While there are of course MANY reasons why the Democrat Party is in such
serious decline

While there are of course MANY reasons why the Democrat Party is in such
serious decline, one of the major reasons is that it keeps proving to the
American Voter just how incredibly inept the Democrat Party is at handling
important items such as national defense. A recent editorial serves to
highlight that Democrat Party incompetence nicely:


"The critics, who are currently enjoying an increase in support from the
right, of course couch their radical stance in terms of due process, as if
what they are asking is the most ordinary thing in the world. And indeed,
for American citizens it is. But never has the United States granted
detained combatants this right. During World War II, for instance, the
United States held hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war without
charge, without legal representation and without a means to contest their
designation as legal combatants taken on the battlefield.

This history conforms with the Geneva Conventions, as long as the detainee
qualified as a legal combatant. If not, a detainee's rights as defined in
the Geneva Conventions are considerably less. The reasons for this are
simple. Article 4 of the convention on treatment of prisoners of war
identifies a legal combatant as someone who fights under a recognized
state which adheres to the Geneva Conventions; wears a fixed insignia or
uniform; carries his arms openly; and conducts operations in accordance
with the laws of war -- which rules out terrorists.

As the administration rightly determined after the invasion of
Afghanistan, Taliban and al Qaeda terrorists fail to meet any of these
standards. Therefore, they are illegal combatants and not protected as
prisoners of war in the Geneva Conventions. A soldier is different from a
terrorist because a soldier is supposed to follow certain rules;
terrorists are not -- and the Geneva Conventions acknowledge this
difference. If they did not, then there would be no incentive for soldiers
to adhere to Article 4.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we accepted that terrorists are POWs,
they would still not be entitled to adjudicate their case before a U.S.
court. There is nothing in the Geneva Conventions that requires or even
considers such an option. The conventions do say that a POW is subject to
the laws of the 'Detaining Power' -- yet the Constitution does not say
anything about allowing combatants access to U.S. courts."

http://www.washtimes.com/op-ed/20050621-085512-7817r.htm



--
The Democrats, in their desperate search for an alchemist who can turn
Iraq into Vietnam, stumble into one soft cowpie after another.