U.S. needs fair legal system for Guantanamo captives

[struggle4progress]

The following editorial appeared in the Miami Herald on Wednesday, Feb. 14:

X X X

After detaining hundreds of terrorism suspects for more than five years at the Guantanamo Bay prison, the Bush administration still hasn't created a fair system for trying terror-war crimes. The first military commissions were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. Now the second set of rules for terror-war trials, issued last month, fails - again - to abide by long-established U.S. and international legal standards ...

It is past time to fashion a system that balances the need for national security with protection of human rights in the war on terrorism. Such a system would strengthen our country's moral and legal standing against an enemy that ruthlessly attacks innocent civilians. It would help protect U.S. troops, too, against torture and other inhuman treatment in future wars. Stooping to un-American values only hurts our cause.

The new rules for war-crimes trials, based on last year's flawed Military Commissions Act, allow evidence obtained through coercion and other techniques that most people - though not Vice President Cheney - consider to be torture. Broad provisions for shielding classified information will deny suspects the right to see evidence against them and prevent them from fully preparing a defense.

Given the administration's inability to create a fair legal system for terrorist suspects, Congress needs to step in and do so. With Democrats in control of both House and Senate, there is a chance, for example, to strengthen protections against unjust indefinite detention and to ban the use of evidence obtained by torture, coercion or other cruel and degrading actions. Another option is to model war-crimes tribunals on the rules of the U.S. Uniform Code of Military Justice, which is respected internationally ...

http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/16704595.htm

[The_Casual_Observer]

1. The detainees are there to provide the illusion that the "war on terror"

has yielded captive flesh and blood terrorists. Those people provided a powerful image that we are being protected from the devastation that they would have brought to this country had they been free. Now they don't know what to do about them anymore.

[ShortnFiery]

2. No!

Then all of those CONFESSIONS of Al Quaeda connections that were beaten out of a few of the goat herders and taxi drivers may be overturned. :wow: That would make the USA look bad.

GITMO will not shut down during Lord Pissypant's rule. :(