http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/editorial/52908.htm
NO LAWYERS IN THE FOXHOLES
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January 10, 2003 -- Congratulations to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for its common-sense ruling in the case of Yasser Hamdi - the American-born Saudi who was captured while fighting alongside Taliban militiamen and al Qaeda terrorists.
Overruling a Federal District Court, the appellate court held that U.S. citizens can indeed be detained by the government as enemy combatants without any of the constitutional protections normally afforded Americans in criminal prosecutions if - and it's a big if - they are captured on the battlefield.
As was Hamdi.
Furthermore, the court ruled, the military's determination that such a battlefield captive is an enemy combatant is sufficient to justify such detention
The civil-rights alarmists say that this gives a license to the government to detain any American citizen anywhere as an enemy combatant, hold him indefinitely and deprive him of access to a lawyer.
Nonsense.
Wrote the court: "Hamdi is not any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant by the government; he is an American citizen captured and detained by American allied forces in a foreign theater during active hostilities and determined by the United States to have been indeed allied with enemy forces."
And not a suspect - even a suspected terrorist - caught on American soil.
There's a big difference.
NO LAWYERS IN THE FOXHOLES
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
January 10, 2003 -- Congratulations to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for its common-sense ruling in the case of Yasser Hamdi - the American-born Saudi who was captured while fighting alongside Taliban militiamen and al Qaeda terrorists.
Overruling a Federal District Court, the appellate court held that U.S. citizens can indeed be detained by the government as enemy combatants without any of the constitutional protections normally afforded Americans in criminal prosecutions if - and it's a big if - they are captured on the battlefield.
As was Hamdi.
Furthermore, the court ruled, the military's determination that such a battlefield captive is an enemy combatant is sufficient to justify such detention
The civil-rights alarmists say that this gives a license to the government to detain any American citizen anywhere as an enemy combatant, hold him indefinitely and deprive him of access to a lawyer.
Nonsense.
Wrote the court: "Hamdi is not any American citizen alleged to be an enemy combatant by the government; he is an American citizen captured and detained by American allied forces in a foreign theater during active hostilities and determined by the United States to have been indeed allied with enemy forces."
And not a suspect - even a suspected terrorist - caught on American soil.
There's a big difference.