Habeas For All
Posted on June 17, 2008 by andrew
This is the new McCain attack?
In a question posed toward the end of the call by Stephen Hayes of the Weekly Standard, the McCain campaign might have found a new talking point with which to emphasize the possible effect of the Gitmo decision. Hayes’ asked if – in the campaign’s interpretation – the Court’s decision would mean that if Osama bin Laden was captured and imprisoned at Guantanamo, he too would be entitled to Habeas Corpus rights.
The McCain campaign’s answer was yes.
And, by implication, we are meant to believe that giving Osama bin Laden Habeas Corpus rights would be a bad thing?
Dude murdered 3,000 people. Practically no one in the world, including bin Laden himself, denies it. Isn’t putting him on trial (so we can presumably convict him), which is more or less what “granting habeas rights” would mean, exactly what we want to do?
Last time I checked, every American accused of murder for over 200 years has had the rights of Habeas Corpus (in theory, at least). We’ve still managed to convict a hell of a lot of them. The fact that we abide by a system with rules such as the guarantee of Habeas Corpus is one of the reasons we rightfully tend to consider ourselves to be better than monsters such as bin Laden.
Sphere: Related Content» Filed Under 2008 presidential election, John McCain, Osama bin Laden, detainee abuse, habeas corpus
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