Interesting Jeffrey Toobin article in the April 14 New Yorker (that I hadn't read before now because of the primary) on the possibility Bush will propose the creation of new "national-security courts" which will limit the fair-trial rights of Gitmo detainees:
[A]ccording to lawyers inside and outside government, the Bush Administration may launch a proposal for a national-security court this summer or fall, after what they presume will be its next loss in the Supreme Court [in the case regarding the denial of habeas corpus to Gitmo defendants, Boumediene v. Bush]. “It looks like when Boumediene comes down the Court may say to the President and Congress that they need more procedures for the detainees,” [former Bush Administration lawyer Jack] Goldsmith said. “So, to correct the problem [sic], the President might consider sending something up to Congress this summer or fall. It would help the Republicans in the fall election.” The measure would force congressional Democrats to take a stand on the issue in the middle of the campaign—just as Bush did successfully with the Military Commissions Act after the Hamdan defeat [holding, among other things, that the Geneva Conventions applied to Gitmo detainees]. “It worked very well in 2006,” Goldsmith said. “The only way the Democrats have to not make it an election issue is to give the President the powers he seeks.”
If Congressional Democrats don't prepare for this eventuality, Goldsmith's analysis sounds right: The Dems will roll over for Bush. But "this summer or fall" -- I don't know when Boumediene will come down -- seems to provide plenty of time to prepare an alternative plan that can be introduced when the time comes. The key issues, as I see it, are truly impartial juries and viable avenues of appeal against questionable evidence, like hearsay. Clearly, it's not possible politically to argue for full trial rights, but we can make the case that enabling defendants to vigorously defend themselves on the facts will produce better decisions and raise our standing in the eyes of the world.
Fun facts: The notorious Camp X-ray is closed but left intact as evidence by order of a federal judge. Detainees are now housed in Camp Delta.
Also:
The head of the Guantánamo Task Force is Admiral Mark Buzby. Moments before he entered a conference room for our interview, an aide brought in the Stars and Stripes and a one-star admiral’s flag and set them behind his chair. Buzby is relentlessly on message about the continuing value of the interrogations. “We ask them, ‘Tell us how you did that forgery stuff.’ That’s as timely now as it was back then,” he told me. “We are filling in the mosaic.” Buzby noted that the detainees’ interrogation sessions were sometimes catered by the base’s fast-food outlets. “They want those Subway sandwiches!” he said. “Sometimes they just want to talk. Meanwhile, he’s chomping on his Subway B.M.T. It’s all about that give-and-take and that rapport-building. We still get regular questions in for us to ask from the front in the field. We’ll show him a map: ‘Thanks a lot, have a Big Mac.’ ”
The Subway B.M.T. is a sandwich made of pork salami, pork pepperoni and ham. Pork is forbidden under Islam. Either Buzby's facts are wrong, or these terrifying Wahhabist terrorists are such lax Muslims that they don't keep halal.
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