Guantanamo has been a hot potato since it was built.

What is thrown together in the first fog of war cannot—and most probably should not—hold. Shocked as I was by 9/11, strong as I feel about the need to aggressively combat Islamist nihilists and their enablers and fellow travelers, certain as I am that Guantanamo houses some very dangerous enemies of the United States, supportive as I was of intervention in Iraq, I am unmoved by arguments that this particular enemy is particularly vicious and disrespectful of our laws and that therefore the executive can claim supra-constitutional powers.

I don’t pretend to understand the legal issues involved, but I find it repugnant that the executive wishes to claim the power to decide who is or is not an “enemy combatant.” It reeks. No one can call him/herself a democrat and support such a notion, much less such a practice.

One of my heroes is the judge in the John Walker Lindh case, T. S. Ellis III, who had no compunction about sentencing Lindh for his crime—and spelling out what it was—

‘Life is about making choices and living with the consequences,” the judge said. ”You made a bad choice to join the Taliban and engage in that effort over there.”  …

”You were willing to give your life for the Taliban but not for your country,” the judge said. ”Fighting for something you believe in is a virtue, but only if the belief is virtuous.”

but who also drew the line clearly when the distraught father of another dead American, Mike Spann, tried to blame John Walker Lindh for his son’s death. From the New York Times ($$):

Judge Ellis made it plain that the government had not produced even a scrap of evidence to suggest that Mr. Lindh had anything to do with the death of Mr. Spann’s son.

”Your suspicions aren’t enough to warrant a jury conviction,” Judge Ellis told the father.

Mr. Spann spoke of the medical examiner’s report and the trajectory of the fatal bullet, suggesting that his son had been shoved to his knees and executed at close range in the exact location where Mr. Lindh was reported to be.

”Proximity is not guilt,” the judge said. He told the father that his son, a former marine, was clearly a hero, but added, with a directness that seemed to surprise Mr. Spann, ”Of all the things he fought for, one of them is that we don’t convict people in the absence of proof beyond a reasonable doubt.”

The military-tribunal issue was crying out for Supreme Court intervention, and the Supremes came through, astonishing everyone, not least the appellant:

Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Mr. Hamdan’s Navy lawyer, told the Associated Press that he had informed his client about the ruling by telephone. “I think he was awe-struck that the court would rule for him, and give a little man like him an equal chance,” Commander Swift said. “Where he’s from, that is not true.”

So painful as this may be, it is a victory for our Constitution, our system, and all of us. And a reminder that we always have to strive to make this a more perfect union.

William Powers thinks it’s high time we had a brawl over the First Amendment [emphasis added]:

Watching the story play out, I’ve found myself hoping that reasonable heads don’t prevail on this one, that the conflict will get hotter and uglier and eventually wind up in court, a la Plame only more dramatic. Why? Because this country needs to have a great, big, loud, come-to-Jesus argument about the role of the press in a time of war, terror, and secrecy.

Should news outlets ever report government secrets? Under what circumstances? When is leaking wrong and treasonous, and when is it heroic? Do the news media have rights and duties that sometimes conflict with, and even transcend, the law?

These questions have been swirling around us for five years now, but in a vague, amorphous kind of way. They are crucial, and they need to be thrashed out….

I couldn’t agree more. The greatest benefit of our living democracy is that we air our arguments and expose them to debate. I especially like Powers’s explanation of why we need a brawl:

The only way to get the public to focus on anything in this news-drenched world is to make it larger than life, bigger than a movie. The First Amendment needs a Terri Schiavo moment, a Katrina, a story that stops everything the way a 7.5-magnitude California earthquake does. [emphasis added]

Happily for me, Powers also just helped me explain the idea behind Infotainment Rules:

We are news-drenched and, I would add, news-fatigued. In the Constant Information Era, to grab even a moment of the audience’s attention is an accomplishment, because a) there is no mass audience—it’s a mass of niches—and because b) a moment is all you get before the media spotlight and microphone and megaphone move on (see Mickey Kaus’s brilliant Feiler Faster thesis).
Smart people will, I hope, eventually stop bad-mouthing “spin” and learn how to grab the audience—whoever it is they’re trying to reach—by the throat and not let go.

