If, at the time of our invasion of Afghanistan, the Taliban was the legally recognized government of that state, why would those persons fighting for the Taliban be considered as Unlawful Enemy Combatants?

Also, if al Qaeda was engaged by the Taliban to fight for it (similar to Blackwater employees in Iraq), why would non-Taliban al Qaeda fighters be considered as Unlawful Enemy Combatants?

These are two of the four of the central questions, I think. The other two are about Mr. Bush's powers, again.

3) Does the President unilaterally have the right to determine when a foreign entity is or is not a party to the Geneva conventions? I think he's the first one who has ever asserted that if we don't recognize a government, the fact that the country they govern has signed the conventions doesn't make them a "High Party".

4) Does the President unilaterally have the right to take military actions individually authorized by Congress (Afghanistan, Iraq), and bundle them together as "battles" in a larger, omnibus war (GWOT) -- one that he can conclude is ongoing no matter what happens to the authorized actions?

If the answers to 1,2, and 3 are that the detainees are lawful combatants of a signatory country, then they need to be treated as POWs -- that is more than common Article 3 treatment. If the answer to 4) is no, then he cannot detain them indefinitely.

Thank you very much.

bucky1:

Paul Rosenberg is slime master ... admits it

... I wasn't attacking antiwar.com at all. I was attacking your logic (or lack thereof) in touting them. ...

Ah, just another attack on me simply because you are full of hate. Fine, and thanks for the clarification.

Projecting your personal animus onto me still doesn't address the points I raise. I've lost track of how many people's arguments you've misrepresented on this thread alone.

You have a long history of it, though, I see. Raised in the Jefferson "small government" tradition that never even tries to explain the Louisiana Purchace.

It is odd that you claim to like antiwar.com but did not respond when LWM slimmed them in vile ways --- you only responded when I defended them as credible and non-partisan. Come to think of it, perhaps it is not so odd, considering the source.

I did not claim to like antiwar.com. Like I said, I was not expressing an opinion one way or another. I was attacking your logic in supporting it--a sort of logic which we've all become far too familiar with, along with its various failings. After running into those obnoxious LaRouchie leeches, I just had to make something positive out of the experience. And the fit was perfect. So I wrote about that.

...I read what you wrote and responded by cutting to the quick. The libertarian laissez-faire ideology was in full sway in 1900, it was supported by McKinnley/Hannah Republicans. And Bourne was not one of them. ...

Then you would be ignorant of history. Wikipedia says, "...In the United States, laissez-faire was mainly present up to the American Civil War, although various protectionist measures were passed by the North against the South before that time ..." but even they are wrong. We have never practiced pure laissez-faire economics in this country. We have given lip service to it, but never practiced it.

No one has ever practiced pure laissez faire because it is an impossibility. That doesn't stop the ideologues, however. And that is what I wrote about, setting the record straight about which group promoted laissez faire ideology. It wsn't Bourne's crowd.

Once again, you're not even close to being close in responding to the argument that was actually made.

Besides, "The laissez-faire means that the neoclassical school of economic thought holds a pure or economically liberal market view: that the free market is best left to its own devices, and that it will dispense with inefficiencies in a more deliberate and quick manner than any legislating body could."

As I keep saying, it is classic liberals that were correct, not the socialist liberal like yourself.

Except for all those nearly system-destroying panics and depressions, which the post-WWII managed economies of the OECD have utterly done away with, that is.

You see, somehow you missed the part where you're not God. The fact that you keep saying things doesn't make them true. The fact that you don't even come close to offering substantial arguments for them makes you a bore.

Mona, God bless her, knows how to argue and think. She may be mistaken, but she is quite capable of rational debate. You, unfortunately, are not.

Thank you for the links. The difference between the dispassionate legal discussions of these authors of our present dilemma, and the actual conditions inside Guantánamo as reported by eyewitnesses is mind-boggling.

Someone once donated a cache of old Nazi documents to my library. In tone, as well as in content (the use of euphemisms and legalisms) they were remarkably similar what the Yoos, the Bellingers, etc. have to say here. It's worth remembering, I think, that we hanged a number of the authors of the NAZI documents despite the dispassionate nature of their internal communications.

I do my best doseedoing and reeling with my husband and son, but will always curtsy with pleasure and a smile as we dance by.

Remember, the more pungent the previous evenings thread, the better the subsequent post.

Research takes time. (let alone book-hawking duties.)

My point, which I don't always make with clarity or brevity, is that once that time comes, there may not be (quite likely there won't be) a Republic within which to make the appropriate adjustments. There may be the empty forms of one, but nothing functional, and the slide into Autocracy we've been on will be complete. -- Ché Pasa

This sad vision of the future is well within the realm of possibility, I admit. On the other hand, when an earthquake comes, what it wrecks is the buldings. The people can live in tents, as they've done before. Not a pleasant prospect, but one which brings the hope of renewal. Consider the example of the Soviet Union. No one in his right mind would wish on the people of the U.S. what the collapse of the Soviet Union brought to the Russian people of the current generation, not to mention to the Chechens. On the other hand, the May Day pomp atop Lenin's tomb is probably gone forever.

Time, as they say, marches on, and the gods are never mocked. For all the blather about revealed religion in Cheney's party, you'd think he might have picked up on some of this. Maybe it just isn't quiet enough in his undisclosed location. Should we invite him to our groundhog barbecue?