Predictable Chaos as Guantanamo Trials Resume

At Guantánamo this week, the Military Commission trial system convened for only the second time since President Obama announced a four-month freeze on all proceedings on his first day in office to give the new administration's inter-departmental Guantánamo Task Force an opportunity to review the best ways in which to deal with the remaining prisoners inherited from the Bush administration.

Reviving the Commissions, ill-advisedly

In May, in a major speech on national security, Barack Obama signaled that he was planning to revive the Commissions, arguing that, with some amendments, they would be "fair, legitimate, and effective," and promising to "work with Congress and legal authorities across the political spectrum on legislation" that would fulfill these aims.

Pleasant though it was to hear a president talk of involving Congress, without having to have his arm twisted to do so, Obama's willingness to revive the Commissions flew in the face of widespread opposition from civilian lawyers and a wide range of legal experts, and, most significantly, from seven former prosecutors who resigned in disgust at what they saw as the politicization of the system or its irremediable faults (including Col. Morris Davis, the former chief prosecutor, and Lt. Col. Darrel Vandeveld, who resigned last September), and all of the government-appointed defense attorneys, who have been prepared to risk their careers to oppose what they all realized was an unjust system.

Critics -- myself included -- were not placated by Obama's proposed tweaking of the Commissions' rules, and insisted that the only way forward was to drop the Commissions and proceed with federal court trials. Bizarrely, on the same day as Obama's speech, the administration announced that Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, a suspect in the 1998 African embassy bombings, would face a trial in New York, and, moreover, in an accompanying press release, the Justice Department trumpeted its "long history of ... successfully prosecuting terror suspects through the criminal justice system" (and attached a list of successful prosecutions over the last 16 years), which rather seemed to prove the point that the Commissions -- which have achieved only three dubious results (David Hicks, Salim Hamdan and Ali Hamza al-Bahlul) -- should not be revived.

Nevertheless, in the last few weeks the Senate Armed Services Committee -- and its chairman, Sen. Carl Levin, who really should know better -- bowed to the president's wishes and tweaked the wording of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (which revived the Commissions after the Supreme Court ruled that their first incarnation was illegal), even though, as I reported last week when Lt. Col. Vandeveld delivered testimony to the Committee which should have halted the politicians in their tracks, it still allows the use of information masquerading as evidence that was obtained through coercion, and still allows for hearsay information to be appraised as evidence by judges who are not qualified to make such decisions.

The legislation has yet to be approved by the Senate, but last week the Commissions reconvened anyway, even though the as-yet-undecided debate about their future added another layer of confusion to events that, as has been typical throughout the long and ignominious history of the Commissions, involved technical difficulties, uncooperative prisoners, and bouts of wrangling over the rules.

An outlandish claim kicks off the proceedings

One of the week's few dramatic highlights came at the very beginning. Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, before the pre-trial hearings began, Navy Capt. John Murphy, the Commissions' new chief prosecutor, announced that prosecutors were ready to proceed with cases against 66 of the remaining 228 prisoners (the 229th, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, is already locked up for life -- in a cell on his own somewhere in Guantánamo -- after his disturbingly one-sided trial in November).

As David Danzig, Deputy Program Director at Human Rights First, explained, Murphy said, "We have 66 viable cases," and added that he was "personally comfortable" that "the government could mount a case that would not depend on evidence gathered through the use of coercion." Danzig also noted that Murphy "refrained from commenting on whether the government might seek to bring some of those cases to trial in federal civilian courts."

Personally, I'm amazed that Murphy could claim that there are as many as "66 viable cases," given that intelligence reports over the years have put the number of prisoners with any meaningful connection to terrorism as somewhere between two dozen and 40 of the prisoners (and also given that, of the 23 cases that were still active when Bush left office, two involved juveniles, and at least eight of the cases had nothing to do with "war crimes"), but what particularly exercised some of the reporters was that the prosecutor's office seemed to be "making decisions about what evidence was appropriate and what evidence was not appropriate to use without any independent review."

Vic Hansen, a former Army Judge Advocate General officer who was observing the proceedings for the National Institute of Military Justice, said, "They say repeatedly that they are not going to rely on evidence that was obtained using coercion. Well, it's the prosecution who is making that call alone without any transparency."

This was a very valid point, and as Danzig noted, although Murphy "said that the prosecution had developed 'a standard' to ensure that no evidence obtained improperly would be used in the trials ... he declined to elaborate on that standard," and did not refer to the fact that the Senate is still discussing whether to impose a voluntariness standard (at the instigation of the Obama administration), which, as Danzig stated, "would presumably exclude coerced evidence." As Hansen added, "What it comes down to is more or less the government saying, 'just trust us.'"

