"Is our media reporting the news or trying to shape future events? "

You'd make a great lawyer. You obviously remember law school Rule #1: never ask a question for which you don't know the answer. ;-)

Thank you! A smidge OT but so true!

I never tire of seeing good people protecting and nurturing not only their own but also each others' faiths, or even simple humanism for that matter. Thank you again.

Christians committed relatively few atrocities in the name of their faith before Islam appeared, and the same is true after they became dominant over Islam. The vast majority of historic Christian atrocities began in self defense against Islam, became institutionalized, and then spread into non-Islamic situations. It didn't end until Christians repented for turning on each other during the Reformation and the Enlightenment helped break the mental encrustations that had developed.

"Seeing the barbarians also as victims might actually help us solve the problem! "

Generally, it often did. Many if not most barbarians were converted. Even the Huns decamped after appeals to turn from violence. The two great exceptions were the Islamic attackers on Europe and the pre-Islamic Mongols; both groups were simply too wedded to enjoyment of violence and to an inability to see themselves as victims of their own beliefs. Christian compassion for one's enemy simply had no positive effect with them. The second group is long gone, but the first...

You still don't know your history. You know what people said, but often not why they said it. Browsing your densely-formatted replies above (you have to admit that IntenseDebate was not kind to them), I did note one interesting item. You set up a straw man argument about shooting entire German populations to hasten the surrender. Yet not too far from those cities, it really happened, though not with bullets but with white phosphorous: in Hamburg, by the British. The death toll was actually greater than the initial death toll at Nagasaki (and only 15 times that of 9/11). The U-boat shipyards never recovered.

And, a personal note: I have in the past come down in my mind against the conventional and nuclear bombings in both Germany and Japan, and may do so again, depending on the evidence. No one celebrates in America because there is nothing to celebrate. You know that as well as I. So why do you persist with these straw man arguments?

Sic semper tyrannis!

You say "We exercised our democratic right to replace democracy....that's the law isn't it "

No that's not the law.

The U.S. Declaration of Independence states that rights are inalienable. This means that one cannot alienate, or voluntarily give up, one's rights. And as far as I'm concerned, that is valid over the entire globe, even in soon-to-be-not-so jolly old England.

We know Robert can be impish, but this looks like he hadn't had his coffee yet and skipped Pamela's comedy comment.

Still, could be important, if the comedian gets a fatwa issued against him.

Again, you don't know your history.

You say "Ethically it looks as a regression to the hysteria after Pearl Harbour when 120,000 Japanese-Americans were detained as suspected saboteurs. Yet not a single case of sabotage was known to have occurred. It took almost 50 years for the U.S. to acknowledge a shameful wrong and to start paying $1 billion in reparations."

The shame diminished somewhat in the 1990's when declassified intelligence showed that there really were spies and saboteurs. You can't base an argument for the wrongness of the internment on its effectiveness. And of the 110,000 (not 120,000) interned, 42,000 were Japanese not U.S. citizens, so legally that could have been justified. The wrongfulness of the internment came from the racism of some perpetrators, from the scale - in Hawaii far fewer were interned with no loss of national security - and from the fact that Congress never suspended habeas corpus, so FDR's orders were illegal concerning the U.S. citizens. I'm sorry that it happened and sorry that compensation was so late in coming, but it was not totally irrational.

You say "The war against Japan ended with excessive use of force against the civil population in a country desperately seeking peace - the war crime of nuclear bombing of civilian targets without any military value."

"Desperately seeking peace"? That's a fallacy if there ever was one, a couple of tentative peace feelers to Moscow hardly shows desperation. The dispersal of industry in Japan did add military value to targets. Purely civilian targets such as Kyoto were removed from target lists. The latest historical research confirms that the atomic bombs saved Japanese lives - all we have left to debate are the demerits of all of the immoralities, the only valid purpose of which is to remind us that war is evil and is to be avoided if at all possible.

You say "The next attemp to undermine the democratic insritutions and the Constitution came with the moral panic and witch hunt during the McCarthy area at the outset of the Cold War."

McCarthyism is overblown. Yes, McCarthy was an ignorant thug. My own father was in the minority on his college campus in attacking him, a stand that I'm proud of. But there were real witches to hunt. The Venona decryptions showed back then that the Soviets had real spies in the upper levels of the U.S. government. And saboteurs: Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Harry Dexter White actually gave the Soviets the plates for printing the German occupational currency, which they then used to print inflationary notes. The core of the myth of McCarthyism is a creation of Soviet sympathizers. I've also mentioned on this site that the American Protective League under Woodrow Wilson was by far the greatest threat to American liberty in history, McCarthyism pales before it.

You say "We are all done for if we don´t clear up this juridical and moral mess!" What you say sounds hysterical.

You say "If the US want to be the moral leader of the West they better clean up this mess". Sorry, can't be done without risking Western lives. Survival comes first, moral leadership a distant second.

There are posters on this site who maintain that they will always answer a troll. I am beginning to understand their point. You are not really a troll, but you are wrong often enough to make constant replies very tempting.

Ipso is a bit crazy, but he is basically right in that we need to follow our treaty obligations, if only for our own sakes'. He just needs to stop misrepresenting their substance.

On the other hand, you are certainly right in that the expectation of reciprocity is something we need to abandon. The Red Crescent is not going to protect our people.

You say "The Geneva Conventions apply in wars between two or more states" Not true. As Wikipedia states about Common Article 3: "This article states that the certain minimum rules of war also apply to armed conflicts that are not of an international character, but that are contained within the boundaries of a single country" Yes, international terrorism crosses boundaries, but in methodology it more resembles civil wars (most of which have terrorist components).

You say "After a "competent tribunal" has determined his status, the "Detaining Power" may choose to accord the detained unlawful combatant the rights and privileges of a POW, as described in the Third Geneva Convention, but is not required to do so" Yes, and the tribunal may choose not to, legally (I do agree that all detainees are entitled to their status hearing - Bush's failure to push this was his biggest mistake).

One problem is that the U.S. legal system constantly interposed itself into the "tribunal" process. What should have happened was that the military commissions should have been allowed to function and then possible procedural shortcomings should have been appealed - and yes, there was always an appellate process. This never happened: the commissions, despite the legal rewrites you cite, were judged to be deficient without any factual basis. It was all legal theory, invented so that the lower civilian courts could mount a power grab and so Bush's opponents would have something to complain about.

You say "Is it "fair trial" and "due process" when the Government can guarantee it always wins?" Given the number of military lawyers and judges who have complained about deficiencies, I find your statement to be fraudulent. If left alone the system would have corrected itself via the appellate process.

The rest of your post is nonsensical. The differences between the Bush and Obama legal philosophies are quibbles (the policy differences are very real). The professors you cite, in wanting to grant Constitutional rights to the enemy (illegal or legal POWs, it makes no difference in the end), are really trying to turn the Constitution into a suicide pact. I have no respect for the argument.

Let me put it bluntly. Any external enemy, illegal or legal POW, has no Constitutional rights, only Hague and Geneva Convention rights. No external enemy is part of the "We the People" who ordained the Constitution. Anyone who says otherwise, even if they sit on the Supreme Court, subverts the Constitution.

I'm done.