From the Always Succint Thomas Sowell

"Adam Smith [once] said, 'Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.'

That lesson seems to have been forgotten in America ... where so many people seem to have been far more concerned about whether we have been nice enough to the mass-murdering terrorists in our custody than those critics have ever been about the innocent people beheaded or blown up by the terrorists themselves. ...

Those who are pushing for legal action against CIA agents may talk about 'upholding the law' but they are doing no such thing. Neither the Constitution of the United States nor the Geneva Convention gives rights to terrorists who operate outside the law. ...

So many 'rights' have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don't meet the terms of the Geneva Convention, then the Geneva Convention doesn't protect you.

If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.

That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening. But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral.

So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect." --economist Thomas Sowell

GTMO - As seen firsthand

"I recently visited the detention facilities at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and was dismayed at what I saw."

Go read the rest. Its not what you expect.

And make sure you read the comments, too. Very interesting.....

Collateral Tragedies My Big Ole Butt

My friend CJ has a post up at A Soldiers Perspective, with pictures and everything.

It infuriates me when I read stories like the one in this week's Time Magazine called Collateral Tragedies. The article rails against our air campaign against the Taliban as responsible for killing more and more "innocent" civilians.
The tent stake holding the line on this story is the August 22nd airstrike in which the military claims only 7 civilians and 35 insurgents were killed. However, the Afghani government and a United Nations "inquiry" claim that up to 90 "civilians" were killed. These types of stories work wonders for enemy propaganda and they use it to their utmost ability in Afghanistan (and in Iraq).
The problem here, again, is that the Taliban does not abide by the rules of war or the Geneva Conventions. They use civilian buildings and locations to conduct and launch military operations. They use children as cover for their activities knowing that if a targeting gunship sees them, the airstrike will be called off.

Did you just hear what I said? We will NOT kill the enemy if there are visible civilians, especially children, at the target location!!