Always Trust the Government

I'm sure many of you have seen the recent news that a Judge ruled that 5 detainees from Guantanamo must be released. The reason for his decision was simple, the Government's evidence was insufficient to justify ongoing imprisonment of a detainee as an "enemy combatant" and there was no credible evidence that the 5 detainees intended to take up arms against the U.S.

These men have been wrongly detained, without credible evidence for seven years. In the aftermath of 9/11, President Bush was given incredible amounts of power in order to fight the "war on terror." In this process, he told a gullible Congress and the American people that he could be trusted with this power. Although it isn't the first time we have discovered that he misused this power, it is clear that we cannot trust the government to use its power without abuse. How do we plan on winning the "war against terror" when we arrest and detain innocent people without giving them due process? Why would any person or country look up to us as a beacon of liberty or a morally superior country? George Bush's approach to the war on terror has set us back years.

One of the men released was named Lakhdar Boumediene. The name may sound familiar if you followed the presidential campaign or recent Supreme Court decisions. Earlier in the year, the Supreme Court ruled that Habeas did apply to Guantanamo detainees and those rights could not be suspended by the Military Commissions Act. Thus, the court invalidated Sec. 7 of the Act and declared the only way to suspend Habeas Corpus is to follow the procedure proscribed in Art. 1, Sec. 9 of the United States Constitution.

At that time, so-called conservatives and Republican's, even 4 of the Supreme Court justices stated that the detainees should not have Habeas rights and this ruling was dangerous for our country. John McCain said the ruling was "one of the worst in the history of this country" and Sarah Palin made yet another asinine statement during her VP acceptance speech stating that "[Barack] is worried that someone won't read them their rights." (Yet again, in proving she is an ass, the case had nothing to do with Miranda rights or notifying them of their protections.) But if these people would have gotten their way, these men would still be locked up in a cage for having done nothing wrong. How can anyone support the stance that these detainees should not have a right to a trial to even determine if they should be there? How can you still trust Bush when he says all the detainees in Guantanamo are terrorists? There are innocent people there, but if John McCain and countless others would have had their way those innocent people would still be rotting away in prisons as we speak. Unbelievable.