By suggesting that military forces could deploy and not "follow the exact procedures that govern law enforcement operations," the memo allowed Cheney and others to claim "there might not be enough evidence to arrest and successfully prosecute the suspects in Lackawanna" and so declaring them enemy combatants and using the military to take them into custody would be easier.
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Lackawanna officials say the idea to deploy the military domestically was a "bad idea."Â
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Buffalo News reports that a former special agent in charge of the FBI's Buffalo office, Peter J. Ahearn, told the newspaper:
"There was a lot of armchair quarterbacking going on, people outside the FBI who just didn't understand the process and the law, and that included the Department of Defense, the CIA and others," Ahearn said, adding he was never involved in any discussions on troops but was kept in the loop on talks about declaring the men enemy combatants. "It was more the issue of military justice versus the rule of law."
On wanting to label the suspects "enemy combatants," Ahearn said, "Why would we be doing this when we are inside the borders of the United States and this is domestic? Treating them as combatants, to me, was unnecessary. They were American citizens."
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Unnecessary isn't quite the word I would use to describe it. Unconstitutional, unlawful, and unacceptable seem to be much better words.
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Take a poll and I bet the same Americans who think it permissible for our military to torture would think it permissible to arrest so-called terror suspects who live in a neighborhood near you. They would be wrong.
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Had the military been deployed, they would not have been defending our freedom. They would have been effectively blurring a distinction that so often distinguishes America from other countries.
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Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who regularly appears on MSNBC to discuss issues concerning the rule of law, writes:
"...most of the framers opposed a standing army rather than a people's militia because of their fear of the tendency of the military in history to exert political and social control over countries. We have seen how a domestic role of the military in other countries has produced instability and abuses.
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