Attracting attention is a skill. Holding it is an art. And it’s as true for those with serious messages

Gulf News

as for those with ridiculous ones

Once upon a time (on June 29) BBC editor Jon Williams explained the code behind the BBC’s sensitive use of language:

Our credibility is undermined by the careless use of words which carry value judgements. Our job is to remain objective. By doing so, I hope we allow our audiences on radio and television to make their own assessment of the story. So we try to stick to the facts - civilians are “kidnapped”, Cpl Shalit was “captured” [emphasis added]

Today, according to the Beeb, an Iraqi minister [a civilian] was:

“snatched”

“kidnapped”

“pulled from his car”

“captured”

“abducted”

and

“ambushed”

Then the minister was:

“freed”…by his bodyguards

The End

Well…you prevent the press (domestic and foreign) from reporting the news:

A Chinese draft law that threatens to fine the news media for reporting on “sudden incidents” without permission applies to foreign as well as domestic news organizations, an official involved in preparing the legislation said Monday.

The law, now under consideration by the legislature run by the Communist Party, calls for fines of up to $12,500 for unauthorized reports on outbreaks of disease, natural disasters, social disturbances or other so-called sudden incidents that officials determine to be false or harmful to China’s social order.

Wang Yongqing, vice minister of the legislative affairs office of China’s State Council, or cabinet, told reporters at a news briefing that the law should apply to all news organizations, including foreign newspapers, magazines and broadcast outlets, which usually operate under different rules from those of the Chinese news media.

But you do it with exquisite fair-mindedness:

The government appreciates and “even relies on” the news media to report actively on sudden events, and the law should not stop them from exposing corruption or cover-ups of such news as long as their reports turn out to be accurate, he said. [emphasis added]

They fail to say who, exactly, determines what turns out to be “accurate,” and when.

(It was of course Zhou Enlai who, when asked by Kissinger his opinion of the outcome of the French Revolution, said: “It’s too soon to tell.)

WNEP, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, salutes our troops:

WNEP-TV and Knoebels Amusement Resort want to welcome home National Guard personnel and Reservists and Active Duty who have served in Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo or Germany in the Global War on Terror.

We’re inviting those persons to a reunion at the beautiful, fun, and tree-covered grounds of Knoebels Amusement Resort, Elysburg. Enjoy the fun and camaraderie of a special day at a special park. Knoebels offers fantastic rides for kids of all ages, including exquisite carousels and thrilling roller coasters. We’d be honored if you’d be our guest, so register now below.

WNEP-TV salutes all servicepersons and veterans throughout the entire year, yet for one special day this July, WNEP-TV wants to specifically honor those who left their families and day jobs, and were deployed to Kuwait, Afghanistan, Iraq, Bosnia, Kosovo or Germany, to answer the call to service for the War on Terror.

I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

—Patrick Henry

It is only a teeny-weeny bit ironic that as we celebrate the 230th anniversary of our country’s independence from the empire formerly known as Great Britain, the British people, seeing the  U.S. as a “vulgar empire builder,” loathe Americans, America, and everything it stands for as never before:

only 12 per cent of Britons trust them to act wisely on the global stage. This is half the number who had faith in the Vietnam-scarred White House of 1975….

Most Britons see America as a cruel, vulgar, arrogant society, riven by class and racism, crime-ridden, obsessed with money and led by an incompetent hypocrite.

American troops are failing either to win “hearts and minds” in Iraq or bring democracy to that country.

More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests.

Sound familiar? It should. Here’s Harold Pinter accepting the Nobel Prize:

I put to you that the United States is without doubt the greatest show on the road. Brutal, indifferent, scornful and ruthless it may be but it is also very clever. As a salesman it is out on its own and its most saleable commodity is self love. It’s a winner. Listen to all American presidents on television say the words, ‘the American people’, as in the sentence, ‘I say to the American people it is time to pray and to defend the rights of the American people and I ask the American people to trust their president in the action he is about to take on behalf of the American people.’

This has been the party line of the biens pensants in Britain since the run-up to the war in Iraq, which is deeply unpopular in Britain. They’re entitled to their bitter opinion.

Happily, Tony Blair, undaunted by his personal and political unpopularity at home, continues to draw attention to the inescapable problems facing his beloved country and the West. And he is unafraid to call out extremist Muslims, and to call on Muslim moderates to stand up and help discredit the nihilist worldview of the extremists:

‘We are not having a debate fundamental enough…within the community, which is where the moderate majority go and stand up against the ideas of those people, not just the methods,’ said Blair.

The accusations and counter-accusations coincided with a new opinion poll, published in the Times Tuesday, which showed that 13 per cent of British Muslims believe that the perpetrators of last year’s bombings should be regarded as ‘martyrs.’

Some 150,000 Muslim adults, or 16 per cent of the Muslim community, believe that while the attacks were wrong, the ’cause was right.’

However, the poll of more than 1,000 Muslims indicated that nearly two-thirds are of the view that those who sympathized with the bombers were a ‘tiny minority.’