How The KSM Trial Fiasco Directly Impinges On The Rights Of All Citizens

From Ace of Spades:

I think I saw this first noted by James Taranto -- Obama, by refusing to admit any difference between trials of war criminal illegal combatants and citizen criminals, is accomplishing not one but two despicable outcomes.

The outcome he intends is to treat illegal combatants more sweetly and gently.

The outcome he doesn't intend -- but which he is engendering anyhow -- is to treat citizen suspects with less constitutional rights than they've ever had in history.

Few judges will, say, demand that KSM be released into the public a free man due to the serious constitutional violations the government inflicted on him. Violations, that is, if you postulate from the outset he had full constitutional rights of a citizen criminal. If you don't postulate that -- if you postulate he was owed a lesser standard due to the fact he was an illegal combatant -- then there weren't any violations (or at least far fewer).

Now, if a judge won't spring KSM for waterboarding -- surely a "shock the conscience" bit of coercion if performed in a police station house -- then a judge must necessarily bless it as permissible for a run-of-the-mill US citizen suspect, because that is, of course, Obama categorizes KSM.

Go read the whole thing over at Ace of Spades.