1. Thanks for telling me what I believe in.

2. You do a fabulous job on the Fox Sports broadcasts of baseball and football games. Keep up the good work.

In response to the writer who suggested that some rights should not extend to non-citizens:

Amendment XIV

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Both the words "Citizen" and "Person" are included in this section. "Citizen" is defined, but "person" is not limited to citizenship. Why wouldn't the drafters of the 14th Amendment just use "citizen" alone?

There are multiple ways to read it, but I am of the opinion that due process was meant to extend to all persons. There is also the suspension clause, which states that habeas corpus may not be suspended except by Congress during period of war or insurrection. Congress has not suspended habeas corpus. What they have done is attempt to make the court inaccessible to suspected terrorists by removing the courts' jurisdiction to hear cases (I believe it was part of the Millitary Commissions Act). Whether it is Constitutional is debatable, but its sure as hell not the way it is supposed to be done.

The argument that this story should not be printed or a story about how wonderful our troops are substituted is too ridiculous to waste mental energy on.

... and your words would be seen as completely alien to any American libertarian back in the late 1990s. Remember when Clinton was in charge, and you guys were all worried about the repressive US government? How you talked about natural rights, and would hotly deny that you have rights by virtue of the government granting you rights, or because you are a citizen? You're an authoritarian thug, the very antithesis of a libertarian. You believe in raw power. You believe in crushing foreigners into the dust. Kill 'em all, let God sort it out.

The original American libertarian, Thomas Jefferson, once wrote: "I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just; that his justice cannot sleep forever."

Gitmo is filled with completely innocent people who were turned in for reward money in Afghanistan. It also has some very dangerous terrorists. The role of a trial is to ascertain who is who. If the OJ trial destroyed your faith in American justice, so be it, but if so you can no longer call yourself a libertarian.

The legal system is also an always evolving of customs and changes.

My point, regardless of whether you choose to call the new judicial forums "political trials," is that we cannot risk the debacle of an OJ-trial with people suspected and accused of crimes of this magnitude, especially when they are not US citizens.

US citizens, like OJ, enjoy all the rights and privileges that come with citizenship, even if that means they can buy $2.5 million of legal advice and confuse a jury.

These rights belong to US citizens, even if accused of terror-related crimes.

They do not belong to some butcher from Saudi or Afghanistan or Egypt.

Try to understand the ontological difference between "them" and "us," even if that may include a tinge of Euro-Centrism.

Stroll around Zimbabwe and see what you think.

[This is written by a Libertarian, BTW.}

I'm not sure of your point, but without laws there are no rights.

Firstly, thanks, jhudson2, for your excellent response to berlet98.

As for you, berlet98, you said that I did not counter your claim that detainees at GITMO received "medical treatment, the freedom to perform their religious observances five times daily, and the three square meals they get daily." I deemed that unnecessary as it seemed to me quite obvious to anyone that this claim would be totally falsified by the fact that these detainees were exposed to a program of systematic torture. If one has such a low regard for people so as to permit brutal torture to be enacted on them, then one certainly would not bother to give them the superior treatment you claim they receive.

Consider the case of Saudi detainee al-Qahtani:

Qahtani had been subjected to a hundred and sixty days of isolation in a pen perpetually flooded with artificial light. He was interrogated on forty-eight of fifty-four days, for eighteen to twenty hours at a stretch. He had been stripped naked; straddled by taunting female guards, in an exercise called “invasion of space by a female”; forced to wear women’s underwear on his head, and to put on a bra; threatened by dogs; placed on a leash; and told that his mother was a whore. By December, Qahtani had been subjected to a phony kidnapping, deprived of heat, given large quantities of intravenous liquids without access to a toilet, and deprived of sleep for three days.

http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/02/27/060227fa_fact?currentPage=all

Obviously al-Qahtani did not receive medical treatment, the right to religious observances and three square meals a day.

And before you go bashing the ACLU, without even entertaining the question of whether or not it is a legitimate and respectable institution, if you actually used the link I provided then you would see that it was to a page of documents that the CIA released to ACLU. Thus those were CIA documents, not ACLU documents.

Oh and btw, I am a woman.

I felt no need to address the many "issues" you brought up because they have no bearing on the article.

How prisoners at Guantanamo Bay treat their captors is immaterial to the question of whether their civil liberties are being violated. How the guards and the US Government treat their captives is not. Religious freedom, food and medical treatment for prisoners are not courtesies - they are legal requirements.

The story is about this, not your views on the ACLU or who loves America more or how you feel about Memorial Day or the political affiliation of the people who comment here.