How Should We Treat Terror Suspects?

Dick Cheney and Republicans have been quite critical of the Obama Administration and its treatment of terrorists since the attempted Christmas Day bombing (1). Their criticism focuses on the president's "soft" treatment of terror suspects, which considers them basically common criminals instead of unlawful enemy combatants, the path the Bush Administration chose to follow in this regard.

Which path is the right path? The Obama Administration's proposals are definitely in line with the rules created by the Third Geneva Convention — which defines detained enemy combatants as prisoners of war, guaranteed certain rights in their treatment as detainees, if they follow certain guidelines for their conduct in war — and the Fourth Geneva Convention — which defines detained civilians and their rights as detainees.

Additionally, the Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention says:

"every person in enemy hands must have some status under international law: he is either a prisoner of war and, as such, covered by the Third Convention, a civilian covered by the Fourth Convention, or again, a member of the medical personnel of the armed forces who is covered by the First Convention. ' There is no ' intermediate status; nobody in enemy hands can be outside the law." (2-last ¶)

But, it does not seem that the type of person detained after trying to blow himself up on Christmas falls into either category provided by the Conventions. The Commentary attempts to close the gap created by the Conventions, but it does so in a rather obtuse, overbroad fashion — labeling all detainees as either/or. It is clearly outdated, given the new challenges governments face in protecting their homelands against a terrorist menace.

While it might seem that the result of following the Commentary's suggestion — that is, doling out constitutional liberties to terrorists — is reasonable because it supposedly errs on the side of "human rights," is it really? Is it really reasonable to afford constitutional protections to non-citizens who are clearly perpetrating (or attempting to perpetrate) acts of war on innocent Americans?

I think the Obama Administration unnecessarily gives constitutional protections to people who have not played by the rules in international warfare. If the Geneva Convention was designed to guarantee the rights of U.S. citizens to those who intend to destroy our free, democratic republic, then that intention is completely unclear in its construction. If that is the case, though, then perhaps U.S. lawmakers should reconsider our commitment to a document that would therefore be more interested in protecting the rights of terrorists than the lives of law-abiding, freedom-loving Americans. Is that really a "humanitarian" approach to international law?

References: (1) Dick Cheney: Barack Obama 'trying to pretend'

(2) Commentary to the Fourth Geneva Convention

(3) Third Geneva Convention (see Article IV(2))

Climate Change Fanatics in: "Fear and Loathing of Truth and Reason"

This post, although brief, is aimed at all of you out there who support cap-and-trade, cap-and-tax, carbon offsets, or whatever else you want to call it — the name is irrelevant — along with any other plans floating out there to reduce carbon emissions by whatever percentage you think is necessary to save the world. (Surprisingly) Lately, news stories have broken around the world that have reported a hacking of multiple e-mails sent among the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia in the U.K.

It's probably shocking to many, but they've been fudging their data! This, of course, is the same data that the theory of anthropogenic (man-caused) global climate change/warming/cooling is based on, including the infamous (and hopefully by now discredited) hockey stick graph showing how evil man has brought the world to the brink of its existence. When asked to show their data, the Climate Research Unit claimed to have lost some of it. Perhaps this unfortunate loss is most similar to the ol' trick I used to dream of being able to successfully pull off in the 3rd grade, in regard to my homework: "My dog ate it." (NOTE: I always did my homework; this is merely a literary device intended to be humorous and mocking).

So now, from what I gather, the man-caused climate change pushers have tried to just sweetly persuade the masses that even though they have no proof of the accuracy of their models and multiple e-mails exist that show, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the data they used was manipulated (I wonder why — GOVERNMENT GRANTS? No, maybe it was their honest effort to save the world from a monster that only exists in their flawed graphs and lack of understanding of the meaning of "causation." Or maybe (and perhaps most plausibly) their goddess, Mother Earth, told them to.), their theories still ring true, and the globe is still heating up because of CO2-spewing corporate entities (people breathing).

But no warming currently exists, and CO2 levels continue to rise. CRU climate dude Kevin Trenberth said it best in his now-famous e-mail: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't."

Perhaps John Stuart Mill can reply more appropriately to this than I can:

"There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation. Complete liberty of contradicting and disproving our opinion is the very condition which justifies us in assuming its truth for purposes of action; and on no other terms can a being with human faculties have any rational assurance of being right."

Lesson: don't proceed on your crackpot theories based on faulty data (and reasoning) when the only sure results of your cruel experiment will be the further impoverishment of people all across the world. It's just not cool, man.