Just in case you have forgotten, Saddam Hussain is a clear and present danger to us and the entire middle east. Saddam has publically said he supports all terrorist acts carried out against us as well as Israel. He even sends the $25,000 to the family of terrorist who carries out a suicide bombing. And you worry about his rights?
What the problem is with you 18th century patriots is you have trouble understanding that things have changed since the days of Thomas Paine and Thomas Jefferson. We face threats on a global scale now, and if you want to bury your head in the sand and ignore the fact that we are in a different world. You wont have to worry about our precious Constitution, because one of these dictators or religous finatics will get their hands on a nuke and use it against us. And if you think that Saddam, Osama, or Arafat wouldn't launch a nuke if they had the opportunity, you're living in a fantasy land.
The fact is we have to protect our freedoms by making sure the finatics in the world don't get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, No longer can we rely on the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans to protect from an attack from abroad. Terrorist and those who support them rely upon people like you to make it easy for them to survive, because you would rather wrap yourself in the Constitution and wait for an attack than go after them before they do.
Just in case YOU've forgotten, the US recruited, trained and supplied Osama and the Al Quida for DECADES and is still sending OUR money to people who are, no doubt, funneling it right into the hands of the terrorists (like the UN, Egypt and Saudi and let's not forget Iran). Gee, guess if we didn't maintain all these interventionist policies and tax-payer funded give-aways, we might not be in this particular leaky little boat, now would we?
Can you REALLY be so naive as to believe that ANY of these madmen are enough of an idiot to nuke the US?? You have GOT to be kidding!! If you're serious, you've been listening to too much network propaganda (the Germans did the same thing when the Nazi party first started doing their war dance). The US would annihilate ANY country that tried that. It's called having a good offense and is one of the perks of being the remaining world super-power. Even China (as bad as they are) can only dream of launching an out and out attack against the US as long as we control most of the satellites and most of the long range tactical nukes. Russia had nukes and the story during the cold war was that they might drop one on our heads at any time. That story was as effective then at getting the feds what they wanted as the half-baked Sadam story is doing right now.