[muawiyah]

The issue is really about whether or not the United States will continue to bother taking prisoners in wars.

If enemy combatants gain access to the courts, no more prisoners will be taken.

The Justices seem to be unaware of this alternative.

[Southack]

""We have never authorized detention of a citizen in this country without giving him an opportunity to be heard, to say, 'Hey, I am an innocent person,'" Dunham argued."

Not true. The U.S. captured or killed more than 1,000 U.S. citizens in WW2 who went to war for Adolph Hitler against America.

We did not grant them trials on the battlefield. We shot them on sight in combat. We captured them alive when they surrendered, and they didn't get attorneys in their POW camps, either.

And we also captured 7 of them here on U.S. soil, in civilian clothes, after they had been dropped off here by NAZI U-boats. Those 7 got a single military tribunal inside FBI headquarters, and at least 4 were promptly executed.

The law and treaty that governs what we can do is the Geneva Convention, which states *clearly* that enemy combatants who are not wearing a legally *recognized* military uniform or carrying military ID (dog tags) can be shot on sight or otherwise dealt with by the capturing Party.

[freeeee]

When I was young I was told of the evil Nazis and Soviets, and their infamous "midnight knock" where they would round up people in the middle of the night, never to be seen or heard from again. I remember feeling a glowing pride that we were above that.

Then I wondered, how could those foreigners stoop so low? Who were those people and why did they tolerate such things? Were they weaklings who had no control over their government, or were they mindless dullards who believed everything they were told?

Now I know.