Challenges and calls for delay in the case of Ibrahim al-Qosi

On Wednesday, when the pre-trial hearings were supposed to begin, court staff complained they couldn't hear Navy Cmdr. Dirk Padgett introduce himself as a prosecutor in the case of Ibrahim al-Qosi, one of three prisoners whose cases were being discussed that day, prompting a reply from Padgett that, to some, could serve as a motto for the whole of the Commissions. "Hopefully, this is going to get better," he said.

In the event, things didn't get better at all. In the case of al-Qosi, a 49-year old Sudanese prisoner who is accused of being a bodyguard and sometime driver for Osama bin Laden, prosecutors called for a delay "in the interests of justice" until September, which would, apparently, give the Obama administration time to complete its review of the cases. Marine Corps Capt. Seamus Quinn, one of al-Qosi's prosecutors, stated, "The continuance is needed ... to address and eliminate all possible challenges to this process," according to Reuters.

The call for a delay infuriated al-Qosi's defense lawyers, who have long maintained that their client was nothing more than a cook for bin Laden, and of no more significance than Salim Hamdan, one of bin Laden's drivers, who is now a free man in Yemen, having served a five-month sentence that he was given after his trial last August. As Reuters described it, al-Qosi's lawyers asked the military judge "to either dismiss the charges or move forward."

"You cannot sit somebody in indefinite detention," Navy Lt. Cmdr. Travis Owens said. "It violates every principle we have as Americans." Invoking what Carol Rosenberg of the Miami Herald described as a "justice-delayed, justice-denied" argument, on the grounds that al-Qosi "was among the first men taken to the prison camps when they opened in January 2002," Owens added, "He was one of the guys who was kept in the dog cages. Talk about oppressive confinement."

Challenges and calls for delay in the case of Mohammed Kamin

While the judge, Air Force Lt. Col. Nancy Paul, refused to make an immediate ruling on the prosecutors' request, even more chaotic scenes took place in an adjacent courtroom, where a second pre-trial hearing was taking place in the case of Mohammed Kamin, an Afghan seized in 2003.

Kamin's is one of the more ludicrous cases put forward for a trial by Military Commission -- or, for that matter, any kind of trial -- as I explained last March, when he was arraigned:

[Kamin] is accused of "providing material support for terrorism," specifically by receiving training at "an al-Qaeda training camp," conducting surveillance on US and coalition military bases and activities, planting two mines under a bridge, and launching missiles at the city of Khost while it was occupied by US and coalition forces. He is not charged with harming, let along killing US forces, and were it not for his supposed al-Qaeda connection -- he apparently stated in interrogation that he was "recruited by an al-Qaeda cell leader" -- it would, I think, be impossible to make the case that he was involved in "terrorism" at all.

On Wednesday, Kamin boycotted the proceedings, telling a military official who offered him the opportunity to take a shower before the hearing, "I'll take a shower when you guys are ready to send me home." In his absence, prosecutors also called for a delay, although no one actually turned up to make the request. Instead, a heavily pregnant prosecutor, Navy Lt. Rachel Trest, called in by closed-circuit feed from Washington, although, as Carol Rosenberg noted, "her argument was inaudible at the media center designed years ago to simultaneously broadcast both trials to journalists."

There was, however, an outburst of drama when, in spite of a court tip sheet predicting that Navy Lt. Rich Federico, one of Kamin's defense lawyers, would "ask for guidance on how much trial preparation could take place during the White House-mandated interregnum," Federico instead urged dismissal of the entire case, referring to comments made last week by Justice Department national security lawyer David Kris, who told the Senate Armed Services Committee (PDF), "Our experts believe that there is a significant risk that appellate courts will ultimately conclude that material support for terrorism is not a traditional law of war offense, thereby reversing hard-won convictions and leading to questions about the system's legitimacy."

As this is the only charge Kamin faces, Federico told the judge, "They cannot ethically proceed on this charge in this forum. It's appalling. It's just a waste of everyone's time." The Wall Street Journal added that he also said that the government's continued pursuit of the case was "unethical, immoral and unjust," called the proceedings "a charade, a complete fraud," and stated that the Commissions remained "a broken system."

