Question Details	Asked By	Asked On
The War on Terror - Why we should be afraid!	excon	01/16/05
Hello: What kind of government seeks the power to lock up, forever, those suspected of being its enemies? What kind of government hides its prisoners from the world? What kind of government ships out its prisoners to other countries for torture? Ashamedly, mine does. The contemplation of secret lifetime prisons have increased my feelings that I am living in a rogue nation on the brink on totalitarianism. The right of an accused person to know the charges against him/her and to defend themselves in a public trial is the bedrock of what we, in this country, call "freedom" From the Magna Carta (1215) to the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) to the Bill of Rights (1791), people seeking freedom from tyranny have forbidden their governments to imprison anyone without just cause or without a trial. I find it terribly frightening that Bush seems to have convinced a huge number of people that this important right can be ignored in the case of "terrorism suspects". If we allow the government to place itself above the law, then we truly open the door to the rule of terror. Because, if they can do it to them, they'll get around to you. If we don't stop it, we will soon find ourselves afraid to speak out. excon
Clarification/Follow-up by excon on 01/16/05 11:11 am: Hello again: I suppose the conversation isn’t complete without a discussion of “values”. Core values? The documents listed above describe mine: in a nutshell, they say freedom for all is good. Oh, I’m not thrilled with homosexuals marrying. I think it’s kinda creepy. But, they are part of “ALL”. And, I know what that word means even if you don’t. Whatever your petty religious values are, they pale in comparison to real, solid, American values which cherish freedom for all. It’s not even a close race. Not even close. Blows me away how some of you can think your personal religious preferences outweigh basic AMIERCAN values. Blows me away… Yes, like Moore, I’ll be called a Bush hater and an America hater. But in the real world, it is YOU who hate the America that I love. excon Clarification/Follow-up by excon on 01/16/05 2:23 pm: Commitment! As a Nation, we have a hard time with that word. Yeah, we “talk the talk”, but we don’t “walk the walk”. Oh, it’s easy to utter the word, but we don’t mean it. Sure, we’ll say it now and then, but when the going gets rough, we may rethink our commitment. And, that’s the problem. You see, the word commit doesn’t allow for an escape clause. It’s an absolute, like pregnant. We have a commitment to the accused. Even if our founding documents didn’t say so, (and they do, loudly and clearly) that is who we are as a Nation. Not surprisingly, the accused don’t tend t be very nice people. Well, duh! If we back out of that commitment, none of our commitments are worth a damn excon
Answered By		Answered On
HANK1		01/18/05
Some groups define Prisoner of War in accordance with their internal politics and world view. Since the special rights of a prisoner of war, granted by governments, is the result of multilateral treaties, these definitions have no legal effect and those claiming rights under these definitions would legally be considered common criminals under an arresting jurisdiction's laws. However, it must be noted that in most cases these groups don't demand such rights. HANK

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