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Darknight613 said:
Wow...nice way to twist and distort my comments.

I wasn't talking lawsuits, genius, and screw you for manipulating my comments to claim that I was. I was talking criminal court. We arrest people who not only commit crimes, but also attempt to do so (attempted murder is a crime, is it not?) And again, if we convict a terrorist who plots to commit such a crime, we keep them behind bars where they can't do any harm. If, however, the legal analysts' hypotheses are indeed correct and a case against a suspected terrorist falls apart because a wiretap without a judge's approval is considered grounds for dismissal, then said terrorist would most likely be free to go and plot and maybe even commit more terrorist activity.

We could have had a reasonable debate on this if you hadn't decided to toss in that last comment, which I found to be belittling, manipulative, and in all honesty, idiotic. If you want to debate with me, debate with me about what I actually say, not about your manipulations of what I say.



A criminal court proceeding is a particular form of lawsuit brought by the state against an individual.

That's why it's held in a court. That's why the case has a caption that reads "People v [name of defendant]."

While you may consider this belittling, your analyis of the facts, and your repeated references to legal terms, tends to indicate that you are viewing the problem of terrorism as simply a law enforcement problem, not particularly different than organized crime.

While terrorism may be a crime. It is also something more, especially in this case.

The terrorists are not simply people committing crimes. They are enemy combatants. For all intents and purposes they have declared war on the US. The US has, in turn, stated it is in a "war" against terror.

The objective in a war is not merely to prosecute a bad person for a crime, or an attempt to commit a crime. It is to prevent large scale acts of war against US civilians.

In order to prevent those attacks it may be necessary to engage in military activity or espionage that would not be countenanced in criminal court simply because, as noted above, the objectives are different.

This is hardly unprecedented. In fact, there is not a single war in US history in which our government was expected to battle the enemy with the rules of criminal court procedure instead of the rules of war.

As such, it is extraordinarily dangerous to think we can limit ourselves to fighting enemy combatants with lawyers and judges, in civil or criminal court.