As recent events have made light, some Bush Administration personnel have obviously been engaging in treasonous activities. Starting with the Valerie Plame affair and now continuing with leaked intelligence to Iran’s secret service via Chalabi, we have strong evidence that Bush Administration personnel have a history of violated their oaths of office and pose a clear and present danger to the peace and security of the citizens of the United States – in fact, they are clearly more dangerous than most terrorists.
Thanks to the Bush Administration we have ways of dealing with such people. It is clearly in the paramount interests of the United States to ship members of the Bush Administration, as well as suspicious civilians like Grover Norquist and Karl Rove, to Gitmo for lengthy, detailed, exquisitely painful interrogations.
We should also get some women to point at their privates and make hand gestures about them. I bet Molly Ivins would do it for free.
This may seem severe, even oppressive, to some. But severity and oppression in defence of freedom is no vice. And compassion and humanity in the face of terrorism is no virtue.
I got “Shotgun” when the guys in the white suits come to take you away. Just to make sure they don’t get lost on the way to the funny farm.
By the way, individual liberties take a back seat to national security (the good of the majority). Or another way, the safety of the majority trumps any one persons rights.
This is the underlying rationale of repressive, authoritarian governments everywhere. A very scary notion, and completely contrary to the principles laid out in our Constitution.
Can anyone explain to me how the holding of prisoners in Gitmo and Iraq without charge or any kind of due process furthers national security?
Especially Gitmo. Not only do I not understand how it helps our security, I don’t understand why the Bush admin is holding these people incommunicado (allowing for some reason other than national security). What is it gaining them?
I can only surmise that since the Bush Administration didn’t pay attention to or take appropriate action on the Al Qaeda threat a few years back, because they decided to go to war with Iraq instead of intelligently addressing real terrorist threats, because they flipped the Bozo Switch with the Patriot Act, and because they’ve made a mess of said war regarding the arrogant “shock and awe” strategy, prisoner torture, and the resulting long-term inflammation of much of the Middle East against the U.S. …
…well, they weren’t left with much **else ** to do but to detain prisoners that present no threat to the U.S., while people that do present a threat are still running around and multiplying.
Yeah - I think that’s why. They had to be doing something.
While I have no qualms whatsoever dishing out a little justice. . .I like to think that our Ms Ivins has far too much class and style to be seen within 100 yards of the knobs found on the knobs.
So, if we strongly suspected that one of the prisoners was planning to blow up the Golden Gate bridge but we had no proof, we should then let them go? Three days later the Brooklyn Bridge comes down and we trace back the attack to the guy we let go three days earlier.
I think suspected terrorists have to be treated differently then the rest of us. They don’t play by the rules, they attack civilians, they are peices of shit.
I think our Constitutional rights should be strongly enforced and upheld to the highest standards. I, however, do not forward these same feelings to anyone interested in performing terrorist acts on/in/at our country.
That’s true. But I think what Mr. Franklin was saying is that we can’t, as a whole, give up our liberties in exchange for safety. I don’t think he would have objected to us suspending the liberties of a suspected terrorist for the safety of the greater masses.
Dude. The founding fathers had a lot of foibles, but they did stick to their principles. I can only imagine that Ben would have felt that a mere “suspension” of one’s rights in the interest of safety was actually worse that a complete abrogation of those rights.
You’re right, but we also shouldn’t erode our liberties and the liberties of others in the process. Since 9-11, we’ve seen a reduction in those liberties and war or not, people like myself who appreciate them. In fact, I work for a constitutional professor and lawyer and even HE is disgusted by what has gone on with this bullshit “enemy combatant” situation.
Treat them differently, but don’t tread all over their rights as humans in the process.
I find it difficult to find someone “strongly suspicious”, yet we lack one scintilla of evidence as to why. I wasn’t actually referring to the legal aspect of things, because we already have the mechanisms in place to detain a person provided there’s a reason. (although we’re getting shady with that stuff, ask Padilla)
I was talking about this closing the barn door after the horse has left mentality that prohibits me from taking a nail clipper on an airplane, and other such stupidity, which is getting more silly by the minute. Recently, they’ve proposed banning photography in the NYC Subway, because people could be potentially casing out targets :rolleyes: