|
Guantanamo Terror Tribunals May Get Makeover
There was news over the Easter holiday that did not have to do with end-of-life issues. Or rather, reports had it that America's terror tribunals were about to undergo a significant change -- to the point of taking on a new and better life of their own. The Defense Department is circulating among its legal teams a 200-page draft manual on the tribunals modeled on the Manual for Courts-Martial. This would be a major step forward for human rights in the war against terror, and so it is not surprising that Vice-President Cheney opposes the innovations proposed.
Under current set up, "enemy combatants" held at Guantanamo, Cuba, don't get a lawyer, and they don't get to see the evidence against them. US District Judge Joyce Hens Green ruled in February that the "combatant status review tribunals" are illegal. Clearly a dangerous woman, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to the bench in 1967, she wrote
Although this nation unquestionably must take strong action under the leadership of the commander in chief to protect itself against enormous and unprecedented threats, that necessity cannot negate the existence of the most basic fundamental rights for which the people of this country have fought and died for well over two hundred years.
Naturally, the defenders of American liberties in the White House have decided to appeal. However, someone at the Pentagon has decided to come up with a contingency plan for restructuring these tribunals should the judicial process require America to respect human rights while defending them. Hence, the draft report gets circulated.
In the Bushite world view, though, backup plans suggest doubt, and doubt is akin to disloyalty -- the highest crime there is. For this reason, there was no plan for occupying an Iraq that chose not to be pacified (the Marines are still waiting for their flowers and sweets from the grateful citizens of Tikrit). And the Vice President is leading the charge to keep the tribunals as they are. Reuters reports that many of the supporters of the changes received new orders in the last month or two, and the vice president has kept a handful of opponents together on his staff.
This entire affair arises from the Bush administration's poor decision at the beginning of operations in Afghanistan to declare prisoners "enemy combatants" rather than "prisoners of war." POWs have rights under the Geneva Convention, though, and the Red Cross might have interfered with some of the more aggressive intelligence gathering (torture, in more common parlance). Posturing among the chickenhawks is the cause of the legal mess in which the Pentagon is now foundering. It must be particularly galling for military lawyers to be told they must continue with the Guantanamo tribunals by people who "had other priorities" when their time to serve the nation came.
© Copyright 2005 by The Kensington Review, J. Myhre, Editor. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written consent.
Produced using Fedora Linux.
Home
|
|
|
