Who does the ACLU represent? What do the letters stand for?  They claim they stand for "American Civil Liberties Union", but I doubt it... at least the "American" part.  The latest outrage from these defenders of NAMBLA (North American Man-Boy Love Association, an organisation to which I'm not going to provide a link) is to defend terrorists.  That's right, the ACLU is angrily insisting that the al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban members detained at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba should be given all the rights of the American citizens they've killed and tried to kill.  The ACLU seems to think that they should be treated as common criminals with citizens' rights, instead of foreign war criminals or terrorists. 

These secret detentions exemplify the dramatic erosion of constitutional rights under the Bush administration. Individuals have been denied access to an attorney and held without being charged of a crime. Among other things, the government has classified detainees as "enemy combatants," and in doing so has tried to justify holding a person indefinitely or having his or her case heard by a military tribunal, where due process rights are significantly curtailed, rather than by a civilian judge and jury.
http://www.aclu.org/SafeandFree/SafeandFree.cfm?ID=13079&c=207

Constitutional rights for foreign nationals who take up arms our people? Whose side is the ACLU on?  I tried to find the place in the Constitution where it says that foreigners who have sworn to carry out our destruction are accorded the right to have a criminal trial as if they were merely caught shoplifting.  I couldn't find it.  You won't be able to, either.  How can the Bush administration be causing a "dramatic erosion" of that which never existed?

Today, the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case which will allow them to decide whether terrorists "may contest their captivity in American courts".  Surely this must be a joke.  If the Supreme Court decides in favor of the terrorists, and even one terrorist is freed by their decision, it will be one too many.

The last time we dealt with something like this, captured enemy combatants were dealt with in the Nuremburg Trials.  First, certain Nazi organisations were examined by the International Military Tribunal -- America, Great Britain, France and Russia -- and indicted as criminal organisations.  Then prisoners of war were tried to determine the extent of their involvement with the criminal organisations: the SS, the Gestapo, and the Corps of the Nazi Party Political Leaders.  All of this was carried out not in civilian courts, and not by granting the prisoners the same rights as American citizens.  The trials were held by the military, and their outcome was swift and fair.

While awaiting trial, the Nazi prisoners were held in far worse and restrictive conditions than the Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners are in now.  Thousands of personal lawyers were not retained at government expense, however, nor were tens of thousands of people called away from their jobs to serve on juries.  None of them had a chance of escaping justice due to technicalities or lawyers' tricks.  Most importantly, the trials were held when the war was OVER.  I think the Nuremburg model is the one we should follow when dealing with the Guantanamo Bay prisoners.