Well, I don't know that it's as bad as he was making it out to be, but I
wouldn't say that it's as cheery as you seem to think it is, either.
While that case in particular seems very obvious, it sets a dangerous
precedent. Also note the wording:
A federal appeals court Wednesday ruled President Bush has the
authority to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and detain
them in military custody if they are deemed a threat to national
security.
Since terrorists are the enemy, and they (obviously) operate within our
borders to do harm, it's not a terrible stretch to think that it won't
be long before a US citizen who's actually here in the states could be
designated an enemy combatant. And obviously, they needn't have
actually committed a terrorist act--we want to prevent such things,
right? So they would be suspected of conspiracy to do something
terroristic. The end result being that US citizens who have committed
no actual terrorist acts could be deemed enemy combatants and thus not
allowed to have all the nice benefits of citizens, such as trials and
what have you.
And then it's just a matter of pissing the right (wrong?) people off,
and away you go, never to be heard from again...
On Wed, 2003-01-08 at 22:35, Michael Cardenas wrote:
I think you're overreacting a bit. The actual case involves someone
who was in a foriegn country for years, and was in the war zone at the
time he was fighting the US.
The ruling says that he was squarely in teh war zone and discusses
the issue that he hda been out of the US for a long time.
