<p>Regarding Jose Padilla - if he is your poster boy for sympathy please note that he has been granted full access to the US courts and has been found guilty on all charges.</p>
<p>Regarding the Gitmo detainees, it is an ongoing myth that those there are guilty of no more than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The Gitmo population has been vetted of anyone who might fall into that category with an obvious intent to err on the side of leniency - with the result of a number of those released ending up back in the fight against us. Sympathy for those remaining is wasted sympathy.</p>
<p>I was going to mention Joe Padilla but couldnt remember the name, and that other guy, the shoe bomber. Them being the exceptions. I thought the difference is obvious - that even liberals will avoid using them as counter argument. I guessed wrong. </p>
<p>Agree with Yourworld that liberal thinking is counterproductive thinking. They point to some lone, out of the way exception and say “see!”. This is getting off course but I think the public schools should add to its educational curriculum a course in constructive thinking and reasoning, but of course they have rid the schools of all the leftist liberal arts teachers first.</p>
<p>edvest1 - Just what do you suggest we do with all those ‘leftists?’ Reeducation camps? Maybe you should find a good liberal arts teacher and take a course in civics and American history with an emphasis on pre-Revolutionary Colonial America. </p>
<p>We point to Padilla and other examples of a government security agency run amok not as rare examples but as the first tumbling pebbles of an avalanche. Be my guest to look the other way and pretend that it’s only going to swallow up other people. The righties seem to live by the rule 'I got mine so who cares about you?" The lefties prefer ‘what happens to other people matters’ – no man is an island, and all that. If that is somehow ‘counterproductive’ (to what?) so be it. </p>
<p>And if O.J. got off because the evidence was flawed and the prosecution tainted, Padilla should have been released as well. He probably will be on appeal, because his treatment broke so many of his Constitutional rights it is frightening. His guilt or innocence is now beside the point. He is an American citizen who was treated shamefully by his own government. If they had followed proper procedure, safeguarding those rights which we are allegedly fighting for, he probably would have been convicted long ago. Read about what ‘they’ did to him and, for the sake of whatever God you believe in, imagine yourself in his place. ‘It Can’t Happen Here’ <em>is</em> happening here.</p>
<p>Right, that’s the way the legal system is supposed work - you charge someone with a crime, try them, and if found guilty you lock them up. I applaud the conviction of Jose Padilla. I applaud the conviction of all terrorists who have committed crimes. Prison is the best place for them. </p>
<p>BUT, I do not applaud the government suspending your civil liberties and mine by simply locking citizens up indefinitely with no charges by means of this “enemy combatant” stuff. Trying Padilla for crimes is what they should have done in the first place. I have absolutely no sympathy for Padilla or any other criminal. But I have serious objections to the government doing away with due process and assigning “enemy combatant” status on its own whim. Fortunately for us, the Constitution was reasserted in the Padilla case and the government was forced to do things the legal way.</p>