The administration says, then, there are no downsides or upsides to treating terrorists like civilian criminal defendants, but a lot of us would beg to differ.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Allowing suspects to indefinitely linger in our cells is, in fact, detrimental to our national security goals. If a suspect is proven to be a terrorist, for the sake of the victims and deterring any future attacks, he or she must be brought to justice. America has done this with Timothy McVeigh and hundreds of other terrorists.
The way the terrorist is trained to operate, especially the suicide terrorists, makes punishment and the threat of punishment far less valuable to those who would prevent the crime.
There is no moral equivalency between those who would kill using children, innocent civilians, children and adults, in their homes and in their places of worship, to that of a government that is seeking those terrorists before they can engage in that awful activity.
However, the Department of Defense treats these detainees in accord with the Geneva Convention, even though that is not required because of the inhumane methods used by these killers.
I do not - I never believed it's better to kill a terrorist than to detain him. We want to detain as many terrorists as possible so we can elicit the intelligence from them in the appropriate manner so that we can disrupt follow-on terrorist attacks.
Al Qaeda doesn't abide by the Geneva Conventions, so in my opinion, they should not be afforded the protections of them.
We can prevent many people from becoming terrorists by truly listening to people who feel they've been treated unjustly and responding to their concerns with a sense of justice and compassion.
Right now, American law bars the admission of aliens suspected of terrorist activity - but not of terrorist sympathies.
Any government that supports, protects or harbours terrorists is complicit in the murder of the innocent and equally guilty of terrorist crimes.
I want to be very clear: whenever it is possible to capture a suspected terrorist, it is the unqualified preference of the administration to take custody of that individual so we can obtain information that is vital to the safety and security of the American people.