And again, it appears I fell victim to a major weak spot in discussion via text; a lack of inflection by which to determine intent.

(Tip of the ballcap)

Oh, and I am all for ANYTHING we can do to keep our soldiers alive.

Isn't terrorists getting turned loose to fight again... (and this is being documented) a logical consequence that needs be considered, here? Am I to assume he simply doesn't understand that consequence to be directly connected to what he's urging us to do? Bad enough it happens in our supposed criminal justice system. But even when it's working correctly, the criminal justice system was never intended to take up homeland defense...

How is relating a fact, a personal attack?

In any event, It's possible I read sarcasm that wasn't in mark's comments. If so, my apologies to Mark.

Yet another gratuitous personal attack by one of the commenters who's allowed to make OTB such a nasty place to visit.

The comment struck me as odd, especially coming in response to someone who seemed to be agreeing with him. Otherwise, I just took it as a rather clumsy way of making a valid argumen -- That playing by the rules when the other side isn't is not without its cost -- rather than a personal attack.

Yet another gratuitous personal attack by one of the commenters who's allowed to make OTB such a nasty place to visit.

That way we can keep em' as long as need be wherever we want without the hassles and misgivings of the courts...and lawyers...

Of course, the idea that the ones that we've released on those grounds are showing up on the battlefield, killing American soldiers, means nothing to you.

Where is the boundary between criminal act and acts of war.

The boundary is who does it. If the people who set off a bomb in NYC (or flew a plane into a building) were employed by a foreign government, then it's an act of war. If the people were employed by Ernst Blofeld (or Osama bin Laden), then it's terrorism (or a crime, depending on your view of this debate).

The difference is important... you can declare war against a country - threaten it, embargo it, invade it, etc..., but you can't really do the same to a non-state like AQ or SMERSH... if we find an AQ training camp in some random country, we can't just blow it up without some sort of coordination - maybe the host country knows it's there, maybe they don't. If we just waltz in & nuke the place, we've as much as declared war on that host country, and there's a lot of paperwork before you can do that...

No, and that's why they were given "enemy combatant" status I thought. That way we can keep em' as long as need be wherever we want without the hassles and misgivings of the courts...and lawyers...

Can we afford to have terrorists handled in the same manner?

So is it a crime to detonate a nuke in New York City? If it is a crime, is it then a crime to detonate another one in San Fran, and one in Boston and one in Washington DC? Where is the boundary between criminal act and acts of war.

I would suggest that the terrorist already knows he/she/it is at war and the American Liberal just can't grasp the concept.

Where they lurk in a failed state, or portion thereof (like Pakistan's NW Province), then either the state exercises force against them, or we do it for them.

Those are the circumstances in which I think military force is appropriate against terrorists. It doesn't have anything to do with their being other than mere criminals; it has to do with the presence or absence of a state apparatus devoted to apprehending such criminals.