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As I said, I am all for erring on the side of caution, and maybe imprison
someone who is innocent, rather than make the mistake of turning someone
loose who may loose a Dirty Bomb on my kids. Tough call, indeed, since *I*
myself would not want to be held for nothing, but the War was declared by
the Islamists (as a "Jihad" against the "Infidels") and the devastation of
9/11 was worse in terms of loss of life than Pearl Harbor.



Hmmm. A lot of highly contentious points there, I think. We might be talking
'apples and oranges' with your prisons, and ours (yes, you are correct, I am
English, or "British" if that makes more sense to you ... another issue ...)
I have seen many TV programmes about US jails, which may or may not be
totally factual, but the overwhelming impression given, is that they are, on
the whole, hard places, where the inmates are left in no doubt about the
fact that they are there as a punishment. We too used to have such a prison
system, but in recent years, it has declined in severity to the point where
many prisons are now seen as a 'home away from home' - allbeit one that you
can't leave - by many career criminals. This has led to huge amounts of
reoffending and recidivism. I am not against prisoners having their time
made use of, nor of them being paid for doing work which is ultimately of
use to the community that they offended against. I don't have a problem with
them earning privileges such as TV time and extra visits. I don't have a
problem with offenders learning new skills that may help them when they are
released. What I do have a problem with is the way these things have now
become 'rights' rather than 'earnings' as a result of human rights
legislation. Prisoners now, in large part, have a right, set in law, to be
treated as though they were still on the outside, instead of banged up to be
punished for what are often highly uncivilsed an IN - humane crimes. Does
that make my position a bit more understandable, perhaps ? Not a million
miles from where you are coming from, I think.

I'm not sure that I can accept that people lifted under prevention of
terrorism legislation either of yours, or ours, can be strictly treated as
POWs, just because your prez has coined this phrase " 'war' on terror ", and
our former lap-dog has gone along with him on it. Neither you, nor us, is
formerly 'at war' with any declared enemy, so 'POW' status of prisoners that
rely on that condition being established, is not actually valid at this
time. Which means that if the military have incarcerated them under their
own jurisdiction, and with the blessing of their government, then we are
already some distance down the dark fork in the road that leads to
totalitarian state control, with the military as its enforcing muscle...

I'm also not at all sure that the conditions under which prisoners are held
and 'persuaded' at Guantanamo - and this has been the subject of news
reports and documentaries using film happily supplied by the US military -
fall under the guidlines and specifics of the Geneva Convention. I'm not
sure how the fact that it is a military prison affects the way that it
treats its inmates. Presumably, if you are a member of the US military, and
you get court marshalled for some offence, and banged up in a military
prison, you would not expect to be kept in a cage in the sun, or subjected
to hours in stress positions, or water boarded, would you ? Perhaps I'm
missing something here in what constitutes a military prison as against a
civilian one over there ?

Further, I'm not convinced that your senator Kennedy and his chums, shut up
for quite the reasons that you suppose. They may indeed have had a door
slammed shut, but I'm willing to bet that it was a political one, and behind
them, at that. Even though they are on the other side of the table from the
uber-chief, I don't think that would have stopped them from admitting they
were wrong, if they were. There's a lot of political mileage to be had by
'eating humble pie', particularly in an election year, and if liberals here
are anything to go by, they would not be afraid to use such a visit in any
way that they could, to gain press exposure. There is also the other way of
looking at it, in that perhaps they were so traumatised by what they *did*
see, that they felt unable to continue to bring it to the attention of the
senate, the people, and the rest of the wiorld, for fear of the potential
political repercussions for the country as a whole...

I too am on the side of acting with caution where there is genuine
intelligence that points at specific threats, but again, it is very easy to
succumb to the 'reds under the bed' situation, that did a lot of
long-standing damage to the political validity of your country on the world
stage, all those years ago. You most likely have seen the recent case where
the Brazillian man was shot dead here by police, at a London tube station,
as a result of shaky intelligence indicating that he was a terror suspect,
incorrectly interpreted, and badly managed by the senior officers involved.
It's a very classic example of 'reds under the bed' thinking, that prevailed
for a while here after the successful and unsuccessful attacks on London.
I'm sure that the officers that shot him dead acted in good faith, and made
what they considered to be a valid judgement call, but you can't help
thinking that their judgement may have been clouded to some extent by the
'everyone's a potential terrorist' thinking that was being pushed in the
public's face by the then Home Secretary and his master in number 10.

Finally, I think it is a dangerous path to tread believing that because
certain small fundamentalist factions of a particular religion have used
words such as "Jihad" - actually a fairly loose word, which in more
instances means a spiritual struggle rather than a physical one - that this
actually means that any kind of war in the lawful sense of the word, has
been declared. Once you have the population believing that you are 'at war'
as a government, it leaves you able to commit all sorts of acts in the name
of defending your side of that war, that would otherwise, not be considered
acceptable in a civilised society.

This doesn't mean that we don't have a huge potential problem with the 'east
meets west' situation, or that we don't all have to remain vigilant to the
*potential* for large scale death and destruction to be wreaked on us by the
bad guys. But we also need to keep it in proportion, otherwise we *are*
terrorised and unable to pursue what we would consider to be our normal
'free' western way of life, and the bad guys don't then need to even pop
their heads over the side of the trench ...


I don't know quite what all this has to do with Toyota cars, mending
electronic equipment (my group) or hydrogen based energy, but it sure is a
fun discussion amongst intelligent people from different political, cultural
and working backgrounds ! Sorry to the Usenet Police, but at least it is
confined to one thread, that had a tenuous connection to any of the groups
in the first place !

Arfa