[Mike4Freedom]

There you go again. Here you are blaming Ashcroft for a precedent set back to WW2 times with the Geneva Convention.

Did any previous administration ever pick up a citizen off the street and lock him away without trial? Not since Lincoln did we have such an evil administration capable of such outrageous behavior. Stop blaming the Geneva convention. The president should know the rare cases when that applies and the everyday situations where due process applies. Jose Padilla is a kidnap victim and George Bush is the head of the gang holding him. Ashcroft is the Capo.

[Southack]

"Did any previous administration ever pick up a citizen off the street and lock him away without trial? Not since Lincoln did we have such an evil administration capable of such outrageous behavior. Stop blaming the Geneva convention. The president should know the rare cases when that applies and the everyday situations where due process applies. Jose Padilla is a kidnap victim and George Bush is the head of the gang holding him. Ashcroft is the Capo."

Sheesh, you're probably about to hyperventilate.

Yes, starting with FDR, American citizens who were in the employ of our enemies...have been arrested in their apartments, on the street, in bars...as well as shot on the battlefield, captured by our military, etc.

Of the more than 1,000 U.S. citizens who fought for NAZI Germany against the U.S., I'm aware only of trials for ten of them. The rest were either killed on the battlefield or held as POW's.

But at least 8 of those 10 were classified as "enemy combatants" by U.S. law due to the Geneva Convention.

This meant that they were given no legal protections, unlike what we give to recognized POW's.

Enemy combatants are those spies and saboteurs who wear no recognized military uniform (or carry military ID), by the way...something that was agreed upon worldwide even before GWBush was born. They are not entitled to trials. You can give them a trial if you want, but you don't have to, legally...much in the same way that you can bomb U.S. citizens without giving them trials...IF they are fighting against U.S. forces or working with or in enemy facilities. You don't stop a battle to give due process.

And *all* of your juvenile anger is misdirected, logically, by the way. Even if you got your way and a Libertarian magically became President, the same Geneva Convention would still be the supreme law of our land due to Article 6 of our Constitution, combined with the fact that the Geneva Convention has been legally signed and ratified here.

So even if you got your way, which you won't, you'd still be stuck with the same problem.

So the *key* here is to fight the right battle, which is as dirtboy pointed out above in this very thread...to either reform the Geneva Convention globally or to limit American officials' powers under it domestically.

But I can't believe that an ideologue such as yourself could ever bring yourself to focus on the root of any problem.

All that I can picture in that line of thinking is that you will continue to tilt at nonsensical windmills in some Quixote-esque crusade.

Perhaps you actually think that if you yell loud enough at a popular domestic target that you'll somehow win converts to your 3rd Party cause, or maybe you have other reasons for yelling at Bush and attempting to deflect criticism away from the Geneva Convention, but whatever your motivation has become, it isn't very likely to accomplish anything of note simply because you are focusing away from the core target.

So long as the Geneva Convention remains unchanged as supreme law of this land (per Article 6), enemy combatants are not entitled to trials. Of course, neither are POW's (heck, you'll probably blame Bush for that, too), but at least POW's have some protections from being shot on sight. Enemy combatants have no such protections, legally.