There is No Need for Wretched Un-American Military Commissions

The changes that Obama is suggesting are little more than giving the defendants an aspirin.
The main reason urged for the continuance of the military courts is that they will permit hearsay testimony that a federal court will not, and that they will be more sensitive to classified information. They also supposedly will allow us to use information gotten through coercion. But they violate the law of the land and American concepts of justice.

None of that is true and none of this are reasons to set up jerrybuilt courts that Obama rejected as he ran for President. As both a lawyer and a constitutional law professor, he knows better and is bowing to political expedience.

The federal judges and federal courts in an attempt to get at the truth have attempted to deal with these issues for over 200 years.

There are procedures to protect classified information that have been developed over decades. There are procedures to evaluate hearsay; there are exceptions to the hearsay rule; and there are valid grounds for applying the hearsay rule when appropriate.

Otherwise, prosecutors rely on rumors and stories that are offered by fourth and fifth parties that bear little or no relationship to the truth. When the hearsay rules were enacted, it was decided by Congress that they were the best way to get in reliable, potentially trustworthy testimony before the court. They work. They have worked in those prosecutions that have thus far occurred in the federal courts

We are not talking about a great number of cases, less than 220. The criminal system can deal with them today. The real reason Obama is giving in is because of resistance by local communities to house these defendants. But that's not a reason. Also the extent there is a concern over political wrangling it will increase it in the Senate fight.

Pushing new controversial legislation before Congress to get a new court system that will not be able to function for months and be subject to every conceivable appeal, is wasteful and, may I dare say, un-American.

Comments

[emjay1954]

03:54 PM on 05/20/2009

Ending the Iraq war.
Protection of gays and lesbians in the military.
Ending illegal government surveillance.
Transparency in government.
Investigation and prosecution of torturers and their co-conspirators.

And now military tribunals (read, kangaroo courts) for prisoners, some of whom were merely swept up in a dragnet or brought in by bounty hunters. Is there no end to Obama's perfidy?

[ProfessorDuh]

03:36 PM on 05/20/2009

My god, the level of discourse on cable "news" is moronic. The discussion of "closing Gitmo" panders SOLELY to irrational fears and ignores the fact that it DOESN'T MATTER where they are imprisoned. The issue is what their legal fate is to be.
We have the absurdity of people who are referred to by the innocuous euphemism of "detainees" being treated as if they are all unstoppable Godzillas who can smash prison walls at will. In our modern America in Wonderland, being "detained" means "permanently imprisoned without legal rights."

[Marcospinelli]

03:43 AM on 05/20/2009

The way the Bush Administration used the appropriations committees to bypass oversight by the intelligence committees in Congress (and get away with torture):

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/05/19/torture-appropriations/#more-4166

[JDM73]

10:19 PM on 05/19/2009

Yes...as a professor of constitutional law, Obama knows better. But tell that to the people who rationalize every bad decision he makes. They use his background in law as a club with which to verbally bludgeon the skeptical: Obama knows what he's doing and you don't and how dare you say anything even remotely critical of this exceptional, almost godlike man? Naturally, their argument--threadbare in the first place--gets a little thinner every time Obama makes another rotten decision, but they don't become less persistent or belligerent. I believe (and I've said this elsewhere) that their anger is a good indicator of how disappointed they are in Obama, deep down. He's not who they thought he was, and that knowledge is burning uncomfortably, painfully inside them--so they attack the rest of us.

[taikan]

10:08 PM on 05/19/2009

Resistance by local communities is only an excuse. The real reason for continuing with military tribunals rather than using the federal court system is that, in the absence of confessions that are not based on coercion, the government is afraid that it would lose too many of the trials. Not only would this result in the release (and deportation) of those detainees who are not convicted, but it also would result in tremendous embarrassment for the government, which has been detaining some of these prisoners for more than seven years.

[tck29]

11:30 AM on 05/20/2009

Resistance by local communities is a nonsensical excuse.

Why would anyone be concerned about terrorists being housed in MAXIMUM SECURITY prisons? Is a terrorist worse than a rapist, thief or murderer? No. A terrorist IS a rapist, thief and/or murderer, so it's not a matter of being a worse type of inmate. Are you concerned with the threat of escape into mid-America from a MAXIMUM SECURITY prison? You'd have to be pretty smart to escape from a MAXIMUM SECURITY prison, right? Terrorists are religious zealots, and therefore not very intelligent. Why would they become evil geniuses just because they are housed in a MAXIMUM SECURITY prison? This argument is so full of holes my fourth-grader wouldn't fall for it...

[Wonderwheel]

09:52 PM on 05/19/2009

Martin, Thanks for pointing out this additional disappointment from the Obama administration. Nothing has happened, not even 9/11, that justifes removing due pocess from the USA's system of justice. We are a nation of laws or a nation of the mob--we can't be both.
I do disagree with you on one point, however. I do not accept for a second that the real reason for this turn of events is about where to put the Gitmo prisoners while their due process is being sorted out. The issue of local resistance is a red herring created by Republicans who don't want to close Gitmo. As I see it, the real reason that Obama is giving in is that he never believed in closing Gitmo in the first place and used it only as a political ploy to beat Clinton in the primaries. I don't see any evidence yet that Obama has a single issue that he really *believes* in. Everything is just political expediency.