WIAKywbfatw's Journal: WTF? Not guilty but still incarcerated indefinitely?

I've just read this news article on BBC Online: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3487958.stm.

For those of you too lazy to click a link, here it is in full.

US 'may hold cleared detainees'

By Nick Childs
BBC Pentagon correspondent

Pentagon officials have confirmed that Guantanamo detainees may still be kept in detention, even if they are found not guilty by a military tribunal.

They say detainees could be kept prisoner if they are considered a security risk.

If found guilty, they could also be held beyond any sentence laid down by the tribunal.

The Pentagon this week laid the first charges against two foreign detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.

'Not common sense'

The US military officials argue that there are two processes underway.

Detainees are being held because they are suspected of being enemy combatants in an ongoing war.

Separately, some may be put before tribunals accused of specific war crimes or other offences.

But the officials say it would not be common sense to release detainees after the tribunals if the so-called war on terrorism were still under way and it was thought they might launch new attacks on US interests.

The officials add that anyone convicted of war crimes would have to serve out their sentences, even if the other detainees were released because the war was deemed to be over.

All of this looks like further evidence of how difficult the issue of detainees is.

So, you've not been proven of any crime, even in the most hostile of courts, despite having no access to a lawyer or other representation for the two plus years that you've already been detained, yet you still aren't free to go? You're still going to be detained indefinitely? What was the point of the trial in the first place?

Is this justice in 21st century America? Please, say it ain't so.

Yep

[Servo]

we're fucked.

Justice and relativism

[Metropolitan]

We seem, with this administration, to be caught in a whirl of relativism about such things as ethics, basic rights, and due process. The world has to play by a set of rules, but we're not bound in this case because it's, er, inconvenient to do so.

I'll admit that I'd rather not have a large number of mercenaries fueled by religious extremism wander the world looking for ways to kill us. There has to be some way to balance out that wish with keeping a system that has at least some respect in the larger wor