Congress needs to keep out of this matter.

The U.S. Congress should pass legislation defining the legal status of enemy combatants at Guantanamo Bay to avoid more damage to the United States' image abroad and reprisals against U.S. soldiers, senators said on Thursday.

But the Pentagon said existing laws allow the indefinite detention of people the United States has deemed enemies in the war on terrorism, and that legislation could be too restrictive and was not needed.

"The truth is due to no one's fault Guantanamo Bay is a legal mess," Sen. Lindsey Graham (news, bio, voting record), a South Carolina Republican, said at a Senate Armed Services subcommittee hearing.

With the Pentagon under fire for the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo, Graham is working on legislation with fellow Republicans John Warner of Virginia, the Armed Services Committee chairman, and John McCain of Arizona to clarify the legal standing of people the administration calls "enemy combatants" who can be held indefinitely.

Human rights groups and a number of European countries have said that term has no standing under international law, and the detainees should have the rights of prisoners of war.

Actually, these are "unlawful combattants" under the terms of the geneva Conventions, and they have no rights whatsoever. At best, they have no more rights than a prisoner of war, who can be held until the end of the conflict in which they are cancelled. That means until the War on Islamist Terror Groups has come to an end -- most likely decades from now.

There is one thing that Congress could authorize that I would support. Congress could pass a law that simply says that we will treat terrorists as the contemporary equivalent of pirates -- "the enemy of all humanity" -- and treat them in the same manner as pirates have traditionally been treated.

You know, hanging by the neck until dead.

Posted by: Greg at 03:11 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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