As with al-Qosi's case, Kamin's judge, Air Force Col. Thomas Cumbie, refused to make an immediate ruling on the prosecution's call for a delay -- or Federico's unexpected intervention -- although, in response to a challenge from Federico he conceded that "the rules of the court were still evolving," as Carol Rosenberg put it, and stated, "I'm not saying in any way you ambushed me. Things change."

Nevertheless, the questions regarding the validity of the "material support" charge are unlikely to go away, and will need resolving before any further hearings take place, Ironically, the charge is a valid crime in a federal court, but has been contested in the Commissions since it was first grafted onto the legislation in 2006. As Salim Hamdan's civilian lawyer, Harry Schneider, explained on Wednesday, "We've always been of the view that [material support] was not a war crime and the conviction should not stand." He added, as Carol Rosenberg put it, that the debate in the Commissions "appeared to enhance a Hamdan clemency bid already on file with the Pentagon," and stated that, if the administration does drop material support as a crime in the Commissions, "Salim would be exonerated in the sense that he would never have been convicted of anything."

No lawyers for Omar Khadr

On Wednesday afternoon, Omar Khadr, the Canadian who was just 15 when he was seized in 2002, returned to the court to resume the discussions about his lawyers that he was having on June 1, when the Commissions first reconvened. On that occasion, as Michelle Shephard explained in the Toronto Star, Army Col. Patrick Parrish "repeatedly lambasted Khadr's legal team" for their in-fighting, which had led Khadr to conclude that he couldn't trust any of them, but commended Khadr himself for being "well-spoken" and "professional."

Six weeks ago, Parrish refused to allow Khadr to be unrepresented, and the Canadian reluctantly decided to stick with Lt. Cmdr. William Kuebler, who, it must be noted, has campaigned assiduously on Khadr's behalf, but on Wednesday, Khadr's suspicions were back to the fore. "I don't trust the office of military defense," he said, prompting Parrish to make the unprecedented decision to appoint two civilian lawyers instead.

Mostly a no-show for the 9/11 pre-trial hearing

The big news of the week was supposed to be the pre-trial hearing of the five men accused of involvement in the 9/11 attacks, but in the end this too was a damp squib. No one turned up at all in the morning, after the men refused to leave their cells, and in the afternoon, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the unarguable showman of the group, refused to attend, as did Ramzi bin al-Shibh, even though the hearing was convened to deal with ongoing issues regarding his mental competency, and that of another of the five, Mustafa al-Hawsawi. Al-Hawsawi, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali and Walid bin Attash eventually turned up in the courtroom, but there was little activity.

According to Reuters, "al-Hawsawi soon demanded to leave after complaining he would not be allowed to speak," and "bin Attash, given five minutes to address the court, complained that the presiding judge, Army Colonel Steven Henley, had not responded to letters the five men had written to him 'a long time ago.'" In the only flicker of the dissent normally associated with KSM's presence, he explained, "If you don't have enough patience to take this case, just give it to a different judge. We view the judge and prosecution as one person. There's no difference." Later, bin Attash showed his disdain for the proceedings by throwing a paper plane -- fashioned, presumably, from his court papers -- at one of his co-accused.

The rest of the session focused on attempts by bin al-Shibh's lawyers to "allow a defense consultant to examine CT scans of her client's brain and perform further tests, including possibly an MRI, to 'determine whether any lesions in his brain affect his cognitive functioning.'" Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier explained that bin al-Shibh has been diagnosed with "delusional disorder," but when she tried to explain that he had been subjected to sleep deprivation, a court censor cut off the feed to the media center.

In an attempt to rebuff these complaints, one of the prosecutors, Navy Lt. Clayton Trivett, said that bin al-Shibh's complaints about sleep deprivation may have been produced by his pre-existing condition. Trivett explained that bin al-Shibh "has accused guards of pumping foul smells and loud noises into his cell and 'vibrating his bed' to keep him awake," even though "The government's position is that it's not happening and it's never been happening," although another interpretation could be that the initial collapse of bin al-Shibh's mental health was caused by whatever happened to him during the four years that he was held in a secret CIA prison before his arrival at Guantánamo in September 2006.

With no visible progress -- and with the little that did take place overshadowed by the dispute over the charge of material support for terrorism, which would have a knock-on effect on several other cases -- this was another dismal outing for the Commissions, and, surely, another warning for the Obama administration that any kind of revival of the wretched trial system will remain fraught with insoluble problems.

Andy Worthington is the author of The Guantánamo Files: The Stories of the 774 Detainees in America's Illegal Prison (published by Pluto Press), and maintains a blog here.

