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Today's Must Read
Forget about the frustration at the slow pace of the military commissions at Guantanamo Bay. You know it's got to really burn the administration to miss a good chance for a PR coup.
But as The Washington Post reports this morning, things are moving at such a glacial pace down in sunny Guantanamo that it seems impossible at this point that any of the September 11th suspects will begin trial before the election -- or even before the Bush administration leaves office.
You know that's got to burn because of comments made by the Pentagon officials heading up the trials. The former chief prosecutor there testified that he was told that he should really push to land plea deals or indictments before the election. And another member of the prosecution team said the Pentagon's top legal adviser in its commissions office wanted to pursue certain cases ahead of others because they would "seize the imagination of the American public" and make a splash.
But the only case that seems at all likely to go to trial before the election is that of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, the alleged driver for Osama bin Laden. And the pretrial hearings for that have been far from pretty -- with Gitmo's former chief prosecutor testifying about the politicization of the system, and Hamdan, who says he has been addled by torture and prolonged solitary confinement, himself proclaiming that he won't participate in what he sees as a rigged system.
The apparent problem is that it just takes a long time to work out the kinks of a made-up process. As a lawyer from Human Rights Watch puts it, "Every little detail ends up being contested, because it's an entirely new system of justice."
But administration officials are trying to keep their chins up, their eyes on the prize. In answering criticisms that the process will be occasionally and arbitrarily shielded from the press, Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hartmann, the top legal authority in the Pentagon's Office of Military Commissions and the man who was, according to those prosecutors referenced above, so keen on landing indictments before the elections, is unapologetic. Certain things have to be blocked from the press to ensure that classified or sensitive information is not disseminated, he says. And besides, who needs publicity?
Hartmann said that within the military commissions process, "the principal obligation is not to the press," and that the cases are full, fair and open because of the rights afforded to the defendants. "That's what we do in the American system of justice," he said.
Josh
Zachary
Isn't it nice that, as other regimes, we can now keep political prisoners indefinately and just make up expedient "rules of law" as needed for the continuance of those in power.
In a REAL democracy, the people overseeing this behavior would be tried and put in prison, but because we have a mob made up of Democrats and Republicans and empeachement is off the table (isn't it nice that "We the People" have absolutely no say in this decision because for some reason, the powers in Washington believe it is not in THEIR best interests to actually punish wrong doers) there will be no accountability... even though those same people continue to espouse accountability at every opportunity.
Of course, we will vote these same clowns back into office again and again because apparently, we also no longer believe a democracy is needed... all the while continuing to espouse how much we need our democratic ideals back... sad ending to a great nation...
May 6, 2008 10:33 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bring back Andy Card. THERE'S a dude who knows how to roll out a new "product" on schedule!
May 6, 2008 10:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know, seems like they'd rather not risk the possible embarrassment of finding the prisoners on trial innocent.
May 6, 2008 11:08 AM | Reply | Permalink
In Soviet Russia, product roll out *you*.
May 6, 2008 11:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
You owe me a new monitor, this one is soaked in spit and coffee.
May 6, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
My monitor is kersplattered with my morning cup of joe equivalent (diet cola) too. We need a tag equivalent to NSFW for that sort of thing - NSFD(rinking) or NSFB(everage) or NSFC(omputer equipment or something so we can swallow in preparation. Thanks for a great guffaw to start the day!
May 6, 2008 12:23 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just what America needed, a "new" Justice system; I guess the old one wasn't any good. All that pesky habeas corpus mumbo-jumbo got in the way.
BP
May 6, 2008 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Former Chief Council to the Pentagon Haynes really screwed the hootch by saying, "We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions." Now that the cat is out of the bag (and not just the grumblings of a few liberals) the Bush PR is going to have to work hard.
Isn't it interesting that they are going to ditch the press inorder to miscarry justice? With secret prisons, secret laws, secret 'justice', tell me the difference between US and the former USSR gulag. Scale. That is all.
