The June 4 guest column by the executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union regarding the Guantanamo Bay prisoner of war camp ("Guantanamo should be shut down") is truly scary in its navete. People in this country who are more concerned with our enemy's rights will be the downfall of this country, and ultimately will lead to our losing the war in Iraq.

Historically, the number of enemy prisoners kept at Guantanamo is small. Consider World War I had 8.4 million POWs held; World War II had 35 million POWs, with 141,584 of them U.S. prisoners - only 90,000 of whom returned at the end of the war. What happened to the other 51,584? During the Korean War, there were 4,714 U.S. POWs, and 687 U.S. POWs were returned at the end of the Vietnam War. Compare these figures to the current 380 Islamic fanatics kept at Guantanamo.

None of the POWs in previous wars was considered a simple criminal with the right to due process of law. I'm sure the soldiers recently captured would have appreciated due process, rather than being killed as reported. The recent dismissal of charges against two of the Islamic fanatics at Guantanamo is a travesty, since the stated reason for the dismissal is that prosecutors omitted the critical word "unlawful" from the "enemy combatants" indictment. I say add the word and retry. This couldn't be double jeopardy because the charges obviously are not the same.

When is this country going to realize we are at war, and the people we are at war with want only to kill as many United States citizens as possible, regardless of whether they are women, children or elderly? The stated goal of Osama bin Laden is to kill 2 million Americans! And he doesn't care if they are military or civilian.

Eddie B. Hulsey, Evans