Congress Goes Ahead on Detainees' Rights

Source: AP via the Austin American Statesman

While the White House weighed closing the Guantanamo Bay prison, Congress pushed ahead Tuesday with a heated debate over whether detained terror suspects were entitled to petition U.S. courts to challenge their confinement.

A House Judiciary subcommittee called in five witnesses for conflicting advice and itself divided on the hotly debated issues.

Setting the tone, the subcommittee chairman, Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., accused the Bush administration of tyranny and President Bush of disrespect for the rule of law in not permitting the 375 or so detainees at the prison to resort to U.S. courts to challenge their treatment as "cruel, inhuman and degrading."

-snip-

But on the Republican side, Rep. Trent Franks of Arizona, the panel's senior GOP member, called the detainees at Guantanamo "unlawful combatants." He said, "What makes them that is their willingness to slaughter innocent civilians."

-snip-

"Terrorists are not just common criminals," he said. "They are terrorists" and they are prepared to "cut off someone's head with a hacksaw."

Read more: http://www.statesman.com/news/content/shared-gen/ap/US_Congress/Guantanamo_Rights.html

Right?

RIGHT???

:banghead:

/sarcasm

the innocent have no rights to challenge allegations of having committed them, much less to be considered innocent until proven guilty.

Hmm, sort of a confusing argument, that. And not very convincing. ;-)