My First Diary!
When confronted about holding indeterminate numbers of so-called enemy combatants (not to mention US Citizens) without rights in Gitmo and elsewhere, most GOoPers reply that this is what they deserve. As terrorists, they have forfeited any and all rights they may have once had.
Imagine if King George III used this same logic 235 years ago . . .
From WIKI:
"A young apprentice named Edward Gerrish accosted an officer on the night of March 5 in King Street for a payment due his master. When he became vocal, a British sentry, Private White, left his post outside the customs house to club the boy. Gerrish returned soon after with a group of boys who pelted White with snowballs, ice, and trash. The commotion brought the Officer of the Day, Captain Thomas Preston, who came to the soldier's aid with a corporal and eight other soldiers of the 29th Regiment of Foot. The mob grew in size and continued throwing things at the British soldiers. In all the commotion, Captain Preston's order of "Don't Fire" was likely misinterpreted, and as the parties closed, the soldiers did fire...In this action, five Americans, Samuel Gray, Samuel Maverick, James Caldwell, Patrick Carr and Crispus Attucks, an African-American and traditionally the first-known casualty of the American Revolution, were killed. Six more were injured.
[snip]
The post-"massacre" trial was held in a civilian court with a jury of colonials and John Adams acting as the defense attorney. Six soldiers were found not guilty, and two more -- the only two proven to have fired, Hugh Montgomery and Matthew Killroy, were found guilty of manslaughter, which was punished by branding their thumbs. Their officer, Captain Thomas Preston, was acquitted when the jury was unable to determine whether he had ordered the troops to fire. The jury's decisions suggest that they believed that the soldiers had been provoked and their use of force was not totally unreasonable."
John Adams defended these troops in order to show England, and the world, that the United States was a nation ruled by Law (with the big 'l'). Even though our own citizens were killed, it was Adams' intention to show that America was a land that didn't put its own interests, as it were, above the laws of the land.