What Next at Gitmo?

Pundits are not mentioning the fact that the recent Supreme Court ruling concerning the due process rights of government detainees is not so much about foreign enemy combatants; rather it is about all possible enemy combatants. What the American public does not realize nor have they been told is that any American Citizen can be designated an enemy combatant by the White House on nothing more than mere suspicion. So the issue is can the right of the due process of law that is guaranteed by the constitution be denied. Can an American have their right to hear the evidence against them, the right to a speedy trial by a jury of their peers, the right to access to legal council, and all the other due process aspects afforded them? We had better have those rights. But before the Supreme Court ruling foreign suspected enemy combatants and suspected American enemy combatants had no right to constitutional equal protection of law. The President had thrown out the right to be proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and replaced it with guilty by suspicion without due process. As well anyone American or foreigner could be held forever with out first being proven guilty of being an enemy combatant. The treatment of all potential enemy combatants meant that all American Citizens had lost the equal protection of the law and the protection of the principle of due process of law. That is what is so conveniently left out of the conversation. What a shame that pundits are leaving out the important details which would allow Americans the ability to decide why the Court ruled the way they did.

History will look back and ask, 'What happened to the American Experiment?' When did it lose its way? Why was it unable to defend itself against internal and external attacks? I have to assume the majority justices have no children or grandchildren to be concerned about.

That will teach us to take prisoners from now on. These animals should have never made it to Gitmo in the first place. They should have each had one bullet put in their heads right there on the battlefield. Problem solved.

As an elderly Egyptian I unequivocally condemn any attack on civilians , whether commited by individuals or states. I would like , however , to remind the few Americans who know and inform the large majority who don't , that the members of Al Qaeda now described as "terrorists" were previously called " mujahidins" ( which means fighters of the faith ) by the US administration as well as by the American media . These innocent victims of the Cold War were volunteers from several Arab and Islamic countries armed and trained by America and financed by Saoudi Arabia to fight America's battle against the Soviet Union . They were naive enough to believe that they were fighting to liberate an "Islamic" country occupied by the "atheist" Soviet Empire ( I assume that only a few Americans know that Islam recognizes Judaism and Christianity as divinely inspired but considers atheism as the major sin ). There is no doubt that , thanks to these Mujahidins , the occupation of Afghanistan became a war of attrition which ultimately brought the Siviet Union to its knees.
After the collapse of the Soviet Union these very people who had fought this war by proxy were forgotten by the American administration , and , as had happened to the Templars in the Middle Ages , they were considered " persona non grata " by their home countries and many of them were and are still detained by the very regimes who had brain washed them to fight in Afghanistan .
I believe that I would not be hallucinating if I said that many of these people should have been properly rewarded , specially that many of them are highly educated , instead of being left with no choice but to continue the fight , though this time against another enemy .

What so many don't seem to understand is, that when the bulk of these poor people were taken, they were tken from their homeland. Does the fact that a person is found in the same valley as a bunch of militants autonmatically make them a militant, and a war criminal? Also the militants, as we all know, were funded and armed by the USA(as with Saddam). So we enable their existence. Then they're in the wrong place at the wrong time - but the government has found a few hundred people the American people can 'hold accountable' and argue over - and when tortured, they'll say exactly what is asked of them.

I don't think that anyone is saying that none are guilty, but that is the whole point. We don't know.
What I know is that if soldiers invade our country and start killing my neighbors I just might take up arms against them before they kill me regardless of who the leader of our country is. How many lives must be taken, how many injustices will need to occur before these Americans will feel vindicated for 911. Iraq did not attack us. This is not a war it is an occupation.
As for the comments about liberal justices. I believe our fundemental rights are for life liberty and the persuit of happiness, not judge life conservatism and the persuit of oppression. Bush hand picked these justices for a reason. As we all know or President is just so honest and forthwright., he would never mislead the American people, he would never put our rights in jeopardy for his agenda.

Actually they are classified as enemy combatants rather than POW's because they are not solidiers in the organized army of the occupied territory during a time of war. The enemy combatants come from neutral nations or allied nations that have normal diplomatic relations with the nation holding the prisoner and are not under the control or influence of the occupied's government, but act on the behalf of their own interests or the interests of an independent militia.

Article 4 of the geneva conventions explicitly excludes protection for this type of militia fighter.

Article 4 defines who is a Protected person: Persons protected by the Convention are those who, at a given moment and in any manner whatsoever, find themselves, in case of a conflict or occupation, in the hands of a Party to the conflict or Occupying Power of which they are not nationals. But it explicitly excludes Nationals of a State which is not bound by the Convention and the citizens of a neutral state or an allied state if that state has normal diplomatic relations with in the State in whose hands they are.

To say it doesn't do anything to apprehand bad guys is incorrect, because CIA agents have stated under oath during the period when Michael haden was defending the practice of waterboarding to congress that they have obtained information that had thwarted a dozen potential attacks.
By the way, our military pilots undergo waterboarding as part of their training so that they are familiar with the experience in case they are captured in a foreign country.

I am not a proponent of torture, I am just stating the facts as I find them...rather than having an emotional reaction to Bush's policies (and in the case of extending habeas corpus rights to foreign fighters during wartime, every other president's policy since this country was founded) or to the exsistance of Gitmo (which is used solely for the purpose of trying to save American lives).

Preemptive war. Preemptive internment. Preemptive spying. Bush's path leads straight to Fascism.

Glad there are some folks in government with the courage and wisdom to fight for what's right. Now if only We the People have wised up enough to put an end to this madness. God willing, Hope will trump Fear.

Texas Conservative quotes a paragraph from Justice Roberts" dissent which I find truly disturbing. Roberts first laments that there will be more litigation over the detainees' rights as if judicial economy is justification for denial of fundamental rights. Then he seems to deride the efforts of congress while complaining that their legislative circumvention of the writ of Habeas corpus should not be "unceremoniously set aside." He rants on that the Great Writ is somehow diminished by extending it (Orwellian logic), that lawyers will have more to do with shaping the policy of how to handle foreign combatants than military and intelligence officials will, and finally that the American people are losing a bit more control of our nation's foreign policy to unelected and unaccountable judges. This blather by a chief justice of our Supreme Court is shameful. This man should know better than anyone that the precise role of the courts is to uphold the constitution and our fundamentl core principles of law, like the writ of habeas corpus against the other branches of government whenever those branches overreach. These principles are not subject to abridgement by simple legislative action, not by executive fiat, and certainly not by military usurpation. They were never intended to be shelved for convenience in dealing with any internal or external threat. And the measure of our courage is the degree to which we demand their application even when there is a threat to our safety or an unpopular defendant. I am appalled that all three branches of our goverenment succumbed to such fear after 9/11 that they were unable to comprehend their duty to uphold the constitution in this matter and others.

As to Justice Scalia, his alarm that Americans will certainly die because of the ruling is standard dictatorial dogma. It is age old fear mongering used to justify the repression of rights. And it is most undignified and inappropriate for a member of the high court to say let alone to write in an official opinion. He has in effect accused his colleagues of being killers because they are defending the writ of habeas corpus. How can an intelligent man be so blind!

Our own government takes more of our rights away everyday and the apathetic, lazy, whiny a** American people sit by and keep silent yet they get outraged when something like this happens. Either fight for your own rights or SHUT UP!