Even suspected terrorists are entitled to humane treatment and a fair trial (gag)

This is not the "patient justice" of which President George Bush spoke in his measured address to the joint houses of Congress nine days after 11 September. The United States government is engaged in the extra-judicial humiliation of alleged terrorists in order to satisfy the understandable but misguided desire of many Americans for vengeance.

Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman, made it abundantly clear that, while anyone who had thought about the issue for more than the length of a soundbite knew that the treatment of the detainees was wrong, Mr Bush considered it politically necessary. "The President is satisfied that they are being treated as Americans would want people to be treated," he said.

Donald Rumsfeld, the US Defence Secretary, is happy to play to this particular gallery. "I do not feel even the slightest concern about their treatment," he has said. "They are being treated vastly better than they treated anybody else."

This is the language of the school playground, not of patient justice. The al-Qa'ida terrorists have committed terrible crimes – which is why it is so important to show the value of universal human rights. That means they must be treated not just better than they have treated others, but in accordance with the principles of law, which include the rights to a fair trial and to be presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Tony Blair and Jack Straw have not been quite so cavalier with the assumption that every one of the prisoners held at the US military base in Cuba is a terrorist. Mr Blair even said in the Commons on Wednesday that it was "important not to say anything that prejudices their defence", but both repeatedly give support to the US's actions by patronisingly reminding questioners that "we are dealing with highly dangerous people."

Of course we are. Given that al-Qa'ida's interest in aviation has not been entirely benign, severe restraints for the prisoners on the flight from Kandahar to Guantanamo are obviously necessary. But the Foreign Secretary's defence of the use of hoods, to ensure that prisoners "couldn't signal to each other", is craven.

It is this intention to degrade that will prove most counter-productive. There seems little hope that the US President intends to live up to the high moral principles – the founding principles of the American nation – that he enumerated in his address to the joint houses of Congress. He should at least, however, be swayed by arguments of practical national interest. There can be no worse context for the diplomatic efforts of his Secretary of State, Colin Powell, now in Afghanistan and shortly to visit Pakistan and India, than headlines around the world about the apparent determination of the US to humiliate its enemies.

The forced shaving of beards will be seen in many countries whose co-operation the US needs as a deliberate insult to Islam. The administration must be persuaded not to press on to the next stage of its short-sighted and self-defeating appeasement of domestic opinion, namely the trial of alleged terrorists by special military tribunals, which would be unconstitutional on US soil and possibly in breach of international law anywhere else.

The decision to try the American Taliban fighter John Walker Lindh in a civil court in the US therefore sets a useful precedent. Because some of the detainees are British citizens, Mr Blair and Mr Straw have every right to argue that case as forcefully as possible with Mr Bush. The Australian defence minister has already said publicly that his government wants David Hicks, an Australian Taliban fighter, to be tried in Australia. The British Government should say, not just that the Britons should be tried in Britain, but that all the alleged terrorists should be subject to international, and patient, justice.

"The al-Qa'ida terrorists have committed terrible crimes – which is why it is so important to show the value of universal human rights. "

This is culturally arrogant. The writer can't comprehend that different people have different perspectives. These people respect, as Osama says, the "stronger horse." Also, they don't believe in Universal Human Rights, whatever that may be, and which certainly aren't Universal.

The lefty sanctimony is slimy. We get the anti-American slant, an imputation that we are abusing rights, without detailing the particular rights abused. That's because if he says them, it would undermine the thrust of his argument, inferrential anti-Americanism, and the lefties' demonstrations of their own moral superiority (probably their biggest motivation.) What are the violated rights? No walls in a hot climate. Big Deal. Some were given valium to shut them up. Oh my. They're "humiliated." (How?) They should be legally treated as prisoners-of-war rather than detainees because blah, blah--not a distinction that will strike most populace as something to be concerned about. Since actually talking the specifics undermine the pose of moral-outrage, the specifics are ignored.

These guys are really going to blow what authority they have if they make these rabid killers their poster boys.

One has to remember that the British have an ultra-liberal government in power under Blair. The Tories have never regained control and they were conservative the last time under Maggie, a contemporary to Reagan. God forbid, but they need to get the Parliament or London Tower or Bukingham Palace attacked to get them feeling like we do about the WTC attack. The last major blow like that was when the Arabs tried to blow up a building where Mrs. Thatcher was going to meet. And a longer time back to the IRA attacks. I have seen some programs in the past of IRA prisoners. When you have dangerous men, you don't put them up at the Ritz. I have no sympathy for how these Taliban prisoners are being kept. We don't torture them. These are treacherous people. So are the Afgans. See how they screw us and let their recent enemies buy their way out or just disappear. You are never going to satisfy the bleeding heart liberals here or in Britain. At least here, most of them except the extreme left, about 10% are too afraid to sound off because real patriots might go after them. Our guys at Gitmo who have to watch over these nasty people need protection and the cell approach is one way to isolate the enemy without an expensive prison. Let the liberal hearts bleed. Those terrorists don't deserve any sympathy from us. They were part of the group who slew about 4000 decent Americans who prior to that event were innocent of any desire to kill anybody, as we all were. Now it's payback time.

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