12-19-2005, 09:09 AM
Xukuth,Dec 18 2005, 11:05 PM Wrote:"Those who would sacrifice essential liberty for a small amount of security deserve neither and will soon lose both." - Benjamin Franklin
In all honesty, I think it's just plain wrong to imprison people (especially US citizens) as unlawful combatants and hold them in a military prison without being charged with a crime and with no judicial oversight. It stinks of military dictatorship.
After all, if we give up our rights to maintain "security," how can we even pretend to claim the moral high ground over our opponents anywhere?
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The key there to Mr. Franklin's quote is "Essential Liberty" -- the framework of those liberties is the Bill of Rights, but when a person violates the law (and convicted usually), or is working against the nation who's Constitution guarentees those rights, then I think some of their rights become forfit.
We are talking about how many US citizens? Two that I know of, Yaser Esam Hamdi and Jose Padilla. CRS Report for Congress -- Detention of American Citizens as Enemy Combatants
This excerpt is relevant;
Quote:The government argues, and two federal courts have agreed, that the
identification and detention of enemy combatants is encompassed within Congressâ
express authorization to the President âto use force against those ânations,
organizations, or persons he determinesâ were responsible for the September 11,
2001 terrorist attacks.â Some argue, however, that since Congress only authorized
force and did not formally declare war, that the absence of language explicitly
addressing the detention of either alien enemies or American citizens cannot be read
to imply such authority, at least with respect to persons captured away from the
battlefield.
The government asserts that the lack of a formal declaration of war is not
relevant to the existence of a war and unnecessary to invoke the law of war. While
a declaration is unnecessary for the existence of an armed conflict according to the
international law of war, it may be argued that a formal declaration is necessary to
determine what law applies domestically, whether to aliens or citizens. For
example, the Alien Enemy Act and the Trading with the Enemy Act (TWEA), both
of which regulate the domestic conduct of persons during a war, expressly require a
declared war and are not triggered by the authorization to use force. The
Emergency Detention Act, in effect from 1950 to 1971, had similar requirements
prior to the invocation of its measures.
My reading of these legal procedings always returns to the problem of Congress' willingness to authorize force (like 150 times), but unwillingness to declare war (like 5 times). It's the "You can go ahead and use the military and we'll pay for it, but let's not actually call it war." The laws are much clearer when congress grows a spine.