More Fair and Balanced Republican POV

My Republican friend has replied to my concerns about civil liberties as follows...

"When investigating terror cells, you MUST do it in private and secrecy.....the only way to catch other cells in the US is to detain people without others knowing that a) this person was detained, b) allowing them to 'talk' to counsel, so that the others in the cell can be alerted. c) You need a chance to interrorgate to get information.......I do however think that an American citizen should be granted ALL constitutional rights, just not aliens.....we do the same with border jumpers if caught....." (as before, the "..." and all caps are in the original email. No emphasis added. I just cut and paste the portions of the email exchange).

I had said that people suspected of aiding terrorists should be prosecuted according to the law but that they could not simply be locked up. He replied:

"Sure we can if they are not citizens"

This one sums up the gist of his opinion on this matter:

"Like I said......citizens should be given constitutional rights, except if they actually fight with the enemy....."

He had compared what the Bush administration is doing post 9/11 to the Cold War and I said it didn't compare because while the Bush administration rounded up thousands of Arab Americans and Arab immigrants and held them for months without access to lawyers and family, the same was not done to the American Communist party during the Cold War. To which he replied:

"And that was unfortunate....we can thank Sen McCarthy for screwing that up......he became just a bit too paranoid......because we all know there WERE commies in govt at that time."

Comments folks?