I agree with Ted. What are the bleeding hearts making of the fact that most of the prisoners are more fearful of returning home than anything the americans might do? They declared war on the USA, now they're in a POW camp. You play with feathers, you get your arse tickled. I don't hear any outrage from them about the guy in afganhistan who converted to christanity and now faces the death penalty. I don't hear their outrage at Hamas childrens website that glorifies suicide attacks. I could go on all day about the hypocrisy of those who see islams' anger management issues the product of western civilization. http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=99839 is a most interesting link, and shows just what this so called religion of peace is. The trouble with islam is that it's teachings are highly malleable, it only takes that imperceptable shift from 'is' to 'ought' to change moderates into jihadists. If one diagrees with that, then they need to explain why muslims fight amongst themselves over what the Koran says and wether to take it literally or at face value. Say christians were to take the Bible literally (some do) - my nieghbours would be duty bound to stone me to death because i work in a field wearing two different types of thread. You'll find that in the book of Lev, among other pearls of wisdom. Are we really going to say a barbaric bronze age text has any relevance in the modern world? A government that teaches it's children to become martyrs is obviously from an inferior culture and it is time we reconized that their evil is not a product of socio economic factors they had brought on themselves but the plainly bad values they have. By the way, why not ask an imam yourself http://www.islam.tc/ask-imam/view.php?q=12128
Being muslim looks to be a tedious affair judging from the questions posed in this site.

Gitmo Guy said: Are we really going to say a barbaric bronze age text has any relevance in the modern world?

Are you talking about the Koran or the Old Testament? It would make sense for both.

Better to put both sides in a giant arena with nothing but their Holy Books and let them go at it. The hatred born in the Old Testament times continues today. Fighting for literally thousands of years over a pile of rocks called Jerusalem.

War in the name of God.. Pfft.. Well, I guess neither of the Holy Books claim their God is peaceful now, do they. Killing in the name of your God has always, in any culture, simply been a way to avoid the guilty feelings associated with murder. O, my God told me to do it.. I am pure, the other mob isn't, and I'm God's appointed janitor..

Spot-on EV.

When it all comes down to it, no matter how you dress it up, all this is fuss is just about whose imaginary friend is best.

Agnostics and athiests at least have the freedom NOT to hate anybody they don't choose to.

Gitmo Guy,
where is your outrage at the man found dead near Bondi this morning? I can only assume then that you condone murder?

Well, I am outraged at anyone being killed for converting to Christianity (or any religion), and I'm outraged that any web site would glorify suicide bombings, so there; you've got your outrage.

I'm also outraged that there are people, who in the face of some strong but immoral threat, believe the answer is to be stronger but to also not worry about morality.

To those people, I ask-

Who decides that a person is a threat?
Based on what evidence?
How should the evidence be used?
What is an acceptable process for dealing with those threats?
If imprisonment, what is acceptable treatment of a prisoner?
Does it depend on the threat of the prisoner? Circumstances of capture? Nationality? Religious belief?
When is it ok to abuse someone?
How open to scrutiny should any of these processes be?

If your answer to any of these questions is that it is ok for a government to decide on the issue and do as it pleases, then you have no place objecting to many of the atrocities of Saddam Hussein's regime.

If you don't want yourself, your family, or any other person to end up a political prisoner at the whim of a government, you must see that the answer to these questions is that all these processes remain open to independent judicial/political/police systems, open to public scrutiny and democratic approval (including world scrutiny and approval).

To hold these freedoms to ransom because it may promote violence to allow these freedoms is counter to the purpose of having democratic freedoms.

The point of freedom is that I can do whatever I want in my society but there will be consequences for my actions if they violate laws that are approved by the people. When a government preemptively restricts my freedoms (by arresting me, for example) to prevent me from acting, that is dictatorship.

Yes I am outraged at the death sentence hanging over the man who has converted to Christianity in Afghanistan. I have raised the matter in another forum that I contribute to, that is mainly inhabited by Americans, including veterans of Gulf Wars 1 and 2, and the fighting in Afghanistan. To a person they wonder why the USA bothered to bring democracy to a place like Afghanistan when one of the central tenets of democracy, that is freedom of religion, is missing. The general feeling is that Egypt, Saudi Arabia and some other Middle Eastern states all need to be 'de-fundamentalised'. This is something agree with, but I don't agree with the proposals to turn the Middle East into a radioactive lake of boiling glass.

So where do we place our outrage? Do we with-hold humanitarian help from those countries that have suffered natural catastrophes such as Pakistan and Indonesia because they are Islamic and Christianity is persecuted? Or do we, by our actions, our donations and our prayers show them that 'the evil west' is not that evil after all?

Or do we tell them that we will not send aid to them, or any other Islamic country, until ALL Islamic countries remove from their statute books laws against conversion?

All I know is this, we hold democracy and its principles, including the rule of law and respect for the individual and their rights to be worth going to war for, and if necessary dying for. How can we let our governments remove from some people the rights that we are trying to bring to others?

Mike – there undoubtedly were some people incarcerated in error at Gitmo, and several hundred have been released. But several score of these former detainees were subsequently killed and captured while fighting for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. So you see – it cuts both ways.

Hamlet – the difference between a Palestinian suicide bomber and Baruch Goldstein is that the former is embraced as a national hero and role model, while the latter was reviled and despised by the overwhelming majority of the Israeli population. If Goldstein hadn’t been killed during his terrorist attack in Hebron, then he certainly would have been sent to prison by Israel for life. Extremism is a phenomenon found in every culture – so the test is not whether a society has lunatics, but how it treats them. The Palestinians celebrate their fanatics, while the Israelis punish theirs. That’s the difference.

Chris – see my comments above about the fallacy of applying conventional criminal courtroom procedure to a situation that has arisen in wartime. Different standards of behaviour equal different legal standards.

Space Cadet – And what amuses me about leftwing internationalists such as yourself is your chicken little predictions of gloom and doom that fly in the face of historical precedent. During WWII, Australia enacted emergency regulations that were much more draconian than the USA Patriot Act or the ASIO legislation. Yet when the war ended and the emergency subsided, these wartime regulations were consigned to the dustbin of history. I guess I have more faith than you in the resilience of Australian democracy.

Wibbie – you erect a rather silly straw man argument that you then proceed to demolish with gusto and glee. As I pointed out in a previous piece in the Age 18-Jan-06), US federal law prohibits torture as defined by the UN Convention on the subject