One Utah

In Harper’s, Scott Horton writes about The Great Guantanamo Puppet Theater. The problem with the military commission trials is that they are really political tribunals controlled by Vice President Dick Cheney. The trials of six “high-value detainees” linked to the attacks on 9/11 are timed to coincide with the 2008 election, and the verdicts are predetermined. All six will be found guilty, and receive the death penalty. Denial of habeas corpus. Secret evidence. Evidence obtained by torture. And now, rigged trials.

[T]he military commissions crafted by the Bush Administration … have been crafted by political hacks out on a partisan agenda, and the experts who could have done a credible job–“first among them the military lawyers in the JAG corps –“have been ignored or overruled at each turn.

Contrary to what some have claimed, the Guantanamo military commissions do not follow the model of the Nuremberg trials. Three of the Nuremberg defendants were acquitted. In The Nation, Ross Tuttle interviewed Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions (emphasis added):

When asked if he thought the men at Guantanamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes–the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department.

“[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time,” recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

“I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process,” Davis continued. “At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, ‘Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals. We’ve got to have convictions.’”

This entry was posted Thursday, February 21st, 2008 at 4:07 pm and is filed under 9/11, Dick Cheney, Disgrace to the Military, Human Rights, Military, National Politics, Political Corruption, Terrorism, The Constitution, This Blog, Torture, War Crimes, nazis. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.