Quote Originally Posted by Gnostic Yevon
It's called the Witness Protection Program because it's for Witnesses not Juries kthxbye.
Are you implying that they can't use it for juries as well? I'd like to see a source on that.

We're capturing them for the most part on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan. Other than Begg, I can't think of anyone who's being grabbed randomly.
So everyone who lives in Iraq and Afghanistan is a terrorist now?

And they'd not be under the constitution anyway. To be under the constitution, they'd have to be either citizens of America or living on American soil legally. American law doesn't apply to everyone on the planet. At best, they're under international laws, not American laws.
I see no point in the Bill of Rights that makes a distinction between American citizens and non-American citizens. If you can point out to me any part of this document that invalidates the Bill of Rights for non-citizens, I'll concede the point, but as far as I recall the Bill of Rights makes no distinction between citizens and non-citizens.

And if we gave them full Geneva rights, the only thing that they could legally be made to tell us are Name Rank and Serial Number. That doesn't help us at all.
well, I don't think it's morally right for us to be coercing anything more out of prisoners, but we've already established that elsewhere.

Well there actually was such an incident during the 93 bombing trial, the FBI admitted in open court that they could listen in on Al-Qaida's satilite phones. So al-qaida members attending the open court sessions heard the testimony and soon after, al-qaida doesn't use satilite phones anymore.
These are the sacrifices we have to make. However, I'd argue that if the government were concerned with protecting such spying methods, they shouldn't have been disclosed in an open court.

We don't but if you bring a guy into open court people who know him will recognize him, plus his lawyer is going to be contacting every person he knows to be a witness for the defense.
Those are valid points. What are the circumstances for military trials? I might be willing to agree to one of those in this case.

I can't say I agree with you on the priorities.
well, does that mean you think the hundred thousand Iraqi lives that have resulted from this war are justified given the 3,000 American deaths in 9/11? As far as I've been able to tell, we've only lost around 3,000 lives to al-Qaeda in the past four years, and allegedly in retaliation for that we've taken over 100,000. It seems to me like *America* is the nation that doesn't have its priorities straight.