Andrew, maybe we dealt with this topic a day too soon. The problem you’ve highlighted (with that nice fellow from the UN coming over to tell you folks how you should run your country) is the same one we dealt with here yesterday, in the context of the Muslim Uighurs from China being held at Gitmo. (If you’re interested, the thread started with Mark Krikorian here and continued through about here, with Derb and I both chiming in.) Namely, the Brits, like the Yanks, have signed UNCAT. I think that treaty came open for signing in (aptly) 1984 – I don’t remember when England signed; I know we waited ten years.

UNCAT nations clearly did not anticipate the effects of militant Islam inside their own territories (although maybe the U.S. should have by the time we signed in 1994 – a year after the WTC bombing, and the subsequent plot to bomb New York City landmarks). Now that we’ve all had many years of experience with UNCAT restrictions, it’s time for tweaking. It would be a lot easier politically to withstand the inevitable hysteria from the professionally aggrieved international human rights activists – who seem a lot more obsessed over the rights of terrorists than those of the rest of us humans – if countries banded together to opt out of troublesome provisions or make sensible changes.