This just in
Apparently, some in the Senate think that violating the fifth amendment may be a slight cause for alarm:
The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Sunday dismissed as “a bad idea” a reported U.S. government plan to keep some suspected terrorists in custody for their lifetime, even if there was not enough evidence to bring them before a judge.
Both Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), the Foreign Relations Committee chairman, and Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, suggested that the proposal, reported in Sunday’s Washington Post, was unconstitutional.
“There must be some modicum, some semblance of due process … if you’re going to detain people, whether it’s for life or whether it’s for years,” Levin said on “Fox News Sunday.”
Do you think?
January 4th, 2005 at 12:06 pm
The incentive to take prisoners is being drastically reduced.
January 4th, 2005 at 12:08 pm
If thwy are “illegal combatants” then they have no protection under any law.
January 4th, 2005 at 12:18 pm
And who is it that determines who is an “illegal combatant”?
January 4th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
Brian, that would be the capturing power.
Piece out.
January 4th, 2005 at 1:18 pm
Capturing power and geneva conventions (under which terrorists and illegal combatants have no protection).
It would be perfectly legal just to shoot the captured terrorists without trial. That we don’t is a sign of our mercy, not of their rights.
January 4th, 2005 at 5:01 pm
Even if we treat them as EPWs, we are allowed to detain them until the cessation of hostilities.
And how exactly do you define that in the current war?