Quote from TorontoTrader2:
ok, so all countries should declare the Geneva Convention to be invalid?
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What I propose is that the police will handle this. Any person arrested will go straight from the police car, to the interrogation chamber. If they confess they are sentenced. Sounds fair. I mean, police would never abuse their powers. And it saves so much money. Tell those bleeding hearts with their leftist agenda to go away. This system is used succesfully in russia, iraq, columbia etc. You don't want your conttry to be soft on crime or pander to the liberals, do you ?
Your sarcasm is duly noted. ;-)
My post was intended to suggest that the Geneva Convention should be enforced by U.S. Courts, in any case where it is objectively reasonable that a person is engaged in making war on the U.S. And, where it is not objectively reasonable, then the person should be treated to the same Due Process as any other person in the U.S.
There are some corner cases that need to be dealt with, and the courts have simply sidesteped dealing with the cases, because of the fear that they will be responsible for a second terrorist attack.
I don't have a perfect solution for the situation, but I agree, that the present solution is not really a solution at all. It's more of a shell game and it defeats the U.S.'s credibility as a nation of laws.
This actually means nothing to the general population of the Mideast, because those people do not believe in the rule of law, anyway. They prefer the rule of Allah and despotic emperors. So, in that respect, it's actually irrelevant how we treat those whom our Executive branch deems to be terrorists.
But, for those nations who do recognize the rule of law, such as Canada, our government's currently incoherent treatment of the enemy combatants is a serious blow to U.S. credibility in the civilized world community, and that is a bad thing.
The good thing is that someone else will be in charge in 2008, and maybe then some of these issues will be resolved. Meanwhile, everyone in the three branches of government who can avoid being directly involved in the nonsense of the current administration is sort of sitting on their hands and trying to do as little damage to the nation as possible.
