Palin on Justice

[beamjockey]

I heard Governor Palin's speech at the Republican National Convention last night.

At one point, she listed contrasts between Senator McCain and "our opponent."

Victory in Iraq is finally in sight ... he wants to forfeit.

Terrorist states are seeking nuclear weapons without delay ... he wants to meet them without preconditions.

And then she said:

Al-Qaida terrorists still plot to inflict catastrophic harm on America ... he's worried that someone won't read them their rights.

This was met with cheers from the assembled Republicans.

I was disturbed.

Is Gov. Palin opposed to reading criminals their rights? Is McCain?

Comments

[kevinnickerson.livejournal.com]

Well, no. The majority of the evidence was not collected in the war zone by our combat troops. It's been collected via interrogations, and intelligence gathering. Some portion was collected in the war zone. That's covered by testimony of the person(s) who made the 'arrest' (I don't know the appropriate word, 'arrest' seems best). Like any court case their testimony should be entered into the record and judged as to it's validity. That judgment will certainly take into account the fact that it was a war zone.

On the second part, even if I agreed with your "inappropriate..." comment, we first need to correctly determine if the people being tried are some of the "people who are violating...". The simple fact is that we have picked up some number of innocent people in the sweep. I'm ok with that. As observed, they were picked up in combat conditions and that's rough. Once they're sitting in a court, then we've got to proceed in a way that allows us to properly separate the guilty from the innocent. That separation of guilty from the innocent is what the DTA and tribunals is all about.

But I don't agree with your second paragraph. There are many levels of conflict, and one is PR and aimed at those leaning against us, but not completely so. i.e. the people being recruited by the terrorists. By treating the worst with a certain degree of standards we defuse the arguments that we're satan incarnate.