Originally posted by PhReAk
i think Ace means those people on the naval base in cuba.
doesn't really matter because they aren't us citizens. we did the same thing with pows in WWII
No, Phreak, Ace was talking about Jose Padilla and that other guy the Justice Department arrested, they were both American citizens and they're both being held incognito and aren't being allowed to talk to their lawyers.
There is also the 1100 Muslim men, mostly immigrants who have been rounded up and held incommunicado as well. Justice Dept hasn't said a word about where they are or let their lawyers meet with thm either, despite being ordered by about 6 different Circuit Courts and Courts of Appeals to do so. None of these men have been linked to terrorism, but they're being rounded up anyway. Racial profiling, you gotta love it.
When you consider that everyone (citizens AND residents alike) in the USA has the Constitutional right to an attorney, locking people up without letting them even see their attorneys smells just like what happened during WWII (the
Korematsu case).
And Phreak, it wasn't just POWs, that happens in every war. What happened in WWII was that Japanese-American
families, all of whom were American citizens, where rounded up, taken from their homes
at gunpoint and put in "detainment camps" (which were nothing more than outdoor jails) for years, violating their constitutional rights not to be locked up and have their liberty infringed on without just cause. NONE of these people had committed a crime, yet they were locked up for nearly four years as WWII was fought. Korematsu was one of these people. He sued the USA and the case got all the way to the Supreme Court of the United States. Those nine guys in black robes actually decided that even though these people were American citizens who had not committed any crimes, it wasn't the Supreme Court's place to tell how the federal government to behave in perptuating national security. And all those people, mothers, fathers, children, grandparents, all of them American citizens, stayed locked up.
Legal scholars and constitutional law professors have decried this decision for more than fifty years. The decision was 7-2 as I recall, meaning that 2 justices vigoruosly dissented. Even some of the seven Justices who made that decision later publicly said that they wished they had voted differently.
Yes, friends, normal American citizens, people like you and me, were locked up for no reason other than they were a certain ethnicity. If you're an American and this sort of thing doesn't make your blood boil, you need to read the Constitution again.
Now that the same thing is happening AGAIN, people are understandably nervous. It's
unconstitutional to lock someone up without charging him with a crime OR letting him meet with his lawyer.
And for those of you who say that constitutional standards can be relaxed during wartime, then just go ahead and go through the process of formally amending the Constitution then. Good luck getting 3/4 of ALL state legislatures to see things your way.
John Ashcroft scares me more than Osama bin Laden or Saddam Hussein. All three piss me off, but it's only Ashcroft who can ultimately do more harm to America in the long run.
Bin Laden or Hussein can only kill Americans, they can't kill America. Ashcroft, if he's successful in diminishing our Constitutional freedoms,
can kill the essence of what makes America great.
So all of you will just have to forgive me if I choose not to trust him or his boss Dubya, who has signed off on all this.
