FOX News Is Led By Unlawful Enemy Combatants

The information is leaking out slowly, with mainstream media largely ignoring it, but they won’t be able to ignore it forever.

According to right-wing news organization WorldNetDaily, FOX News paid $2 million to terrorist organizations in order to obtain the release of FOX News employees Steve Centanni and Olaf Wiig. It seems at least some of that money was subsequently used, as you’d expect, to buy weapons to kill people with.

Now, I want to make it clear that I am not second-guessing the decision made by FOX News. I can’t say with honesty that I know what I would do if my loved ones were kidnapped by terrorists. Maybe I would cash out my bank account, which has a balance of — OK, maybe I’d take out a loan and try to ply them with a few thousand bucks in order to try to obtain their freedom. Terrorists make our lives and our choices difficult, so I won’t sit here and play morally-superior second-guessing Monday-morning-quarterback games about FOX News’ actions.

No, what’s interesting to me is that, under the provisions of the Military Commissions Act (or as I prefer to think of it, the Tyranny Act), the FOX News executives who authorized the money transfer are now “unlawful enemy combatants,” under the following provision of the law signed by George W. Bush:

(1) UNLAWFUL ENEMY COMBATANT- (A) The term `unlawful enemy combatant’ means–

`(i) a person who has engaged in hostilities or who has purposefully and materially supported hostilities against the United States or its co-belligerents who is not a lawful enemy combatant (including a person who is part of the Taliban, al Qaeda, or associated forces);

“Material support” is specifically defined in section 2339A(b) of title 18 of the U.S. Code:

the term “material support or resources” means any property, tangible or intangible, or service, including currency or monetary instruments or financial securities, financial services, lodging, training, expert advice or assistance, safehouses, false documentation or identification, communications equipment, facilities, weapons, lethal substances, explosives, personnel (1 or more individuals who may be or include oneself), and transportation, except medicine or religious materials;

It appears FOX News executives who authorized the transfer, and FOX News underlings who carried the transfer out, are fully subject to classification as “unlawful enemy combatants.” And we know what happens to “unlawful enemy combatants” under the current law which is (despite the counterfactual protestations of partisan Daily Kos writers who wanted us to all support Democrats who helped pass the law) now fully in effect.

If the people at FOX News — the most gung-ho, kill-them-Ayrabs, kiss-ass-Republican, Bush-is-God, Stop Questioning Authority, Christian reconstructionist bunch on the airwaves — qualify as “unlawful enemy combatants”, who isn’t at risk? It’s not just the Evil People, convenient marked with “E” tattoos on their foreheads, who are at risk under the Tyranny Act. We are all at risk under this law.

I know the liberals who read Irregular Times understood this danger long ago. But to the authoritarians who read this blog, I ask: Do you get it now? Do you finally get it?

Postscript: I anticipate someone will react by pointing out that nobody in the government is about to classify FOX News executives as “unlawful enemy combatants,” even if they do qualify as unlawful enemy combatants under the law. But that’s part of the problem: when an unelected committee of the President is given power to make unreviewable designations like these at their discretion, they won’t be equally applied. Of course FOX News executives won’t be declared “unlawful enemy combatants” because the current administration views them as friends. Special treatment can be purchased with the currency of political allegiance and obedience, making indefinite detention a matter of arbitary and unequal treatment under the law.