-
sponsorship
Also, our point wasn’t to issue any sort of blanket indictment of military justice, or American justice, as a whole. To the contrary. Same government, yes, but very different rules—and in the traditional court systems, it’s the courts that make those rules, not the executive branch. Not so for the tribunals. That was one of the main bases in the first place for Salim Hamdan's suit challenging the commissions in. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in his favor, Congress got into the act, both verifying the Bush administration's call to establish the tribunals and demanding a higher standard of due process for them. We'll find out in June, presumably, how that sits with the justices.
-
sponsorship
Eric, I think Joseph Heller would agree with the Catch-22 scenario you've described for the commissions at Guantanamo Bay. They truly are damned if they proceed and damned if they don't. Perhaps unintentionally, I think you've arrived at the right conclusion: The commissions are fundamentally and fatally flawed; the rule of law will prevail only if they are perpetually blocked. Specific evidence against defendants is irrelevant to the question of the tribunals' legitimacy, although I'd also argue that this evidence makes it all the more important that we find some way to try the men held at Gitmo.
Ironically, our French allies across the Atlantic might have found a way. A French court sentenced seven men to prison yesterday for aiding al-Qaida in Mesopotamia by funneling young Frenchmen to Iraq to wage war against U.S. and coalition forces there. French prosecutors brought this case in civilian court, using a combination of open and sealed (i.e., classified) evidence to prove the defendants' guilt in a six-day trial this past March. Now the defendants are headed for prison—and the French get to put points on the scoreboard in the fight against terrorism.
Maybe we can learn a thing or two from our colleagues in Paris?