Combating Terror: Policing or Soldiering?.
To rule the Commander in Chief
must treat as a mere arrestee
a citizen found
for terrorists bound
to kill us will yield our defeat.
But critics of those who did not
in time hook the Nine-One-One dots
so righteously bow
when judges allow
Miranda's concealment of dots.
It's not rocket science to find
distinctions twixt warfare and crime,
so citizens seized
in terrorist deeds
cannot hide the dots we must find.
With counsel to argue both sides
in chambers a court can decide
if factors are showing
a danger that's growing
so dots the accused cannot hide.
Although this is no panacea,
in cases like that of Padilla,
defense counsel needn't
meet clients for pleadin'
for crim'nal not martial arenas.
Yesterday, in the case of José Padilla, the Court of Appeals ruled that evidence of a citizen's presence in this country to carry out a terrorist mission as agent of a terrorist organization at war with the United States is insufficient to negate applicability of the full panoply of constitutional rights guaranteed to a citizen charged with a mere criminal offense. Sharing the view that we must avoid destroying our Constitutional rights in an elusive pursuit of an unattainable level of safety from terrorism (as I explained on June 1, 2002), I nevertheless have confidence that the judicial system can make a reliably meaningful determination of whether evidence supports military detention of an American citizen as an agent of terrorists organizations at war with the United States or is merely sufficient to support detention for law-enforcement purposes.
