Supreme Court opens up Gitmo lawsuit floodgates; Scalia: “The Nation will live to regret what the Court has done today. I dissent.”
Unbelievable.
We now give constitutional rights to illegal combatants.
I'd been thinking about this since the ruling came down and trying to think of how this would pan out in the future. My thoughts went to the "unofficial" ROE are going to change. If the bastard we just rounded up from a location that we were receiving fire from most likely is one of the terrorists that was shooting at my squad and even though he is an illegal combatant, he now has U.S. constitutional rights if I arrest him and take him into custody, now gets to go through a U.S. federal court to make sure his "rights" weren't violated. What's next, reading Miranda rights to every terrorist we pick up?
As I was driving home this morning I came to the conclusion that there will be a lot less terrorists taken prisoner. The Geneva Conventions state that a combatant with no uniform can be summarily shot. No breaking of the rules here. All "civilized" nations have signed this agreement and have vowed to abide by the rules.
Right after my thoughts, on the radio, a Viet Nam vet was calling into Bill Bennett's show and brought up that back in that war, with no consistent ROE and no uniform for the enemy, the attitude was "better safe that sorry". If you thought they were the enemy better shoot them now rather than let them go and have to fight them again tomorrow.
War sucks! It always comes down to killing more of the guys on the other side than they kill on yours. The Geneva Conventions were drawn up to reduce the civilian deaths by establishing who was fighting for who by stating that uniforms must be worn. If you chose to ignore the rules, then any civilian deaths that occur due to your actions fall back on you.
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