When I was in the military, I took my oath to "preserve the Constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic" very seriously. I don't like it when it appears we're trashing our freedoms to save them. It reminds me of the old saying from the Vietnam era, "We had to burn the village in order to save it." As old Ben Franklin pointed out, "Those who would sacrifice liberty to gain safety deserve neither."

At the same time, I know there is historical precedent and probable need for treating a wartime enemy differently than we treat US citizens. Why should someone who attacked us and our form of government suddenly be able to demand that we treat them the same as our citizens? We didn't do that with captured enemy prisoners during WWII, so why should we do it today?

Could you imagine the madhouse of a legal "Dream Team" using every legal maneuver possible to defend Osama bin Laden? He can certainly afford them. He could tie up the court system for years. Quite a bit of the evidence against bin Laden and his cohorts comes from highly classified sources like electronic surveillance satellites, spies, and informants. Presenting the evidence in open court would compromise the sources, making them unavailable to use against other terrorist groups. The court testimony would be a "how-to" on avoiding intelligence compromise for other terrorist groups.