: Imagine a country in which you could be imprisoned at any time, with no way to legally challenge your detention, see evidence being used against you, or face your accusers. Congresswoman Sue Kelly can. She voted for a radical departure from basic American values, a bill that allows for the imprisonment of any alien, in the United States or abroad, whether a foreign resident or a lawful permanent resident, with no way to challenge that detention. Any of the millions of legal immigrants living in America could be incarcerated indefinitely without charge, without access to the courts, should the government designate them a so-called “enemy combatant.” No presumption of innocence; the government merely has to assert that you might be guilty to imprison you indefinitely. The bill not only authorizes treatment of prisoners that by any reasonable standard constitutes torture, but protects from legal action any official who engages in these practices, which have been condemned by every major human rights organization. America, once the world leader in protecting human rights, is now a notorious violator thereof, because of legislators like Sue Kelly, whose rating on the Human Rights Campaign Congressional Scorecard is a dismal 33 percent. President Bush says terrorists hate us because we love freedom; perhaps Sue Kelly thinks we’ll be safer if we show the terrorists we don’t love freedom quite as much as we used to. Thank you. John Prusinski Warwick