Just in from
AP:
WASHINGTON (AP) -- A federal appeals court put the Bush administration's military commissions for terrorist suspects back on track Friday, saying a detainee at the Guantanamo Bay prison who once was Osama bin-Laden's driver can stand trial.
A three-judge panel ruled 3-0 against Salim Ahmed Hamdan, whose case was halted by a federal judge on grounds that commission procedures were unlawful.
Why is this significant?
This topic first peaked my interest when
60 Minutes did a comprehensive report on Gitmo's military commissions. These commissions were established to try Gitmo prisoners, and are of dubious value. Lawyers for the prisoners filed suit against Bush, asserting that the commissions are unlawful:
Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charlie Swift is one of the team of military lawyers appointed by the Pentagon to defend those accused of being the nation's worst enemies.
Does he believe that the prisoners in Guantanamo are getting a fair shake? "Under the rules, as they're written right now, no way," says Swift. "The rules are written from the -- to make every possible accommodation for the prosecutor, with no thought to, 'Does this jeopardize a right of the accused?'"
The commissions look unlike any Constitutionally-mandated tribunal I've seen:
The rules permit hearsay evidence, unsworn statements and even statements taken under duress. The standard is any evidence the panel considers relevant and reasonable.
What? And it gets worse...
if a defendant is acquitted, he can still be sent back to detention at Guantanamo Bay until the war on terror is over, which may be decades [Decades? With Bush at the healm, try never].
And worse...
Instead of a unanimous verdict to convict, it takes only a two-thirds majority [in non-capital cases]
Why should we care about this? Bush stresses that these prisoners, imprisoned as part of his amorphous "war on terror" should not receive the same legal considerations that other suspected criminals might. That's absurd. Either we are a country of principle, and extend those principles to all, or we continue our decline into a banana republic.
"Different people have been mandated to defend freedom in different ways, whether you're out in the field carrying a weapon or whether you're guarding Camp Delta down at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba," says [Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, a former Air Force judge, now representing one of the Gitmo prisoners]. "I am defending America and its principles and its notions of liberty and justice."
***
"We have a system, we have a system of justice. We hold ourselves up as the greatest nation on earth, because we say we are controlled by law as opposed to men," says [Air Force Col. Will Gunn, the chief defense counsel]. "If we can stand by that, but also live it out when we're threatened, then we've done a great thing."
'Nuff said.