London's Burning...

Headline from Saturday's (7/9/05) New York Times: "Despite Terror, Europeans Seem Determined to Maintain Civil Liberties"

Buried in the last paragraph is this little gem:

"Germany is the only country to bring people accused of being members of the Sept. 11 terrorism team to trial. But both cases have foundered, not because of some excessive civil liberties scruples on the part of the Germans, but because the United States refused to provide records of its interrogations of terrorist leaders."

Simply translated: since the Bush administration has violated both international and U.S. law in the "treatment" of suspected terrorists in Camp X-Ray and other super secret prisons (lots of torture, no due process, extraordinary rendition), we can't actually prosecute any suspected terrorists in a court of law. When Cheney and Gonzales and all the bright conservative bulbs were cooking up their so-called "war on terror," did anybody actually think all this through to its logical conclusions? You start operating outside of the the Constitution and the law, and -- surprise! -- there's no legal way back in.

And it's fascinating that the Brits aren't queuing up to sign away their rights after the London Tube/bus bombings as so many Americans were happy to do so in the wake of 9/11...America's supposed to be "the land of the free, home of the brave," not the monarchy that spawned us!