Under settled law, they have about 48 hours to charge him. How long has it been raf?? Do you think 2 months is long enough?

Don't know if you noticed it or not Dave, but the liberal internationalist agenda has been advanced more under this administration than any other since FDR.......

My patience is exhausted...Get bent raf....

a lot of the same folks stick around from election to election, and those that are voted out, still are active in their party

these guys have been clamoring for more powers to fight terrorism for years, here's one example:

[url]http://www.cnn.com/US/9902/01/pentagon.terrorism/index.html[/url]

they've got a list of powers they'd like to have, and every little "event" gives them an excuse to get some of them put in place. they may not have had the "patriot" or the post OKC anti-terror law written completely just before the attack, who knows, but they did have a list of desired powers, and it didn't take long to write them down when it was clear a law could freely sail through congress



i'm not really saying it's just the republicans, i'm saying its the whole two party crowd


after each major bombing since 1993 some senator has tried to push an anti-terrorist bill—which rapes constitutional liberties and personal freedom—through congress.



search for the phrase "Emad Salem" "world trade center bombing" on google

The rub here is what exactly constitutes a "combatant?"  

I have a VERY hard time accepting that the executive branch can simply declare someone to be a combatant and have that individual have all of their constitutional rights suspended.

Where are the checks and balances here?  If you're one of these "combatants" you don't even have the right to have your status determined by a court of law--or at least that's what the Bush administration is saying.

Don't you see a problem with this?  ANYONE can potentially be considered a combatant.  You can be put in jail, without access to an attorney, without access to the courts, and left to ROT until "hostilities" have ended--and the way our federal government is talking, that can/will be decades.

But hey, they'll only use it against those terroristic towelheads, right?

...right?

1. Stop supporting the Saudi govt. with military support, and remove all of our troops from the Arab world.

2. Stop supporting the Egyptian, Jordanian and any other arab nation. We give Egypt a shit load in military aid to "keep the peace". Some of Osama's lieutenants are actually after us because we support the Egyptian govt. and Saudi govt., not Israeli.

3. Quit funding Israel. Removed all military aid from the federal budget.

4. Leave NATO.

5. Remove all troops from basically anywhere else in the world: Korea, no support for Taiwan, etc.

6. Bring them home to defend our borders from illegal immigration. Stop the immigration flux now, and increase the time it takes to become an American citizen to like 30 years or more (hence, voting rights and rights to social services).

7. Leave the UN.

This will solve 99% of our problems. I find it hard to believe that Osama is after "our culture
" and wants to destroy America. He uses that verbose garbage just to attract recruits. He lacks man power and money to pull it off. I doubt you'll see a naval fleet of towel heads off of our shores any time soon to "invade America".

Instead, you'll see immigrants trying to come into America and become citizens to live and work, vote and pay taxes. There's a butt load of Arabs in this country already, and they're more likely to cause trouble if we incite war against their homelands. If we do incite more wars in the Middle East, I doubt the INS would stop their immigration. This is how the 9/11 hijackers entered this country, via student VISAs. Thus, I'll be damned if I trust the govt. to use war to solve the "terrorist question" if they're going to keep letting them in on a daily basis.

themao [chainsawkill]

Here you go RAF, but please understand that I am not a walking bibliography, so you may have to crack a book or do a web search or two if you doubt anything I say.

Art 1. We have free speech in this country as long as you don't say things that are hurtful such as racial epithets (other than those directed at white people) or anything of the like. Simply saying "I wish those illegals would go back to Mexico." got one woman jailed and fined in Idaho? Iowa? can't remember. Others, and yes I am including Bill Maher in this crowd, have been fired, ostracized, or investigated by the FBI for not being in lockstep with the groupthink. If you don't believe me, you should read the paper or surf a little. One young woman was investigated by the FBI because she had a anti-death penalty poster on her wall that featured Pres. Bush when he was the TX governor. Remember, TIPS won't be abused, right? TIPS, among other equally delightful ideas, will absolutely quash freedom of expression in this country. We aren't totally done with destroying freedom of speech, but it is rapidly coming. When the first incidents of restriction on speech went unpunished and the perps were in fact rewarded, freedom of speech died here. Died with the advent of PC as well as the PATRIOT act. Dates and malefactors, many.

Art 2. The moment we allowed gun control to exist we ended the freedom to posess weapons and made it a priviledge we must beg the state for. Surely you are aware of this? Died 1934. Malefactors? Many.

