"Terrorist" vs. "Suspected Terrorist" continued

Building on the earlier post today, this kind of thing drives me nuts-

While complaining about Elena Kagan's decision to deny access to military JAG recruiters at Harvard Law School (because the military violates Harvard's anti-discrimination policy for employers), Ed Whelan of National Review Online says this:

At a time of war, in the face of the grand civilizational challenge that radical Islam poses, Kagan treated military recruiters worse than she treated the high-powered law firms that were donating their expensive legal services to anti-American terrorists.

No Ed, the lawyers donated their legal services to people suspected of being terrorists, not terrorists. That extra word "suspected" makes a big difference. The lawyers I know who have been involved with accused terrorists are doing it to make sure that the government proves that the suspects are in fact terrorists - and not people with the same name as a terrorist, or people who were picked up in a village in Afghanistan that a lot of other terrorists live in, or something like that.

It's easy to think that only actual terrorists get arrested, and that this problem only affects others, and they probably have it coming to them for being involved with terrorists... but that's often not the case.

When I was a senior in college, about 6 months after 9/11, I was coming back from a spring break trip to Italy. Going through passport control, the customs agent stopped me, and started asking a bunch of detailed questions. Apparently I passed, so he let me through. I asked him why I had gotten extra scrutiny, and he told me that apparently there was somebody with my name on a watch list. Now, I have a very anglo name, and I'm white, blonde and unsuspicious-looking enough that tourists regularly stop me for directions in NYC. I can't help thinking what my encounter would have been like at that time if I looked different, or had a different name, or didn't speak English, or was just flustered and couldn't explain myself well. That's why we need to give suspects rights, and lawyers to defend those rights.