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Lastly, with the occurance of another terrorist attack hanging in the balance, from this point on which is the most important tack to follow in the case of detainees in U.S. custody?





this is a hard question to answer. i'm assuming you are ruling out the idea that we will play the bullshit "unlawful combatant" card going forward. trying them as regular criminals in our courts doesn't really work, because they are, (at the very least accused of being) in one very real sense, enemy combatants. the military has its own court for a reason. (i suppose trying them in our military courts would be an option, if i believed for one second they would get a fair trial) but treating them as traditional "prisoners of war" doesn't really work, either. i mean, traditional wars end, and those prisoners go home. is this "war" going to end? are we going to want to turn these guys loose if it does?

not hedging, i didn't vote on this question. another way of dealing with this problem is needed, (and not the one we're currently using where we spirit them away to lawless shadow zones and do whatever the hell we want) and i have no clue what it should be.



Big Moose, I'll be darned but you've raised some very astute points. In my opinion, you got to the very heart of the matter. DDG, your post was on point as well.

There's so much gray area here that it certainly can't be resolved by any current partisan dogma alone, for lack of a better, less unwieldy way to put it. The problem is, of course, that this is all going to be run through the political machine now.

What we do know is that a decisive yet controversial tack was taken in the past. How do we reconcile that, and yet effectively (read: no attacks on US soil) carry on the next phase of this "war"?
Juggling security with justice on a political tightrope?

I regret that I will be going on the road tomorrow and won't be able to continue this discussion until Wednesday, but I urge the continuation of this debate, and I mean debate in the classic sense! Send the kids to the craft table to make macaroni pictures on construction paper if they digress!