 

Follow Andy Worthington on Twitter: www.twitter.com//GuantanamoAndy

Comments

[noneIn2008]

Gitmo is another example of Obama quickly resolving an issue. Quick decisive words, lots of promises, but where is the action. Change is in the thesaurus. The "troops" have "withdrawn" from Iraq. The pesky detail is that there are still as many Americans there? Just as many dieing. And the excuses remain. It is more amazing the zealot following that continues to make excuses instead of holding Obama accountable. The Dems have the White House. They have both houses of Congress, they can pull the trigger, yet all we get is excuses and blaming. The people need to hold them accountable.

[LeonBNJ]

Most citizens of the USA, and especially the most noisemaking ones, have no problem with the continuing detention of terror suspects in Gitmo and elsewhere, no problem with any torture or other violent acts on them, the use of remanding to 3rd countries, denying them proper legal procedures, ignoring any and all treaties and the Constitution as to them. Most Americans see any terror suspect as subhuman, not deserving of any legal protections - indeed they want blood revenge for any terror acts. They fear any detainee will see revenge against the USA for their detention, becoming leaders of further terror acts toward America. Of course if any of our soldiers got similar treatment, we and the politicans would scream bloody murder.

This is further compounded by the fear of our political leaders, including the President, of even trying to do legally and morally correct policies as to these detainees, believing that if they prusue a less severe policy, or release any further prisioners, their opponents will beat them in the next election.

I guess it will take the capture and similar treatment of 100's of American soldiers and civilian contractors in Afganistan and Iraq to finally realize the horror of our policy.

[Josie Gates]

utter shame on this govt for their misdeeds andthen calling it 'protecting the homeland'

shame on those that participated.

www.josieg6.wordpress.coms.com
www.immigrationdetaineestories.wordpress.comss.com

[TJCole]

I find it interesting that the President of the United States and the President Harvard Law Review has so little faith in the entire Federal Court System of the United States...

Fascinating isn't it...?

[serena1313]

The dehumanizing, degrading treatment men, women and children have been subjected to is horrendous in-and-of itself yet to further subject them to more abuse by the "judicial" system is not only atrocious it sets back the advancement of social justice and human rights.

After spending 6 years in solitary confinement Mohammed Jawad, one of Bush's "too dangerous to release" prisoners, will be released due to the lack of credible evidence. Although the Obama administration lawyers originally took the same position and fought against his release, they did reverse that decision.

But it took a military judge who ruled Jawad's torture-induced confession inadmissible, the lead prosecutor's sworn affidavit validating Jawad was tortured and the testimony from Jawad's interrogator before they dropped the case.

For someone who spent his adult life fighting for social justice, Obama's inexplicable decision -- to deny prisoners deemed "too dangerous to release" the right to due process and reinstate military commissions allowing tainted evidence to be presented at trial -- doesn't make sense.

Bush's attempts to justify the unjustifiable, defend the indefensible, argue the inarguable and claim justice was served were an abject failure.

While reversing positions on Jawad's case is a step in the right direction it is not near enough. Policies that hearken back to the Bush era that were unacceptable then are equally unacceptable now and if allowed to continue would be a travesty to the cause of human rights, social justice and freedom.

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

It's actually worse than that, Serena. The government has now backed off from defending any of the material masquerading as evidence that was produced during Jawad's many interrogations, but the judge in his habeas case is not making a final ruling on his appeal until next month, and even when his appeal is accepted -- as it surely must be -- there is no guarantee that Jawad will be repatriated, as District Court judges are not empowered to order prisoners to be released.

The government should have given up decisively last week, and put Jawad on the first plane back to Afghanistan, but that's obviously asking too much ...

[erikmartin]

Jawad was captured by the US Army with two grenades in his jacket pockets after he (if the criminal allegations are true) or one of his associates (if they are false) threw a grenade into an occupied US Army vehicle.

At his combatant status review he testified that at the camp he went to for a job he was trained to throw grenades and clear mines. At his first administrative review he claimed he hadn't been trained to throw grenades, and that when his associates handed him the grenades in the market he didn't recognize what they were and put them in his pockets.

Whether or not there is enough evidence to convict him of actually throwing the grenade, there can be no question that he was a part of an organization that was part of the insurrection in Afghanistan. Even if he joined just for a job, and not on ideological grounds, he is still an unlawful enemy combatant, and legally should be held until there is no longer an active insurgency in Afghanistan.

