It's part of the process of declaring the detainees are legally not subject to Geneva conventions so that, you know, no one is breaking the law.
I don't see it being done in secret versus declared has anything to do with "an eye-for-an-eye" vengance. It's just about intelligence gathering and national security. And I think it was attempted to be done in secret, and this memo had to be forcibly obtained. How could it be a warning of "an eye-for-an-eye" treatment by the administration if they didn't want it announced in the first place?
That makes people who want to sneak into our country and kill innocents all the more dispicable.
Why? The people they want to make uncomfortable are Al-Qaeda, they are un-uniformed sabateurs, and they certainly aren't playing by the rules of the Geneva conventions, and in most cases they'd probably gladly die rather than give up information. In fact dying might be part of their mission.
These detainees were pulled out of the hornet's nest. It's hard for me to think of a good innocent reason to be going to terrorist training camps, niteowl. I really think you're for the rights of the wrong people here.
Arabs aren't mindless insects, flying about with the ability to "sting" the United States at will. Planning is involved in coordinated attacked, and it takes police work, intelligence gathering, and counter-intelligence to stop the plots.
And I don't really have a lot of sympathy for those that are angered by the United States trying to protect itself from militant Islamic terrorists. And it certainly is no reason to not protect ourselves. 9-11 happened before we were detaining enemy combatants, and before the Iraq War. In fact we had just stopped racially profiling potential hijackers to be *ahem* totally sensitive to racial concerns. We were bending over backwards to not offend Arabs people from certain nations of origin.
It seems to me that this "hornet's nest" was already riled up. For our "declared crimes" of: 1) Having troops stationed in Saudi Arabia to help keep the peace after the first Iraq War and 2) Buying Arab oil. These were some of the official reasons Al-Qaeda supplied following 9-11 for the attacks. Note the articulation of grievances came AFTER the attacks.
I'm not quite sure the complaint with squaring away strategies for dealing with terrorist BEFORE they are implemented. That's the proper way to do things. You don't rewrite the law after you've broken it. Likewise if you're going to give an ultimatum (a la Al-Qaeda's "demands"), it's done prior to an attack. You don't attack a nation, and then tell them afterwards what it was for. And you don't deny combatants their rights and then later justify why this is done.
Of course we would declare our intentions BEFORE they are implemented.
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Vote Jeb Bush 2008
