According to Reuters, the Bush administration is now pondering the possibility of simply locking up terror suspects for the rest of their lives… without trial.
Tell me again why we invaded Iraq? Because Saddam was a bad, bad person?
The Washington Post story is much more complete, although you have to register to read it all. Here’s a bit that Reuters left out:
I just don’t know what to say anymore. I really don’t. This is one of the reasons I didn’t vote for Bush; because he, and his administration, seem to have decided that the laws they’ve sworn to uphold don’t apply if it’s not convenient. They seem to have forgotten that the times when it’s inconvenient to uphold the law are the very times that it is most important to do so.
So they don’t even have enough evidence to try them, even before a military tribunal, let alone a civilian court with the full panoply of rights?
Lemme see… indefinite imprisonment of people not convicted of any crime… check. Torture of detainees… check. When will our government start building rape rooms and hauling in the wood chippers?
Lack of evidence doesn’t mean these people aren’t guilty.
I mean a lot of them look Arabic. They have beards. They read the Koran for fucks sake. It’s classic terrorist behaviour. If you liberals had your way we’d all have been murdered in our beds already…
It’s a sad reflection of how low things have sunk (and some of the arguments I have had recently), that I read the first line of this and thought you were being serious.
Heh, very few people in America care about civil rights anymore. Just keep giving tax cuts to the rich and directing mass hate to gays, Muslims, and liberals, and Bush can do anything he wants.
The excuses, aside from bad ass weapons stockpiles and germs and chemicals, included the one other excuse that he was doing exactly what we are doing now - locking people up, being mean to them, etc. We have met the Enemy and he is us.
You liberal whiner, you. You just don’t understand. We have to lock these people up to protect Good Americans from Evildoers who don’t even have the decency to respect our sense of freedom and fair play.
I notice none of the usual reactionary zealots have had the guts to defend this one. I’m sure one particular one who gets all turned on by killing and such will come along soon enough, but the rest apparently need a few more days to come up with some idiot rationalization.
Fatherland, motherland, homeland.
Panem et circenses
O beautiful for glory-tale
Of liberating strife
When once and twice,
for man’s avail
Men lavished precious life !
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
Till selfish gain no longer stain
The banner of the free!
What, ~suspicious~ do you not want to Stay the Course?
Are you… Soft on Terror?
So you want the Bad Guys to win?
Are you just a coward-sissy-pansy and unable to Do What it Takes to Win?
Why do you whiney Liberals hate America so much? *
*Whatcha think? Seems like the thinktank spin to me.
All right, this is the last straw, America; I’m packing up my bags and going home.
Wait a minute…this is my home.
Shit.
To be fair, it’s the weekend and (for most) the last day of the holidays.
Don’t worry, I’m sure Brutus will be along shortly with absolutely nothing insightful to say.
Hey, maybe some, or even most, of these prisoners are indeed terrorists, “the worst of the worst”, as I believe Rumsfeld put it. Doesn’t matter; the whole thing stinks like week-old calamari. On what fucking basis were these people taken away and imprisoned, if no legal case of any kind can be made against them? If this policy is successfully rammed through whatever legal hurdles may impede it, we might as well wipe our collective asses with the Constitution, it means nothing.
If there was ever a time to bombard one’s elected officials with letters of objection, this is the time to do it, folks.
And comments like that will discourage him from sharing his opinion on those ocaisions when it does agree with yours.
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Going back to the OP and post #2, I’m not sure it’s some hidden agenda or convenient legal amnesia as much as it is a case of “the ends justify the means.” We were attacked on our own soil on this scale for the first time since Pearl Harbor, and Bush’s name will be forever linked to it because he was in office. There has been a strong indication that the Cabinet was already gunning for Iraq, and 9/11 gave the administration nearly a blank check to do what it felt was necessary wherever and whenever. There is definitely arrogance in the White House again. It is a different type arrogance, though, than that displayed by Nixon et al, who did have a more casual and convenient disregard for certain laws.
Vlad/Igor
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If they get away with this (and the past 4 years of precendent says they will) … how long 'til they start locking people up for being Democrats?
Why bother?