The following article is part of a column by Neil Steinberg, from the Chicago Sun-Times this past Wednesday:

... and justice for all

Americans must adhere to our own standards when dealing with prisoners

My wife recently started setting the alarm on our clock radio, since the 11-year-old has orchestra, and somebody has to prod his little pre-adolescent hiney out the door.

So we wake up with a dose of the WGN news, which mentioned Monday that the Supreme Court is convening its fall season and will, among other matters, explore the status of prisoners being held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay.

It'll probably decide that they aren't Americans and so don't have any rights, I think, sleepily.

The next thought jars me awake like a gong: They aren't Americans ... but we are.

As foreigners on foreign soil, they may indeed have no American legal rights.

But as Americans, wherever we go, on whatever soil we tread, we have definite obligations to our system of justice, to our standards of morality. Don't we? At the Nuremberg trials, we took pains to administer justice to the Nazis, even though they were foreigners on foreign soil, even though they were guilty as sin of enormous crimes.

How can we do any less for this ragbag of unfortunates, scooped off the battlefields of Afghanistan? Some guilty of something, some guilty of nothing at all. How does their possibly being enemies relieve us of the need to adhere to our own standards?

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~ Do you think our prisoners of "war" at Gitmo deserve the rights we hold dear? (The right to an attorney, the right to be charged in a timely manner, the right to know what you're charged with).