For instance, the US Congress, in the wake of September 11, passed the ‘USA Patriot Act’, which deprives aliens within US borders of equal protection under the criminal law. It empowers the Attorney General to detain any alien suspected of aiding terrorism for seven days with no charge. If the alien is then charged with any even wholly unrelated crime, and the Attorney General believes that releasing him will threaten national security, then the alien can be detained for six months, and for further six month periods indefinitely.
2.
The person who has most tirelessly documented US complicity in terrorism and war crimes during the late 20th century is Noam Chomsky. See, especially, his Deterring Democracy, updated edition, Hill and Wang, 1992.
3.
PowerS., ‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide, Basic Books, 2002.
4.
Brian Urquhart, a former Undersecretary-General of the UN, in a review of Samantha Power's book, above, ref 1, (New York Review of Books, 25 April 2002) comments: ‘The UN and its leading members failed to act on specific warnings of the catastrophe to come. When the killings started the Security Council, under US leadership, ignored appeals for reinforcements from General Romeo Dallaire, the Canadian Commander of the tiny UN force in Rwanda, and instead progressively reduced the strength of the force and its capacity to intervene’.