Art 3. OK. We still have this one. Sorta. It is probably unreasonable that we will ever be forced to quarter soldiers in our homes. That being said, during the federal murder of civilians at Waco, TX, the feds took over a nearby private dwelling as their base of operations. The folks were told that they really had no choice. So much for that article of the bill of rights. Died, 1993. Malefactor, Louis Freeh.

Art 4. Gonesville. The PATRIOT act says that anyone can be searched without a warrant or that secret warrants, which might as well be the same thing can be used. If some federale decides you are a terrorist, a terrorist being anybody the govermnment says is a terrorist, you can be dissapeared, never charged, held indefinately without trail, have all your assets seized, and held incommunicado. Don't believe me? Check it out. Died, 2002. Malefactor, Bush et al.

Art 5. See above. Also, under the hostile witness clause, you can be made to testify against yourself if you take the stand. I think maybe that exporting people to foreign soil so we can torture them may fall under this as well.Died 2002. Malefactor, Bush, et al.

Art 6. Again, see the response to Art 4.Died 2002. Died 2002. Malefactor, Bush, et al.

Art 7. No jury trials in terrorist trials. So if you as a citizen, expressing your now non-existant right to free speech and to peaceably assemble, are BRANDED A TERRORIST because you spoke up against the government's actions, You get no trial by jury. Heck, who knows if you even get a trial? That sucker might be a secret too. Died 2002. Malefactor Bush, et al.

Art 8. No bail, no fines probably in a terrorist case. I think however that being imprisioned or killed because some government official decided to do it might be considered by reasonable men to be excessivly cruel and unusual. But heck, if it becomes the norm like in the Soviet Union or North Korea, then I guess it won't really be unusual. Just really fucking horrible. Died 2002. Malefactor Bush, et al.

Art 9. OK. Here is a meaningful/meaningless phrase. It means nothing without something to refer to. Get it? But we get to keep it. Yippee.

Art 10. Gone. Killed by that evil tyrant scumbag in 1861.

Yes. It was never our fight. If the Germans couldn't make it across the Channel to subdue tiny mostly unarmed Great Britain, do you honestly think they could have made it across the Atlantic in order to meet up with every rifle in the US pointed at their pumpkin heads?

I do it quite often and at my peril. Get it? At my peril. That isn't FREE speech. We will see how refreshing it when find yorself in a cell.

Moving to stop the unfit is not the same thing as stopping regular citizens and you know it. Don't be disingenuous, it is the mark of the weakminded.

Are you illiterate? Read what I wrote.

If the AWB sunsets it may resurrect my naivte concerning the government. Don't hold your breath.

The ACLU picks its battles and may well agree with this rule as it has been around a long time. Why do you think lawyers hate it when their client takes the stand? This is one reason.

pilo, you're dealing with either a gameplayer, or one who is a drooler. Either way, don't waste yer time.....

When we started rounding people up and holding them without charges. Read the papers. Watch CNN. Do you honestly think you can discuss the world when you are ignorant if it?


We either obey the law or we recognize that this is a dictatorship based upon the whim of the elite. If they are in this country we treat them like everybody else or the law has no meaning. Also, some of those people who have been rounded up are US citizens. Should we discount their rights because GB says so? How empty minded.

There are reportedly about a thousand concrete examples sitting in cincrete hotels in this country right now. Wake up.

Again with the smartass. If you can't frame an argument properly and with some degree of organized thought, leave it alone and go do what you are more accustomed to. Those lego houses won't build themselves you know.

Lincoln didn't free the slaves. Get a history book. Lincoln gutted the country unjustly and trampled the bill of rights to do it.

Again, wake up. Look around. The house is on fire.

[img]http://www.stopstart.fsnet.co.uk/smilie/boohoo.gif[/img]

Was it the Swiss navy who kept those evil Nazis, the Washington Generals of the History Channel, at bay? It was the fact that every swinging dick had a weapon in his closet and knew how to use it. They could have held GB if they could have taken it because the Brits foolishly had no armed civil populace. They could have never held anything at all in the US because we were as armed as the Swiss. The Brits came real close to being a part of the Reich and would have been without our aid. We should never have been in Europe militarily. It wasn't our fight. Show me where it says in the constitution that we are to supply hessians to foreign states at the president's whim.