[bilmardre]

It appears to me the Obama administration is doing it right. They would have been irresponsible to release any "prisoner" without first reviewing the case themselves. Despite the shameful actions of the previous administration, the current administration must first assume the prisoner's guilt. Once a review is performed and it is determined the case is but another small piece of the huge pile of crap it was handed, appropriate action can be taken to remedy it.

[Leatherhelmet]

If Obama would have left Bush's military trials in place after years of lawsuits, supreme court hearings and congressional actions, most of the innocent would be home and the guilty locked up by now.

Just keep the terrorist trials out of our civilian courts.

[charon]

The continued incarceration of these men is outrageous and unconscionable. The real reason they are being held is that some Americans in positions of power are afraid of them, not because of any crime the prisoners can be proved to have committed.

Fear as the basis of incarceration is really bad--really dangerous--policy. Nothing has to be proven, no crime has to be committed, the only "crime" is the fear the jailers have of the prisoner. For that, a sentence longer than that served for murder in the US. How absolutely absurd. "I fear you--therefore you are a criminal".­..that is the sum of the case against these victims of insane American powermongers.

And after being treated with such cruel injustice, why wouldn't their hate of America be etched deeply into the very tissue of their souls? Why wouldn't they die just for the satisfaction of watching Americans die?

These inept American employees have most likely created monsters obsessed with hatred of America, because said inept employees are so scared they violated all norms of civilized behavior, incarcerating men not for crimes committed, but out of fear, and in how many cases, torturing, lying to the American people until they have no credibility, and abusing the good name of our nation.

The only way America can regain any moral legitimacy is by vigorous prosecution of the criminal perps of this violation of civilization, from the bottom to the top.

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

Great comment, Charon. Unnervingly accurate about the politics of fear. Something has gone horribly wrong when people who were never charged or tried are tainted as "enemy combatants" for the rest of their life, and regarded as more dangerous than convicted criminals.
However, far too many people don't want to take that on board. It suggests to me that Cheney tapped into some horrible truth -- that for many people the law is indeed a distraction, and they'd like to see more people banged up without charge or trial, because someone in power has assured them that they're dangerous, without having to ever provide any proof.

[erikmartin]

I think you are missing the fundamental concept here... as Obama likely was before he ever had to think about the realities of being commander in chief. You do not detain an enemy combatant because he committed a "crime". You detain an enemy combatant so that he is not free to try to kill the citizens and soldiers of your country.

The most important part of the military tribunals are the tribunals which review the evidence to determine whether or not the detainee is an enemy combatant, and if so, whether he is an unlawful enemy combatant.

Tribunals to determine war crimes are a different matter. Even if detainees do not have pending charges as war criminals, if they have been determined to be enemy combatants, they are still to be held until the underlying hostilities have ceased, under the international law of war and the Geneva Convention.

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

A little "War on Terror" deconstruction:
People who try to kill the soldiers of your country in wartime are combatants, to be held as prisoners of war.
People who try to kill the citizens of your country are terrorists, to be held as criminal suspects and charged and tried in a court.
Why complicate matters by coming up with "unlawful enemy combatants" who can be seized without any regard for Article 5 competent tribunals, interrogated coercively, judged to be "enemy combatants" after sham tribunals, and generally held in conditions of isolation that are comparable to, or worse than those endured by the most hardened convicted criminals on the US mainland, even though they have never been convicted of anything?

[mbaty]

Let them all go with large settlements. We have done enough damage in the name of "national security," holding people without cause indefinite­ly...it's evil, and we need to make amends and stop it now before we create a lot more "terrorist­s." I don't believe there's even one person held at Guantanamo who deserves to be there. And it will take a lot of evidence to convince me otherwise.

[CitizenLegislatorCC]

So let's see...

We have MILITARY judges, MILITARY prosecutors, and MILITARY defense attorneys at war with each other, in the name of providing "justice" for their long-abused foreign prisoners whom the U.S. government refuses to classify (and treat accordingly, which means NO NON-voluntary interrogation) as either Prisoners of War or criminal suspects.

While the U.S. Congress admiringly studies its own navel, and files its nails, these absurdly non-neutral Military Commission proceedings continue, at an exceedingly leisurely pace, OUTSIDE our OPEN and sitting regular civil courts of law.

Of course, in the event that some legislators have a mind to observe the setting and proceedings blessed by their profoundly unjust (and Supreme Court-decreed unConstitutional, at least in part) Military Commissions legislation, Congress's long indifference and contemptible dereliction of duty will come back to haunt them, as ABC is reporting:

http://abcnews.go.com/print?id=8108591

These Military Commissions are, in effect, martial rule, despite the distance and time from any battlefield or active conflict in Cuba, today, and the fact that our regular courts have never been closed or threatened since 2001.

