Some detainees must remain hidden from public view because of what we’ve done to them. Genuine drooling nut cases make for bad teevee.

Is it not possible to detain some of these people in a status akin to POWs?

That would hopefully be what he means as a ‘reporting mechanism’. I mean, POWs don’t go to federal prison, unless it’s noriega, who was convicted as a criminal, yet granted more rights than a criminal because of his POW status. And now that his sentence is up, he’s still in federal prison because the government can’t rendition a prisoner of war to other nations who want to prosecute him. I’m just confused at this point. It would be nice if we had some sort of evidence to try them as criminals, as terrorists aren’t warriors, they’re criminals. Iraqi insurgents and Taliban fighters are another thing, but those who commit acts of crime are criminals, whether they call themselves warriors or not.

Oh it’s confused and confusing. It’s also possible to be a POW and a criminal.

ohh hell .. i thought that was why we used read headlines like:

recently released terrorism suspect killed in hit-and-run accident in buenos aires …

namby-pambies would never unnerstand .. eh ??

Oh fer gawds sake.

You stop being frightened of everything. That’s it.

Yes, there are bad people in the world. Always have been. And part of our value system required us to accept that, and do what we could to mitigate the risk, and live with the remaining risk because that’s the kind of society we WANTED to be.

You accept that you follow the rule of law, and you live up to your own values. And if you can’t prosecute these peeps for a crime, you let them go. You do what you can to monitor them and anybody else who you deem a threat, but we’ve survived MUCH greater threats than al Quaeda without becoming everything we loathe….

mikey

That certainly is namby-pamby. The NYPost would punch that right up

WHEEL of JUSTICE!!!!!
Decision to Release Terrorist Overturned

didn’t you mean the NY comPOST ??

i have no problems with covert action ..so along as it is covert ..

when obviously giulty parties get a free walk due to obvious legal technicalities .. there’s always a remedy ..

you don’t have to like it .. but it’s called “reality” ..

Does it sorta matter as to what they’re “obvious guilty” of and how long they’ve been held?

i’d say yes .. but those who really really do present a future threat to americans .. or major interests .. what would you do with them ?? i’d get them out of contention .. off the court ..

and you my friend .. where do you land ??

Continued detention as a POW.

Some detainees must remain hidden from public view because of what we’ve done to them.

It would be very easy to presume he wants this loophole for those detained by Bush. This would still establish the standard, however.

Regardless of your political affiliation, you must admit that there is just the one kind of terrorist. The worst of the worst kind. There will be no scenario where someone who wanted to kill civilians or attack US troops is afforded any different status.
Unless of course the US just elected it’s first suicidal president.

yeah .. i’d go for continued detention .. but .. what i thought we were discussing was releasing dangerous persons ..and how to reconcile that with common sense ..

Well, you can’t. The question is whether keeping all these folks harms us more than releasing them will. It should be clear that most of them, after a half dozen years, aren’t going to do much but try to recover.
Running this camp was a fucked-up idea to begin with. Running it the way it was run was criminal. Not ending it would be horrendous.

I submit that part of the reason that we feel like we can hold these guys indefinitely without any process is not their ability to harm us, but their inability. It is not their strength that allows us to act omnipotently, ruining the lives of not just people, but entire families without even having to say why, but rather their weakness.

In the cold war, the Soviets had thousands of megaton yield warheads targeted on US soil. Globally, we treated their operatives with kid gloves, not out of kindness or some “grand game” sense of fair play, but because the consequences of action could be escalation, and escalation can get out of hand fairly quickly.

But al Quaeda isn’t a strong organization. They do not have the power to inflict real harm on the US as a nation. They can take some lives, but so can the Sinaloa cartel. So can MS13. So can the 33d avenue crips. We KNOW how to deal with transnational non-governmental organizations. We have the capability AND the methodology to do so. We only pump up their imaginary capabilities when it suits us politically, and yet our actions send a clear signal that, at the highest levels, we do not fear these people…

mikey