"Well, what troubles me was reinforced by the testimony today. There is no endpoint given and when a government says that they can hold people in perpetuity without some type of review, I get nervous"
Have the terrorist scum given us an endpoint as to when they'll stop? You can be nervous for the terrorist. I prefer to be nervous for the innocent Americans they want to kill. You must be a democrat since your sympathies lie with the enemy and not with our fellow countrymen and women, in and out of uniform. You should be posting crap like that on the AirAmerica boards.
You don't have to be a Democrat to be nervous about giving a government the ability to lock people up without the ability to appeal. In fact, quite the opposite. In fact, the irony is that, in most situations, Democrats find it quite acceptable to yield nearly unlimited power to the government. It is the person who is suspicious of government power in the first place, as Republicans used to be before they fell in love with Big Government, who tends to be wary of giving up liberty for a little security. The defense of the country is one of the few Constitutionally enumerated powers of the government. My alarm arises not from the treatment of enemy combatants per se, but from the inevitable expansion of this initial precendent that it is ok to hold people without trial and without appeal for indefinite periods. We trust the current administration to not apply this to American citizens. Do you trust all future administrations to do the same? Do you trust that the definition of what constitutes a threat to national security not to be expanded to include domestic terrorists? Don't forget, the Clinton administration classified disagreeing with the view that HIV is the cause of AIDS as a threat to national security. Should we someday imprison people who disagree with that view? Sounds ridiculous, I know, but 200 years ago, the concept of a living Constitution would have sounded incredible. What changed? People's perception of what a Constitution is for. Is it such a stretch to see this as the start of a slippery slope? I think not. If you disagree, then you obviously have a much greater degree of trust in the ability of people in power not to abuse that power. If these detainees are indeed such a threat to the security of the nation that they need to be held for an indefinite period, then it shouldn't be too difficult to provide a little more proof to justify that decision than "Trust us, we know what's best for you." It doesn't have to be done in the open press, but there should be a mechanism in place that has the power to review the decision of one or of a few people. It can even be done in such a way as to provide the President with the ability to overturn the decision of the tribunal if he indeed feels that the risk of release is too great. It is that mindless acceptance of the party line that leads inevitably to loss of all liberty. Again, if they are indeed a threat, I don't object to holding them indefinitely, and with many fewer amenities and much more aggressive interrogation than they are currently afforded. What I do object to, however, is the mindset that they can be held indefinitely without some mechanism for occasional review of their circumstances by some tribunal that doesn't have a vested interest in covering up some mistaken initial assumption that they were indeed dangerous. No one is infallible. To state that isn't disrespecting anyone. To say that the military could possibly make a mistake isn't disrespecting them. I have nothing but admiration for the military and have several friends and family members in the service, several in Iraq. But as I said in previous posts, anyone, even those with the best intentions can make a mistake. To sentence someone "in perpetuity" without some type of occasional review is wrong.