The United States is bankrupt. If China wants to call in our debt, they can do so at any time and we'd be fucked. Except, the US has the world's largest military and they are stationed all around the world. This protects our hegemony and prevents China (and Japan, where we have 35,000 troops) from calling in that debt. In other words, the continuation of perpetual war is the only card we have left to play in this game of full-spectrum dominance. When you have to continue wars indefinitely, you also have to go along with all the trapping of empire - torture, rendition, loss of habeus corpus, etc.

The US certainly does owe a lot of money to other countries and one being China but China can't call in their loans either causing our economy to collapse. Why? Because their economy is too dependent upon selling us lots of their goods and trading with us for things they need. So it's more a bad marriage of economic convenience to both countries to continue this way.

However our huge debt with China doesn't allow us to dictate much of anything to them.

I think we agree that attempting to maintain our empire is bankrupting our country and needs to stop.

While I held out a little hope that Obama might, just might, be different from Bush and bring about some much needed change as he so often promised, I no longer suffer from that wishful thinking. Obama IS Bush; just a smoother, more oratorical version. And why wouldn't he be? He is a product of the system. Remember, this guy received a record amount of corporate donations to get elected. I really don't think any President calls the shots anymore. They are beholden to the elite that got them elected and they know what happens when they do not toe the line the elite wants them too. I recently finished reading Russ Baker's "Family of Secrets". It really opened my eyes about how this country really works now, and caused me to seriously revise my expectations regarding the political system. Even if you believe only half of what he wrote, it is enough to disabuse you of any notion that the US is still a free society where all men are equal and that there is a fair political process. Disclaimer: And yes, I do not believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, the Twin Towers were brought down solely by airliners crashing into them, or that there is a Santa Claus.

Have we become a nation of cowards? Jim's hypothetical killer is not an unstoppable force. Have we become a nation of sheep? (Evidently, yes.) Just because someone is intent on doing harm is not an indicator that they will inevitably be successful.

The simple fact is, that just can't seem to get through, is that THE TERRORISTS CAN'T ACTUALLY HURT US. There are 300 million plus Americans; what kind of actual threat to you and yours can some impoverished idiots living in caves half way around the world actually pose?

You know how the Brits handled the IRA, how Israel the PLO? They toughed it out when they took a few pin-prick hits and didn't panic.

So a few terrorists we can't convict may go out there and try again. If they try it in Iraq or Afghanistan, which is what is likely, they'll probably be dead terrorists pretty soon. Or maybe they'll bomb something in the US. You'd have a better chance of being killed by lightning than in that bombing. 300+ million, remember?

We have become a nation of weenies, and probably deserve to get beaten up on the playground.

What Zepgirl said on the release of the "truly guilty". I'd only add that the discarded tainted evidence is discarded for a reason. As has been pointed out millions of times on this site, tortured "evidence" isn't worth crap in terms of uncovering the truth.

As to the defense based on "inheritance", let's just establish that anyone with 2 brain cells firing in sync knew years before the 2008 election about the problems with Gitmo, torture, etc. that the Bushies had created. Everyone knew that the next POTUS would have to deal with these problems; Obama said he would deal with them in accordance with our constitution.

So what are we supposed to believe - that Obama thought he was running for Prom King and on January 20 he discovered he was to become POTUS? That he thought he was following the presidency of Mary Poppins? Get real. He knew the problems, said he would fix them, then betrayed his supporters.

It's not just the torture/Gitmo issues that have been so treated by the Obama administration.

You can see the same thing happening with regard to lobbyists (welcome to the White House, Monsanto). Everyone knows why politicians welcome lobbyists and why lobbyists exist. Obama knew that when he said "no lobbyists in my administration". Now you can't count the lobbyists in his administration. He suddenly woke up in January and discovered the "value" of lobbyists?

Your defense of the man makes him look like a simpleton to save him from looking like a crook. Is that the change we can believe in? (Especially following a POTUS who was both a simpleton and a crook.)

I agree with everything that Greenwald writes, with one exception: It is possible to hold unlawful enemy combatants for the duration of hostilities, just as one would hold a POW. These individuals have been granted habeus corpus hearings and hearings before a tribunal to determine their "status". If they are found NOT to be an unlawful enemy combatanat, then they MUST be released. I'm in total agreement. HOWEVER, if they ARE determined - after a tribunal hearing - to be an unlawful enemy combatant, but they are accused, tried and ACQUITTED of some specific act (no, that wasn't me that blew up the Brooklyn Bridge, it was my cousin), then they could still be held in the manner of a POW, even while acquitted of the specific act.

Almost everything here is not correct. I've held a cognitive dissonance that has hampered my ability to write my blog, and driven everything I think about this "conflict" into shadows of shades of mists of nuance and difficulty for some months. I resolved to figure it out a few months ago, and have clarified much of it to myself. I would ask you to look at the as usual incredible post that pow wow put up on the previous thread,

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/07/froomkin/permalink/2bdb3455e5ebdc85472b258b57d8411c.html

and my short attempt at a reply,

http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2009/07/07/froomkin/permalink/7db0dc7c4888c57fc54d0f4e0608d3fa.html

There is a lot more.

First, your use of the word 'unlawful enemy combatants' has no relevance to your assertion of detention authority under the Geneva Conventions. Whether or not a person is 'lawful' or 'unlawful' the previous administration's rewrite of 'eligible' and 'ineligible' belligerents, has no bearing on how long they may be held.

Second, there is no such thing under the Geneva Conventions as 'duration of hostilities'. There isn't even really a duration of 'armed conflict' for international conflicts, only a duration of war. The ICRC disputed the Bush administration's assertion of rights of detention under the Geneva Conventions in Afghanistan as far back as 2001, since neither the AUMF, nor the conduct on the ground in 2001 justified the United States being party to an armed conflict of international character, or of non-international character. Unbelievably, the Bush administration asserted that they could claim the right, and then deny the application of the Conventions under the Martens Clause, which is there to make sure countries obey the Conventions even in a "new kind of war".

Third, only a small number of prisoners have been granted and have had habeas corpus reviews. To say they all have is just plain wrong.

Fourth, there is adequate dispute as to whether the CSRT's which you refer to as tribunals constitute "a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples," as specified by common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, especially since the meaning of that phrase in customary international humanitarian law is assumed interpreted by Article 75 of the 1977 Additional Protocol I, which guarantees rights that have not been afforded by the CSRT. That's why the Supreme Court ordered habeas reviews in the first place.

Lastly, your statement that if they are found to be an unlawful enemy combatant after a tribunal hearing and then acquitted in court -- exactly what jurisdictions we are talking about here is unclear -- "they could still be held in the manner of a POW, even while acquitted of the specific act" is not correct, either. They require a court review of their status as a belligerent in addition to, and before their trial (Article 45, 1st Add'l Protocol). After acquittal, there must be a determination that they would return to the battlefield to fight against the U.S. to hold them for 'duration of conflict' and there must, must, must be a specification of what conflict that is, and there must be a realizable method of determining when it is over, and if it is over, then holding such a prisoner further is a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions.

Furthermore, if it is determined that they are not a combatant, then the U.S. must answer for why they were deported, if, say, they are Afghan, since deporting is also a grave breach. Further still, the U.S. cannot pick people up anywhere in the world, ship them to the point of least justice, and then claim 'duration of conflict'. And most especially, and this was the source of the fog I mentioned, the U.S. has no right picking someone up under one conflict and then holding them for the duration of another, or declaring a permanent conflict for the purposes of indefinite detention.