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The assumption that the Guantanamo prisoners were terrorist is just that, an assumption.
If they were tried in military courts, we would never ever find out the truth that would otherwise be available to the public in US courts.
Fear promoting militants are quite ready to shoot first and ask questions later.
yeah and we are in a war--where's your allegedly superior intelligence telling you these are not high value targets? if you think they're so soft and cuddly, go ahead and adopt one--just make sure you don't have a dog, enjoy pork and have locked up your women and children.
My statement is not a test of my superior intelligence to evaluate military targets.
Historically, governments and military establishment have given false or misleading information to the populations, and I don't propose to allow that to happen at all.
They assert these prisoners were terrorists? I would like to be sure, before I consent to condemn them.
You must be exceedingly young and have been indoctrinated to believe that what Military leaders or the Administration do not lie. That's already been proven false.
Do you expect me to take their word for it?
I am neither young nor militarily stupid--particularly with my family's bona fides. However, I'd rather trust them than you--I know my family--I don't know you. And I know Khaleed Sheik Mohammed isn't mr. cuddly. Neither is anyone involved with islam at any level, regardless of the religion of peace spin. Yes, I've done my research and education in that area as well.
So, I'll believe my research and the facts over a bleeding heart who wants to let these monsters loose. You want 'em loose, you "adopt" them--and good luck.
Much as we may have one of the best legal systems, mistakes are still made; witness the some 20 + death row who were found to be innocent.
Open court offer lots of examinations, and reviews, and is designed to protect the innocent; so if there were one innocent person in Guantanamo, I wouldn't want it in my conscience for having closed my eyes and trusted a military court.
I never asked you to trust me; but between the military, and the courts, the latter is organized such as mistakes can get caught much easier than in military courts.
Secret military courts do not have such safeguards. I know; I was in the military myself for 4 years.
I don't think you were calling me a bleeding heart; nor do I think you were suggesting I wanted them to be set loose. Going into the standard legal system isn't setting them lose.
You talk of them all as a single unit. They're individuals, and can't be prejudged by a military system without any safeguards.
I was falsely arrested once. No big deal; I spent the night in jail until an attorney was able to show that I was not the person they wanted. But I got picked up because of the zeal of people who thing that if someone is accused, he must have done it.
In "A Few Good Men" Jack Nicolson played the well intentioned Commander who in the end believed that because he was assigned to protect us, he had the absolute right to do so as he saw fit. Well, it is for that reasons that the military was put under the jurisdiction of the civilian world. The stress of battle and defense can cause anyone, no matter how well meaning he may be, to lose perspective of the rest of the world. It's similar to the police, who facing crime on a daily basis, they tend to forget that most people are decent, and once in a while the take it out on the innocent.
So it happens.
All this has historical precedence. Goering once said:
“Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
And so it happens today that our leaders have done the same, and keep the public in high pitch emotional rage against whomever they point to as the enemy.
Our nation was conceived with the idea of "justice for all" which doesn't mean let all criminals loose, but it does mean that we must do whatever necessary due process so when we judge someone and find him guilty of a crime, it is totally founded on real facts, and not the emotional reactions of zealots.
Have you seen the state of the judiciary lately? And you still believe "in justice for all"? Not freaking likely. And, as far as our constitution was written, it was written for american citizens, not enemy combatants found on a battlefield. The vast majority of those found to be in the wrong place at the wrong time have been released--yet how many have returned to the battlefield to fulfill their role as martyrs--about the same twenty you equate with as being on death row wrongly. However, those on death row weren't planning the destruction of this country.
They were found on a battlefield. They were rounded up as enemy combatants. Those who are obviously innocent and many not innocent at all have been released. What's left is the scum. They are not entitled to our freedoms. They are not entitled to our constitutional rights. We are the united states of AMERICA--not the one world government.
And if you think for one 1/2 second our troops are going to stop in the midst of battle and ask for ID and Mirandize them, you're stark raving nuts. They'll just kill them where they stand and have done with it. UCMJ is over the military and rightly so--the civilian courts are for the citizenry and rightly so. They are not meant to meet based on the very concepts of their inception.
Good God even my uncle has been roused to action out of retirement out of this travesty and trampling of our constitution by the left--my federal judge uncle. Not to mention my cousin, the Brig. Gen (Ret, US Army).
Yeah, many do serve a night in jail wrongly accused. They are citizens and the system works 99.9% of the time. They are not enemy combatants firing at our soldiers.
And I'd like to know just what you consider is so bad about Gitmo when they are pandered to and appeased the way they are. They're treated better than any prisoner on us soil. But then, facts continue to elude those who just don't get it and never will.
They're not citizens. They are scum. They deserve to stay where they are. They are not entitled to constitutional rights of the USA. We are not a one world government despite what Breyer, Souter and Ginsberg think. And I will cheer any troop who foregoes the continued tying of their hands in the ROE and plain shoots the bastards where they stand.
Oh,, and despite what these three traitors to the constitution think in their judicial fiat, my firm wouldn't win cases without cold hard facts, either--including dui drivers who challenged the blood taken at a scene who were found to have had their id stolen--and once we proved that through that lovely dna testing, the client was completely exonerated. My firm believes in facts, indisputable. Judicial fiat is not constitutional. Not to true practitioners of constitutional law. It's not a living document to be changed as whims strike--despite what the left says, the only fiats enacted were not on a presidential level, but on the level of the judiciary itself. By the left, for the left and at the expense of the country.
We don't always get justice, and that was precisely my point; we have more safeguards, and are likely to get more justice than anywhere else. I know; I've lived in many different places, and we're lucky by comparison.
If they were in the "battlefield" they cannot be declared "unloawful combatants." They would be prisoners of war... but they are not being treated as such, as according to Bush and his buddies Geneva doesn't apply to "unlawful combatants." So it's one or the other...
I can't make the assertions you make about them... we must have read different information...
The constitution never made explicit statements as to who was entitled to protection by American laws.
You have made a prejudgment about who these people are, and I prefer hearing the truth in our courts. That's all! Being held for years without being charged is bad enough, no matter where it happens, Gitmo or Manila.
Next time something like this comes up at the Supreme Court, they are open to receive anybody's Amicus briefing, so you might consider sending them one.
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