Posted by shadowlandr on September 30, 2004 at 04:41:32:
In Reply to: Re: Re: A view from 'Over the water' posted by Bill(OB) on September 29, 2004 at 21:10:06:
like i said, it is not that i agree with everything bush does (although i do agree with a LOT of it-- i live in an area with seven major military bases, the mid-atlantic's ONLY harboor deep enough for major shipping and thus a HUGE source of income, two shipyards which are major contractors for our Navy, and a nuclear power plant, all within a twenty mile radius of each other and a 2.5 hr drive of DC. so you can bet on 9/11 i was scared s***less that norfolk was getting it next. i still *am* scared that (among other metropolitan areas) terrorists may be considering ours next time they feel like blowing something up, due to the military bases and the vital pieces of infrastructure. i am also from a military family, so all the events of the past three years have cut WAY too close to home. sometimes i think your perspective changes a bit when you imagine your own family in the gun sights. i flew out of the same boston airport the 9/11 terrorists did, two weeks before the attacks happened. *cringes*
i won't go on here for hours about john kerry (although i certainly could, with considerable warmth of emotion). but that man has SABOTAGED the state of massachusetts-- he and his reptilian cohort of a fellow buzzard ted kennedy (a MURDERER, for God's sake!) have done an admirably thorough job of making it a worse, harder, sadder place to live than those two. and i have family up there whose hard times bear witness to that. he is a self-serving buzzard who will bend america over the counter to suit his self-serving interests. i would be HAPPY with anyone BUT him, and that INCLUDES dubya-- a man who while he's not perfect, knows at least that the sky is up. i'm not sure kerry would tell you off the bat if you *asked* him-- he'd have to take a poll to see what 51% of a selected sample thought, then change his vote twelve times to see how much money he could wangle out of the deal, first. trust me, you DON'T want this man in office, and you don't even have to LIVE here. sorry to any kerry supporters here, but i'm callin' it like... well, ok, that's enough for now.
and as for the inhabitants of gitmo, well, honestly i agree with mike. you treat military and war-crime related cases differently (tribunals rather than public juries) for a very good reason-- the tribunals are made up of the people who actually have experience with and a stake in the manner; that is, the judges advocate general (JAG, if you all receive and have ever watched the TV show by that name over there). they are the ones with legal jurisdiction (much like the difference between state versus federal jurisdiction) in this because they have been selected to serve in matters relating to A) foreign policy and B) the military. (it's also their jurisdiction because they also serve AS the judicial system of the military-- it's their call, because it's their guys in the rifle sights, so to speak. if you watch the internatl news you'll notice that pfc. lynndie england, of leash-holding nekkie-prisoner picture fame, received a sentence from the JAG, not a state or federal venue). this comprises both; it involved the military, and it involved people who are either linked to or directly derived from a foreign and possibly hostile nation-state. so the tribunals are used rather than the jury-at-large. frankly, after all that has happened because of their (considerable) money and influence, i don't even WANT 'em here.
here endeth the lesson.
i'm a foxnews.commie myself-- they're much wittier. and yes, i hold a conservative viewpoint on many issues both foreign and domestic. i do not have much patience for the liberal flim-flummery that is happening to my contitutional rights, without my vote, by side-note legislators and unelected activist judges (the latter in particular-- where did *I* get a say in any of these law-rewriting, social-activist, "landmark" decisions? *I* want to determine the laws i must live under, not some slick-slimy lawyer. not to indict all lawyers-- my mom is one-- but she's not out there trying to get "constitutional amendments" snaked through without being voted into office by the american people).
but that is enough ranting for one day. hope that cleared things up a bit regarding tribunals, truth, justice, and the 'murrikin way, as we would drawl =) and bill (ob), i always appreciate your point of view, even when i don't agree with it. where have you been hiding?
becky =)