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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ManyMoose who wrote (85453)	9/19/2008 1:28:41 PM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541931

Many Moose, your ingrained, underlying assumptions are simplistic and false...and where do those assumptions come from anyway? I'd say you were listening uncritically to talking heads with radical agendas. You know, those spinners who privately believe that you're silly enough to swallow anything. For instance: "And why would we detain and maintain people who have no intelligence or preventative value? You haven't explained that." Any reasonable thinker wouldn't have to ask for an explanation because it's obvious. Despite the drumbeat of denials from talk radio and Fox News, it's very common for law enforcement and for government officials to screw up. And when they blow it they often slip into denial because that's easier than taking a career setback or an emotional hit for making a mistake. To justify the lack of basic fairness in our actions at Gitmo by saying; "Hey, why would we hold them if they weren't guilty" is simply circular reasoning. That's the same as justifying an arrest of a "presumed innocent" person and then going to court and asking the jury to convict him because "Why would we have arrested him, held him and brought him to trial if he was innocent?" In your case it's glaringly obvious that you don't need even the sketchiest of evidence to conclude that those we held without charge, without counsel, without evidence that would be admissible in any civilized nation's court and without trial are "guilty as sin." You drive that home when you write: "I don't cut a fine line between their being captured on the battlefield or turned in for a bounty. They are bad guys who want to kill us." How the hell would you know that? The ease and certainty with which you assert that which has not been established says a lot about your sense of fairness and the depth of your thinking on these issues. But that's not an issue with you because: "As for due process, this is not a criminal court, and they are not US citizens. They are getting all the due process to which they are entitled--the same due process that people from our side should get under similar circumstances, only the other side beheads them regardless if they are combatants or not. It must be nice to have such a smug, self righteous, and dismissive point of view with regard to the lives, suffering and rights of "them." Of course you also denigrate their suffering by referring to their "supposed tribulations," their "living like kings" in Gitmo and their failure to show "gratitude" for the way they're being treated. To top it off you lack the insight to answer your own question, i.e., "If they're as innocent as you suggest, how do you explain that some of the ones who were released already have gone to war against us already?" The answer to that question is also obvious but since you apparently can't see the obvious, here's the answer; First, I never said all of them were innocent...we don't KNOW...That's what we've been talking about, remember. Second, when you punish a guilty man appropriately for something he knows he did you don't get nearly the outrage and desire for revenge that you get when you punish an innocent man for something he didn't do. When you compound that outrage by refusing to give him even the most basic due process and then treat him like his life and his freedom have no value to you, do you think maybe you might have created just a teensy little bit of vengefullness that reaches deep into the core of him? Is that clear to you? Ed