I think part of the problem is that since you don’t know how much the guy knows, you don’t know when you’re done getting info from him.

We should be fighting this war LIKE A WAR! The reason the president’s poll numbers are decreasing is because we are not FIGHTING TO WIN!

You can’t knock out an enemy with jabs. You can’t wash a semi with a squirt gun. You can’t fight anthrax with neosporin.

I must agree that this has become President Bush’s Vietnam for the plain and simple reason that he nor his commanders have the will to kill.

The dichotomy is not quite as clear to the administration though. They’ve been fighting agaisnt this scheme in the Padilla case.

Un-uniformed combatants in the field are taken into custody and shipped to Gitmo or any other convenient OCONUS location for detention – hence detainees.

Terrorists/suspects picked up in CONUS are handled by the FBI for criminal prosecution – hence prisoners.

In guantanamo? no. But I wasn’t addressing events we have seen, and more the event he was positing in his “if.”

“…The reason she, a tracked-vehicle mechanic, was assigned to the checkpoint was to search women.

“But, that day (about 9 a.m. on June 7) there were a lot of people gathering at this checkpoint and it was very busy. So, I was asked to search some men, too,” said Nicholson.”
      [SNIP]
“During the second search, the soldier spotted a grenade hidden behind the visor on the driver’s side. The soldier shouted, “Grenade!”

She continued to hold him down until other soldiers came over and zip-cuffed the man.”
      [SNIP]
“She said the man then started crying and someone said he might have been embarrassed because it was a shame for a man in Iraq to get beat up by a woman.”

Read it all. This is the same gal that was awarded for valor in that scene where the 3 HMMWVs charged the insurgents, mowing most of them down — don’t really want any prisoners to add to the Gitmo ranks.
http://www.blackfive.net/main/2004/06/jessica_lynn_ni.html

If they’re taken in the US then the US constitution applies.

In addition, let’s not forget that these detainees were captured on the battlefield, not kidnapped from some coffee house. If someone is shooting at me, or even hanging out with those who are shooting at me, I think I can generally assume that he’s an enemy.

Hostilities will be over when the hostiles stop trying to kill us.

Time Warp:

Chris Matthews interviewing Gen. Patton in 1944: “General, the folks back home are very upset about the length of this war and all the casualties; what are you doing about an exit strategy?”

Patton: “We’ll exit when we’re finished kicking the %$#@^%$ hun &^%$@#$^ to death, you idiot, and not a moment sooner. And for asking that ^%$#*&^ stupid question, I’ll give you a personal exit strategy right now, out that %$@*&^ window.”

Hey, I can daydream, can’t I?

(1) How do we determine who gets sent there? I think that there should be some sort of legal procedure in place to make certain that everyone there belongs there. Particularly in the case of detainees who were taken in the US. Listen, I don’t have any sympathy for terrorists, but I do want to make certain that we have determined for certain that they are terrorists before locking them up indefinitely.

(2) “By the way, prisoners of war should be held for the duration of the war.”

Totally meaningless unless you have some sort of definition of what constitutes the end of the war; I keep noticing that everyone who wants to keep the people in Gitmo until “the end of hostilities” doesn’t define what exactly that means.