"Battlefield"?

Apropos of my post Tony goes to town... Thanks to a commenter on Talking Points Muckraker for this:

Tony Snow: "Are you saying that detaining people who are plucked off the battlefields is an assault on democracy?"

Jose Padilla was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested at O'Hare Int. Airport as a material witness and later changed to an "enemy combatant".

Ali al-Marri was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested in Dec. 2001 in Peoria, IL as a material witness, subsequently charged with credit card fraud and lying to FBI. He was not declared an "enemy combatant" until June 2003.

Maher Arar was not "plucked off the battlefield". He was arrested in JFK airport and transported to Syria where he was tortured before it was determined that he was innocent and was released.

Another says

of the actual GITMO detainees, the Seton Hall study - pretty much the most thorough study done of the detentions at GITMO, shows that less than 10% had even an arguable "battlefield" connection.

adding

even the least generous estimate I've seen, that from Dr. Nakhleh http://www.harpers.org/archive/2006/09/sb-six-questions-emile-nakhleh-1158706094 says that at least one-third were not terrorists nor even jihadists and are people who "wouldn't have been there if we weren't paying a bounty to Pakistani security forces for every Middle Eastern-looking person they handed over to us"

Now, it's true that the reporter did follow up several times, but in the end Tony was allowed to get away with it. The stories should have been about the White House, via Tony Snow, lying through their collective teeth and once again heaping disrespect on the Constitution. It's not hard to get the facts.

You just have to want to print them.

Which is the answer, after all.