May 6, 2008 11:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
My monitor is kersplattered with my morning cup of joe equivalent (diet cola) too. We need a tag equivalent to NSFW for that sort of thing - NSFD(rinking) or NSFB(everage) or NSFC(omputer equipment or something so we can swallow in preparation. Thanks for a great guffaw to start the day!
May 6, 2008 12:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
that.">Jane Harman Sucks!
Does she really believe all this? Christ on a crutch!
And exactly what is "the prize" we are supposed to keep our eyes on? What ever happened to justice? Politicazation, that's what. Nothing is for the good of the country or its inhabitants. It's all for the good of a party. Apologists for the most appalling of governmental actions.
And yet another thing that will be dumped on the next POTUS. Well, I suppose it would be dumped on Obama since both Clinton and McCain seem to relish the war president, obliterate them, bomb bomb bomb Iran, Commander in Chief position.
Oh, the wrongest of wrong turns our country has taken.
I am starting to think that all our elected officials suck. Someone wake me when this nightmare is over.
May 6, 2008 12:31 PM | Reply | Permalink
Just speculating here, but let's presume that some trials will result in acquittals or dismissals. Since this is a new legal framework, won't these detainees then have the opportunity to file civil suit against the US government and specific individuals?
May 6, 2008 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Hartmann said that within the military commissions process, "the principal obligation is not to the press," and that the cases are full, fair and open because of the rights afforded to the defendants. "That's what we do in the American system of justice," he said."
The principle obligation in terms of ACTUAL justice is for justice not only to BE done but also to be SEEN to be done.
And the alleged fear of classifed information "leaking" is bullshit. There have been procedures in place FOREVER to prevent that happening; certainly SOME of the procedures from the old, "quaint" and "obsolete" justice system can be recycled.
Apparently the general hasn't read the Constitution recently, or he's fully on board with the Bushit criminal enterprise's anti-American anti-Constitutionalism.
Which should go without saying: he was appointed by Bushit because he can be trusted to also be a criminal.
May 6, 2008 1:13 PM | Reply | Permalink
Remember when Bush was saying it would be easier to be a dictator? Well, hasn't it been? If this were still a constitutional form of government the crimes of this administration would long since have been visible to everyone, would have triggered impeachment hearings and would have resulted in mass resignations of the entire administration, including Bush and Cheney. That can't be easy for a President.
May 6, 2008 1:26 PM | Reply | Permalink
More proof the DiIulio was spot on when he said that everything in the Bush White House was done for political reasons.
May 6, 2008 2:40 PM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a good bet: Far from being chagrined that Gitmo gavels won't fall in time for the election, the administration quashed the kangaroo proceedings themselves. GOP polling probably showed Americans - acting like weak, indolent HUMAN BEINGS, again - felt nothing but revulsion at the very mention of this Caribbean cesspit, most prominent in our shameful gulag of torture dungeons. Remember when the White House warned us not to get all excited and gung ho over the lynching of Saddam in late 2006? Our leadership is out of touch with us by light-years.
May 6, 2008 6:18 PM | Reply | Permalink
Imagine our ruling clique had decided to go with existing law and due process, and not to try to expand unchecked executive power to functional dictatorship levels. And that they'd imprisoned captured al-Qaeda suspects in federal prisons or at least brigs in the U.S., acknowledged in word and practice the prisoners' rights under the Geneva Conventions, and never gone near torture. {Admittedly, at this point it's a real test of one's imagination, they've taken us so far down the road of the national security state.}
We'd probably have had a good half-dozen convictions by the time of the 2004 elections, on top of which we'd know one hell of a lot more about the scope of the actual threat that faced us. But that last part's the heart of the matter -- exactly what the Cheney-Bush "administration" didn't want the U.S. public to understand. They needed the threat to be unknowable, huge, looming, able to be called on whenever the next looting or shooting opportunity arose.
May 6, 2008 8:34 PM | Reply | Permalink