We're a country that allowed waterboarding and indefinite detention, and we're a country where the NYPD Intelligence Division has police files on what Muslims think of the State of the Union address.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
If waterboarding's OK, why don't we let our police do it to suspects so we can learn what they know? We only seem to waterboard Muslims... Have we waterboarded anyone else?
Afghan human rights campaigners worry that U.S. forces may be using secret detention sites like the one allegedly at Rish-Khor to carry out interrogations away from prying eyes. The U.S. military, however, denies even having knowledge of the facility.
You can gesture at the transnational problem of Islamist terrorism all you like, but it's just hot air unless you invest in proper security on the ground in your own country, with the right safeguards to civil liberties.
But there have been many news reports that water-boarding has been used on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is one of the major al Qaeda figures that we have in U.S. custody.
We are not a country that subscribes to policing any part of the world. The areas we are comfortable with are capacity building, intelligence sharing, exchange of ships, call on each other's ports, joint training and exercises.
There is nothing more foreign to a civilised and democratic system than preventive detention.
European Muslims need to feel ownership of security, rather than viewing the police as an occupying army.
The question is, why do we have Muslims in the country?
The NYPD has too urgent a mission and too few officers for us to waste time and resources on broad, unfocused surveillance. We have a responsibility to protect New Yorkers from violent crime or another terrorist attack - and we uphold the law in doing so.
Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we've been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.