As long as you acknowledge it I will be satisfied.[:D]

Yes I have. Did you notice that the Germans conquered western Europe prior to Hitler's attempt to recreate Napoleon's wild sucess in Russia? And that they steered clear of the Swiss while doing it? I have heard the argument that Hitler wanted Switzerland to remain neutral and independnet so he could base his spies and have a place to store his cash. Horsecrap. What do you say to a domestic spy? "How fast was I going officer?" If he had invaded and conquered he wouldn't have needed spies, he would have had the police. He also didn't need a safe place to keep his stuff. He had Germany. The argument you are putting forth is a flimsy one, unsupported by reason. He couldn't get Switzerland because of the Swiss. It is just that simple. If you don't think a bunch or resolute men with their backs to the wall can't make a difference, even against a monstrously superior force, I suggest you accquaint yourself with the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Other than the mass murder of "undesirables" throughout europe (morally speaking, a reason to go to war in and of itself, but more on that later) exactly what reasons do you have for American involvement in the european phase of WW2?

Think about history before you reply--even Roosevelt, who direly wanted to involve us in ww2, was not able to declare war on Germany until THEY declared war on us on 8 December 1941.

As for moral reasons, if those were valid then, why are they NOT valid NOW?  Should we not be at war with china, the vast majority of the middle east, and any other country who has ethnic/gender/political groups that it  oppresses, puts in labor camps, or exterminates outright?

It's interesting that you should phrase it that way.  "US Citizen Rights."  Let me ask you a question:

Do non-citizens have the right to free speach?  The right not to incriminate themselves?  The right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure?

The answer to all of those questions is, of course, yes.

The bill of rights doesn't just apply to citizens, it applies to everyone.  

That said, I think it's fair to exclude enemy combatants from the civil justice system.  They don't belong there because civil rules just do not apply in war--killing people and breaking things is what soldiers do.  but as I mentioned earlier, determining exactly WHO is a combatant is where the rub is, and if there is ANY question, should be left up to a judge and a jury.

That statement does a great disservice to the men of the US Navy who guarded the convoys from u-boats.

Without those convoys, there wouldn't have food, fuel, or anything else for the RN and the RAF.

And let's not forget lend-lease.

You might want to take a look at some of that cash. It came from US banking houses. Now can you use your intellect to figure out how that relates to the topic of this thread??

I can't decide if you are being deftly disingenuous or that your reading comprhension is just a little substandard. The OSS and MI6 were there for counterespionage all right, because Hitler hadn't conquered the Swiss. Otherwise they would have been there for simple good old fashioned spying, just like when the skies of Greece were filled with the parachutes of British "archeologists".

Cash and hard to obtain industrial components? Sure. Any reason that couldn't have gone through Spain, a neutral and militarily/finan-
cially unimportant area? Ever wonder about that? Hitler wanted Switzerland, he just couldn't take it. They had the advantage of terrain and an armed population. I used the Warsaw ghetto uprising not because they were successful, but to illustarte what the Swiss would have writ large upon the German army if they had decided to party. Get it?

Freedom and security are opposites, remember?  Yep, the terrorists are using our rules against us--the alternative is we change our rules and let em win by default.  I'm not prepared to sacrifice my freedom for "a little temporary safety" are you?

There were plenty of British spies in Macedonia and Greece. There was a WW2 periodical that did a pretty good piece on it several years ago. Again, crack a book, do a web search.


Trading with both sides is not being genuinely neutral. Spain Abuts France. Germany owned France.


If Germany had taken, if anyone could take, Switzerland I would be shocked. The cost would have been to high to have been feasable, and the armed citizenry would have made it too dificult to hold. None so blind as those who will not see.

But we have, haven't we? Or rather our freedoms have been taken by force from us by an unjust government.

Ahhhh, perhaps now you see. You dialogue with a gameplayer.....

I bow to your superior wisdom Lib.

I think we all can agree that these policies, if taken to the extreme, are very very bad.  But can you imagine how bad things would be RIGHT NOW if Gore had been elected instead?

FOTBR

Not any worse at all, as has been mentioned before, most of this stuff has been waiting in the wings for years.....

I wouldn't say that, I went round and round, and not for the first time. I may be dense sometimes, but I get it eventually.....

There is a book out called Target Switzerland whose major thesis is that the Swiss Militia was major deterrent to Hitler's attack because every male from the age of 18 to I think 46 had a rifle.