I finally had the breakthrough that let me get my head around the Preventive Detention debate. And I realized it's been our major anti-crime method for decades, just we haven't acknowledged it.

You see, we've locked up millions of people for marijuana charges because smoking marijuana is a sign that one day you might actually take a dangerous drug and do something violent. (Of course quite a few people drink and beat their spouses, but we're talking about hard drugs, not liquid drugs).

Not that heroin specifically makes you kill - it usually just makes you poor and desperate, which could lead to robbery. Safer to lock someone up. It used to be easier to cut straight to the chase and lock people up for indigence until they became digent again, but most of those laws have been taken off the books, so this is a more acceptable method to our sense of caring and compassion. Besides, think of the child victims we're saving.

Even then, it's not a sure thing. Inmates in Guantanamo have been getting more and more violent, engaging in more manipulative "self-inflicted injurious behavior" (SIB, in the Army's terminology, hunger strikes to the un-initiated) and have accelerated to "permanent self-inflicted injurious behavior" (otherwise known as "suicide" in lay terms). One Yemeni prisoner resorted to manipulative refusal to breath just yesterday, and despite medical and military counter-tactics, officials were unable to reverse the effects.

This is a direct attack on America's good will, even more so than civilians callously using the spread of Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam to push their cause via unfair propaganda showing pictures of burned and deformed children. In this case, the inmates' cold actions endanger our relations with major oil producers and the Middle East as a whole, a dangerous development in these economically tense times. At some point, we'll see past the need for Preventive Detention to the next step, which is Irreversible Pre-emptive Restraint. Whether the facilities will be accepted on American soil remains to be seen - steadfast Congressional leaders will need to weigh in on the potential effects of these most incorrigible detainees working against our basic freedoms directly in Amercia's Homeland. However, presuming these restraint cemetaries are kept well separated from existing civilian facilities, with no chance of runoff getting into the water table and our general drinking supply, chances are they will pass muster. At least we'll be certain that these preventively-detained risk factors won't rise up to potentially threaten our freedoms anytime in the future.