[CitizenLegislatorCC]

As the Supreme Court explained, right after the Great Rebellion, aka the Civil War, in 1866's Ex Parte Milligan:

"The next paragraph lays down the chief condition that can justify martial law, and also marks the boundary between martial and civil law:

'While the laws are silenced by the noise of arms, the rulers of the armed force must punish, as equitably as they can, those crimes which threaten their own safety and that of society, but no longer; every moment beyond is usurpation. As soon as [71 U.S. 2, 55] the laws can act, every other mode of punishing supposed crimes is itself an enormous crime.'

-snip-

The military commission, under our government, is of recent origin. ... It is a rude substitute for a court of justice, in the absence of civil law.

-snip-

If [Milligan, or Guantanamo's prisoners] cannot enjoy the immunities attaching to the character of a prisoner of war, how can [he or they] be subject to their pains and penalties?"

http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=us&vol=71&invol=2

Will ANY American Senator stand with the wise and humane 1866 Supreme Court, next week, to block Carl Levin's latest uncalled-for version of martial rule, now inserted into the 1000-page defense authorization bill??

Or will Leahy, Dodd and Feingold DUCK again, as they ducked when Levin and Harry Reid, on behalf of the Senate minority, helped speed the unConstitutional Military Commissions Act through the Senate in late 2006?

[Andy Worthington - Huffpost Blogger]

Your contributions to the debate are excellent, CitizenLeg­islatorCC, both about the imposition of martial rule, and the spinelessness of politicians. Taking a wider overview, it also concerns me that, nearly eight years on from the invasion of Afghanistan, when most of the prisoners were seized (although the majority were nowhere near any battlefield), the Obama administration has, effectively, chosen to accept the Bush administration's position that they are some novel category of prisoner -- neither prisoner of war nor straightforward criminal suspect -- when in fact the majority of them should have been prisoners of war, and Obama should have had the courage to admit that the particular "war" in which they were seized was not a "War on Terror," but a war to topple the Taliban and instate a new Afghan government. This was over in 2002 (or in 2004, if we date it from Karzai's official inauguration as President), but the Guantanamo prisoners have now been held for longer than the duration of the Second World War, and even the judges in the habeas appeals (which provide the prisoners with the only open forum in which to dispute the basis of their detention, unlike the unaccountable Executive review being undertaken by the administration's inter-departmental Task Force) are not allowed to address this absurdity.
See the following, for example:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-worthington/how-cooking-for-the-talib_b_162250.html

[erikmartin]

The "character of a prisoner of war" did not have the same legal basis in 1866 as it does now. The military commissions are proceeding under the legal basis of the Geneva Convention and other law of war. The Geneva Convention -- and so, the Military Commissions Act -- distinguishes between lawful and unlawful enemy combatants. The commissions make an evidence-based determination as to what category each detainee falls into and then does indeed treat them with the "immunities attaching to the character of a prisoner of war" of whichever type they are, or else if they are of no type of enemy combatant, they release them. But there is NO "immunity attaching to the character of a prisoner of war" that involves a civil trial to evaluate their status or apply the rules of evidence appropriate for civil trials of US citizens.

[Marlyn]

We torture people for years, making them crazy, and then say they are not mentally competent to stand trial???????

[RickyJ]

Mr. Worthington, these pre trial shenanigans, you describe, also occur in the regular American court system. In European trials, using tribunals, you don't have the elaborate kinds of rules of evidence we have here. If the tribunal is free to explore the worthiness of the evidence, then they should be allowed to hear any of it. The only problem I have with the Guantanamo tribunals is a suspicion that the judges/jurors would be afraid to acquit because of reprisals from their military bosses. The French really know how to run tribunals that guarantee fair justice. They have come a long way since the Dreyfus case. I think a few French judges and law professors should be hired to help set up a good tribunal system for us.

[rudyinbama]

No one remembers that Cronkite's stature as a journalist did not happen in a vacuum.
Television news was protected by FCC rules by a requirtement that the networks provide "public service." (There used to be "family viewing hours, too" - imagine!)
Reagan changed it all.
Suddenly networks were in a horserace to make a profit from the news - so now you don't offend anybody and you present the reality of what happened along with a lie and call this "balance." (The technique Jon Stewart loves to skewer.) Then you drop a lot of international news in favor of stories that are really infomercials for one of your network shows, add gossip, etc.
Under these circumstances, could their ever be a respected television journalist again?