From: "Robert G Lewis" 

The Germans were treated as POW's and subject to the Geneva Convention.
They were also released. They were treated well enough that they became if
not friends then at least not enemies. Wonder if ANY of the current
detainees will feel that way.

WWII was also a war between nations. This is a 'war' on a tactic.

How many of the detainees were caught on a battle field and how many were
just picked up ? If the statements are correct then this person doesn't
appear to have been picked up on a battlefield where US Troops were anyway.


"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news:442ab662{at}w3....
> The Bill of Rights IS IRRELEVANT when it comes to enemy combatants
> captured
> on the battlefield.   As justice Scalia pointed out to some pointy headed
> EU
> trash in Switzerland recently, Germans brought not to a base OUTSIDE the
> USA
> but directly to prison camps INSIDE the USA did NOT have rights to any
> kind
> of trial or hearing in USA courts.  It would be "crazy" to assert
> otherwise.
>
> If these few military lawyers brainwashed by the liberal educations they
> received (and who likely became military lawyers because they couldn't cut
> it in the real world) don't like the military acting like the military,
> they
> should get the hell out of the military and go to work for scraps for some
> public interest legal group or the ACLU.
>
> The Bill of Rights applies to citizens and in a fairly limited context to
> non-citizens present in the country.  It does NOT apply and has NEVER
> applied to prisoners of war and enemy combatants.
>
> Gary
>
> "Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
> news:442a8c21$1{at}w3....
>> "If you believe that these are full and fair trials, you
believe that the
>> Bill of Rights is irrelevant," Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed defense
> attorney,
>> Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, declared on the front steps of the
>> marble-columned courthouse.
>>
>> http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14208166.htm
>>
>> "The commission is operating in totally uncharted waters;
it's charging a
>> violation in a stateless, territorial-less conflict, something which the
>> full laws of war have never applied," replied Katyal, a Georgetown
>> University Law Center professor who was a clerk for Justice Stephen
>> Breyer
> a
>> decade ago.
>>
>> Uniformed American military officers were scattered throughout the
> gallery,
>> among them lawyers from all four services - Marines, Air Force, Army and
>> Navy - who in effect mutinied against their commander in chief by
>> alleging
>> that Bush's commissions strip foreign captives of fundamental rights.
>>
>> "If you believe that these are full and fair trials, you
believe that the
>> Bill of Rights is irrelevant," Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed defense
> attorney,
>> Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, declared on the front steps of the
>> marble-columned courthouse.
>>
>> Retired military officers, civil liberties lawyers, former diplomats and
>> international law experts all filed briefs on behalf of the 36-year-old
>> Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, arguing that the Bush
>> administration
>> went too far by creating a commission outside an explicit framework set
> out
>> by Congress and ignoring many of the protections of U.S. military
>> justice,
>> which has a provision for tribunals.
>>
>> The justices seemed especially intrigued with the nature of the crime
>> alleged, conspiring with al-Qaida. At least four justices asked questions
>> related to the charge.
>>
>> Katyal called the conspiracy charge so broad and unfocused that
"a little
>> old lady in Switzerland who donates money to al-Qaida, and that turns out
> to
>> be a front for terrorist acts ... might be swept up within this broad
>> definition. That's why international law has so rejected the concept of
>> conspiracy."
>>
>> Clement argued that the court shouldn't even be considering the case
> because
>> Bush had signed a law Dec. 30 that effectively stripped Guantanamo
> captives
>> of pre-commission habeas corpus challenge.
>>
>> Some justices focused on whether Congress intentionally or inadvertently
>> suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus for captives in Cuba; Clement argued
>> that Congress' intent was irrelevant, an argument that seemed to find
> favor
>> from Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Clement once clerked.
>>
>> Hamdan claims through his lawyers that he never joined al-Qaida, wasn't a
>> warrior and was merely a civilian driver who earned $200 a month driving
>> a
>> pickup from bin Laden's private farm. His lawyer said Afghan militiamen
>> captured him along the Afghan border in 2001, after he evacuated his
>> pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter to Pakistan, and turned him over to
>
>> U.S. troops who sent him to Guantanamo.
>>
>> Breyer asked what would stop the president from "picking up
an alien" and
>> holding the same type of trial in Toledo, Ohio.
>>
>> Justice Anthony Kennedy questioned whether Hamdan wasn't "uniquely
>> vulnerable," and therefore not entitled to certain prisoner-of-war
>> considerations under the Geneva Conventions.
>>
>> "I don't think he's protected by the Geneva Conventions, but that's
> largely
>> because he chose not to comply with the basic laws of war,"
Clement said.
>> "Nobody has a claim here that they were part of the uniformed al-Qaida
>> division that complied with all of the laws of war such that they are
>> entitled to POW status."
>>
>>
>
>

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