While I'm handing out links, check out the "Habeas Schmabeas" episode of NPR's This American Life. This one has been mentioned before (by others), but it's worth repeating. The first-hand accounts of experiences in Guantanamo Bay are so horrific and gut-wrenching that I was filled with a deep feeling of shame and sadness.

http://audio.thisamericanlife.org/special/310_bonus.mp3

Note: There's a more recent "updated" version that isn't freely downloadable: http://thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?episode=331

You're using amphiboly here to tar folks like me as unreasonable.

What's so odd about your comment here is that you have decided to place yourself within the scope of what I was criticizing in my reply to Che Pasa, even though (a) I wasn't thinking about you when I wrote that and, more significantly, (b) had I thought about you when I wrote it, I would have said that you were excluded from that.

I agree it wasn't clear in what I wrote, but there are, of course, different types of "systemic critics" of America. Some people embrace systemic criticisms but still work within that system to achieve what they consider to be constructive results.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there are people who are committed so completely and exclusively to their systemic critique that they are actually uninterested in any incremental change - they only believe in, and are waiting for, some major paradigm shift or revolution -- because they believe that all change is meaningless so long as the fundamentally corrupt system remains. People in that group are not only indifferent to positive incremental reform within the system, they often also actively oppose (whether they say so or not) such reform, because incremental change can placate people; it can diffuse the anger that they want to milk to launch more systemic changes.

For the sake of the discussion, if one assume that only those two poles exist, I absolutely place you closer to the former, not the latter -- and that is apparent from many things, including your very first comment here today, were you argued that Democrats were superior to Republicans on the "security state" issue notwithstanding the numerous deficiencies of Democrats. A systemic critic indifferent to incremental improvements does not, by definition, think that way.

You are not someone who belittles the restoration of habeas corpus as more or less meaningless, because -- although you surely believe that it leaves all sorts of grave injustices unaddressed -- it is still a meaningful enough improvement for you to support. Therefore, you do not exemplify what I was criticizing.

And if those views are rejected, brave enough to let America sink into its own fetid, paranoid fantasies. Let Americans experience a police dictatorship. Let America truly experience the disease of fascism that we have been flirting with. Just let it happen.

Alcoholics often talk about hitting bottom. Only when they are at the bottom, can they see how truly they have fallen. Only then can they see the destruction they have wrought on themselves and the people around them. And only then can they pick themselves up, admit that they caused this, and attempt to change their ways and rebuild their lives.

Not to nitpick or pull you away from your core argument, saltmeat, but "hitting bottom" is not considered to be a good or necessary part of rehabilitation of addicts in modern addiction medicine (See the HBO documentary "Addiction").

The reason holds a nugget for America and her problems, which you very eloquently expressed: On the way down, the addict is destroying his/her body and his/her social relationships -- in essence destroying both the strength and the social fabric necessary to support him/her when recovering.

Were America to go all the way to the bottom, the country's strength, and its relationships with the rest of the world would be gone, and with it, all that this country has done that is good, and all that it could do in the future as good.

We have plummeted a long way, as we can see from the MCA and DTA, from Abu Ghraib, from the fact that good and educated people like Alan Dershowitz now defend the use of torture.

But we can still be a nation of laws, we can still be the driving force behind human and civil rights initiatives, we can still be a force of good in the world and repair our relations from where we are now, and we should, before we hit rock bottom.

What is really necessary is to get over the "September 11 Syndrome": We really should have been asked to sacrifice, and the sacrifice that each and every American should have been asked to make is that we must live with being less safe, less secure, and less sure of ourselves and our future, in order to stand tall and say that we will not change our belief in civil and human rights and the rule of law, in what is right and what is wrong, no matter how many planes hit our buildings.

Surprisingly brief reference to it at wiki, but here it is:

"Suspension during the Civil War and Reconstruction

On April 27, 1861, habeas corpus was suspended by President Lincoln in Maryland and parts of midwestern states, including southern Indiana during the American Civil War. Lincoln did so in response to riots, local militia actions, and the threat that the border slave state of Maryland would secede from the Union, leaving the nation's capital, Washington, D.C., surrounded by hostile territory. Lincoln was also motivated by requests by generals to set up military courts to rein in "Copperheads" or Peace Democrats, and those in the Union who supported the Confederate cause. His action was challenged in court and overturned by the U.S. Circuit Court in Maryland (led by Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger B. Taney) in Ex Parte Merryman, 17 F. Cas. 144 (C.C.D. Md. 1861). Lincoln ignored Taney's order. In the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis also suspended habeas corpus and imposed martial law. This was in part to maintain order and spur industrial growth in the South to compensate for the economic loss inflicted by its secession.

In 1864, Lambdin P. Milligan and four others were accused of planning to steal Union weapons and invade Union prisoner-of-war camps and were sentenced to hang by a military court. However, their execution was not set until May 1865, so they were able to argue the case after the Civil War. In Ex Parte Milligan 71 U.S. 2 (1866), the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the suspension of the writ was unconstitutional because the President was not empowered to try and convict citizens before military tribunals. The trial of civilians by military tribunals is allowed only if civilian courts are closed. This was one of the key Supreme Court Cases of the American Civil War that dealt with wartime civil liberties and martial law.

In the early 1870s, President Grant suspended habeas corpus in nine counties in South Carolina, as part of federal civil rights action against the Ku Klux Klan under the 1870 Force Act and 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act."