Michael P. O'Connor

When I first visited NY, I bought the maps and pictures of most of the landmarks. Heck, I even took pictures myself and later when I came back, I videotaped my vacation. Nothing wrong with that, heck, NY is advertising for people to buy that stuff. Now imagine if I was an Arab. Oh how quickly the tables have turned. Isn’t that prejudice? Yes, maybe they were potentially involved in something. I guess we can’t afford to second guess people, lets assume they are guilty and then, assuming we didn’t shoot them first, perhaps jail them indefinitely with no access to lawyers and then try to, maybe, find out what they were really doing. Reminds me of Gitmo. One side says they’re all innocent and should be set free. Another side says they are all terrorists that should be hanged. Why not conduct a proper trial for all of them. If they are found to be guilty (and I’m sure some of them are), then follow US or international law to judge them. If they are innocent, let them go. What’s wrong with that? I know. We don’t know why we have them. I read a lot of stories about people turning in “al queda terrorists” in afghanistan simply because there was a 25,000 reward for them. That’s a lot of money for a poor person in that area of the world. It’s like witches, jews, communists, gays, and now, terrorists… same thing. One thing I’d like to point out is that illegal immigrants should be deported without delay. However, arresting american citizens with little if any evidence and keeping it a secret sounds too Orwellian for my taste, at least pretend we have some rights here.

I’d agree with you, but the US has a recent history of Japanese concentration camps during WWII and the ‘red scare’, both were done without presenting a shread of evidence (nevermind the old fashioned witch hunts). Maybe not in this case, but it’s widely documented that in the time of panic, all evidence is unnecessary (in any country). Yes, he was arrested as an enemy combatant, however being a citizen of this country entitles him to a trial at least (http://archives.cnn.com/2002/LAW/06/27/dirty.bomb.suspect/). Otherwise the grand view of this is: our spy agency was monitoring a citizen and based on some evidence is chose not to reveal in a regular trial, it indefinitely detained an American citizen without access to a lawyer. That’s scary. Why are they hiding this stuff. If they have all this great evidence, then bring it out and pretend like we have a great justice system – let him stand trial and be found guilty instead of this cloak and dagger stuff. Also, treason is very tricky, remember John Walker Lindt? Don’t forget that our founding fathers committed treason, they wanted to make sure it was very hard to convict someone of treason. Personally, I’d convict someone of treason (which has a death penalty) only after they were proven to have killed Americans. This bull about not waiting for a smoking gun, although makes some sense, means that anyone can be arrested for what they might do later on.