Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: rich4eagle who wrote (222765)	1/28/2002 10:17:22 AM
From: Neocon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

"On Liberty", John Stuart Mill bartleby.com In politics, again, it is almost a commonplace, that a party of order or stability, and a party of progress or reform, are both necessary elements of a healthy state of political life; until the one or the other shall have so enlarged its mental grasp as to be a party equally of order and of progress, knowing and distinguishing what is fit to be preserved from what ought to be swept away. Each of these modes of thinking derives its utility from the deficiencies of the other; but it is in a great measure the opposition of the other that keeps each within the limits of reason and sanity. Unless opinions favourable to democracy and to aristocracy, to property and to equality, to co-operation and to competition, to luxury and to abstinence, to sociality and individuality, to liberty and discipline, and all the other standing antagonisms of practical life, are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up, and the other down. Truth, in the great practical concerns of life, is so much a question of the reconciling and combining of opposites, that very few have minds sufficiently capacious and impartial to make the adjustment with an approach to correctness, and it has to be made by the rough process of a struggle between combatants fighting under hostile banners. On any of the great open questions just enumerated, if either of the two opinions has a better claim than the other, not merely to be tolerated, but to be encouraged and countenanced, it is the one which happens at the particular time and place to be in a minority. That is the opinion which, for the time being, represents the neglected interests, the side of human well-being which is in danger of obtaining less than its share. I am aware that there is not, in this country, any intolerance of differences of opinion on most of these topics. They are adduced to show, by admitted and multiplied examples, the universality of the fact, that only through diversity of opinion is there, in the existing state of human intellect, a chance of fair play to all sides of the truth. When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.

To: rich4eagle who wrote (222765)	1/28/2002 12:07:43 PM
From: Skywatcher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769667

Thank goodness for the man I said had character...unlike the other clowns around W Colin Powell Dissents By WILLIAM SAFIRE ASHINGTON -- High officials at the White House, as well as at State, Defense and Justice, are having a hissy fit about the revelation in The Washington Times of a dispute within the Bush inner circle. What legal rights should be accorded to the terrorists — including some trained to be savage suicide-murderers — now being interrogated at our base in Guantánamo? That newspaper's enterprising Pentagon correspondent, Rowan Scarborough, unearthed a four-page memo from Alberto Gonzales, the White House counsel, which is the basis for a tense meeting today. The president's lawyer told the president and cabinet members that the Justice Department opinion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to Al Qaeda prisoners "is definitive. . . . Nevertheless, you should be aware that the legal adviser to the Secretary of State has expressed a different view." As a result, Gonzales wrote: "The Secretary of State has requested that you reconsider that decision. Specifically, he has asked that you conclude that GPW" — Geneva's prisoner-of- war rules — "does apply to both Al Qaeda and the Taliban." Colin Powell, sensitive to flak from governments overseas, argues that a military board should review each case to see if prisoner-of-war status should be given. This would transform a sweeping executive policy into a series of individual judicial decisions made on the scene, a process Defense, the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. all oppose. Condi Rice's spokesman claimed the Gonzales memo was only a "draft," confirming suspicions that Gonzales signs off on half-baked memos and orders. The spokesman says the published memo has since been rewritten to say that Powell personally agrees that the captives could be determined not to be prisoners of war. That's foo-foo dust; Powell still thinks each case should be decided on its merits by military judges. The central issue has nothing to do with humane treatment of these captives, called — legitimately, I think — "unlawful combatants." Congressional representatives on the scene have attested that the captives are not being tortured or starved. On the contrary, their treatment in the balmy cages of Cuba is far better than they had in the frigid caves of Afghanistan. Nor is the argument that pits Powell against the rest of the N.S.C. merely "misunderstandings by lawyers," as the distraught Rice spokesman claims. The disagreement is substantive: are these guys Taliban soldiers with rights, or military criminals with fewer rights, or Al Qaeda terrorists with almost no rights — and who is to decide which detainee fits in which category? The real problem is interrogation. If designated as P.O.W.'s, Al Qaeda men and Taliban leaders — many of whom may be able to name other Osama bin Laden confederates already assigned to new attacks — would be required only to state name, rank and serial number. They would then claim not only the right to remain silent, but also the right be freed when the "war" ended — despite active participation in a criminal conspiracy to kill civilians. Our overriding public purpose in the antiterror campaign is to deter as many future attacks as we can without subverting our Constitution. Some of our Guantánamo guests could help us save lives by ratting on their fellow terrorists who are "sleepers" in our midst. Skillful, patient, persistent, detailed interrogation over a period of months — coupled with leniency incentives to talk and deceptive praise for the most recalcitrant — is urgently needed to penetrate and disrupt suicidal cells around the world. After an ill-advised military order at the start, the president is painfully working out a form of prosecution of accused criminal-warriors that balances the protection of human lives with a concern for principles of human rights. If military tribunals subject to civilian review must be one part of his approach, he should "reconsider" his one-crime-fits-all decision, as Powell suggests, and have tribunals slot each suspect or defendant into the proper prosecutorial venue. It's encouraging that Bush has not allowed last week's leak to trigger a paroxysm of plumbing. The Washington Times was one of the few conservative media voices to oppose his early kangaroo-court order; when its editor, Wes Pruden, shook his hand at a Christmas reception, Bush surprised those nearby by saying, "You're a conscience of this town." That augurs well for balance at Guantánamo.