Posted on 11/18/2001 1:30:37 PM PST by It'salmosttolate
Bush Insisted Only He Should Decide Who Should Stand Trial Before Military Court
NEW YORK, Nov. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- After he signed an order allowing the use of military tribunals in terrorist cases, President George W. Bush insisted he alone should decide who goes before such a military court, his aides tell Newsweek. The tribunal document gives the government the power to try, sentence -- and even execute -- suspected foreign terrorists in secrecy, under special rules that would deny them constitutional rights and allow no chance to appeal.
(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20011118/HSSA005 ) Bush's powers to form a military court came from a secret legal memorandum, which the U.S. Justice Department began drafting in the days after Sept. 11, Newsweek has learned. The memo allows Bush to invoke his broad wartime powers, since the U.S., they concluded, was in a state of "armed conflict." Bush used the memo as the legal basis for his order to bomb Afghanistan. Weeks later, the lawyers concluded that Bush would use his expanded powers to form a military court for captured terrorists. Officials envision holding the trials on aircraft carriers or desert islands, report Investigative Correspondent Michael Isikoff and Contributing Editor Stuart Taylor Jr. in the November 26 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, November 19).
The idea for a secret military tribunal was first presented by William Barr, a Justice Department lawyer -- and later attorney general -- under the first President Bush, as a way to handle the terrorists responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland. The idea didn't take back then. But Barr floated it to top White House officials in the days after Sept. 11 and this time he found allies, Newsweek reports. Barr's inspiration came when he walked by a plaque outside his office commemorating the trial of Nazi saboteurs captured during World War II. The men were tried and most were executed in secret by a special military tribunal.
Thanks - I was beginning to think I had wandered onto the DU site or anarchistsrus.org
Ever stop to think.........
and never start again
;)
I just got back from my Sunday part-time job transcribing the talk shows, so I had to listen to too many people saying how the trial of the bombers of the WTC in '93 shows how civil trials of terrorists can work. Now, if you look at Laurie Mylroie's book on the '93 WTC bombing (now out in a paperback edition under the new title The War Against America) and particularly at the foreword to the paperback edition by former CIA director Jim Woolsey, you will see how informed people are of the view that the real truth about that bombing was concealed because the government treated the matter as a criminal matter, to be tried in civilian court by DOJ prosecutors.
In any case, a more recent trial of terrorists in this country was that for the East Africa embassy bombings in 1998. That trial only took place this year. And the chief problem with such criminal trials in civilian courts of terrorists is vividly illustrated by the fact that the convicted defendants were scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Lower Manhattan on Sept. 12, 2001. I strongly suspect Sept. 11 was at least in part a response to that scheduled sentencing.
Holding criminal trials for bin Laden-associated people in federal courthouses in cities in this country is just asking for trouble. And so is failing to execute these people, or at least -- if they have to be imprisoned rather than executed -- imprison them in some isolated area, preferably under the condition that they will be executed if any terrorist attempt is made to extort their release.
Here, by the way, is a link to the Supreme Court's unanimous decision approving FDR's trial of the 1942 German saboteurs by military commission, EX PARTE QUIRIN, 317 U.S. 1 (1942) . I do not believe the present situation can be effectively distinguished from the situation that the Supreme Court approved in that decision.
Intimidated by terrorists and inflamed by a passion for rough justice, we are letting George W. Bush get away with the replacement of the American rule of law with military kangaroo courts.”
Safire goes on: “...His kangaroo court can conceal evidence by citing national security, make up its own rules, find a defendant guilty even if a third of the officers disagree, and execute the alien with no review by any civilian court. No longer does the judicial branch and an independent jury stand between the government and the accused. In lieu of those checks and balances central to our legal system, non- citizens face an executive that is now investigator, prosecutor, judge, jury and jailer or executioner. In an Orwellian twist, Bush’s order calls this Soviet-style abomination, ‘a full and fair trial.’”
And even Wes Pruden of the Washington Times, a conservative columnist, said: ”[It’s] cynical to pretend that a military tribunal is justice under the law. Rigging a jury is beneath a president of the United States.
Conservatives, who preach mighty sermons about reverence for tradition, principle and values, should scream louder than anyone else.”
DR. RICE: This is an option that the president wants to have at his disposal in unusual and extraordinary and extreme circumstances. There is every belief in the administration that there may be times when it is appropriate to use the judicial system as we know it. But let’s be realistic about what happened here on September 11. We now know that for a number of years, there were people who were coming into this country from other countries-some of them among the types of these very Arab fighters that we’ve been talking about holding out in place like Kunduz-who were coming into this country for the express purpose of killing Americans. This is more like what Franklin Roosevelt faced in the 1940s with the Germans who were coming into this country to do the same.
Now, under certain circumstances-and I want to emphasize extraordinary circumstances, probably limited circumstances-the president wants an option that does not take this kind of case into our normal court system. In our normal court system, the potential compromise of information, as you’re trying to disrupt other terrorist cells, would clearly be a concern for the president, for the American people. It is the American president’s responsibility to try and protect the American people. We’re learning that we are open to a kind of attack that I think none of us ever imagined. This is simply an option for the president in extreme circumstances with people who came into this country with the express purpose of killing Americans, not for reasons of money or the like, but because we are Americans, because they resent what we stand for, and because they’d like to bring down our way of life. These are extreme circumstances.
MR. RUSSERT: Some observers have said when the World Trade Center was first attacked in 1993, those terrorists were put on trial in an American court, 10 found guilty. Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Oklahoma building, put on trial, convicted, sentenced to death; that the whole war on terrorism is a war to protect our way of life, our system of justice and we should protect and defend it; that we don’t need a military tribunal. Let our system of justice stand and speak for itself.
DR. RICE: But I think you don’t want to start adjusting our system of justice to deal with the fact that, for instance, in an ongoing circumstance, where you may be dealing with people who’ve been caught but who are still connected to others who are sitting out there in cities of America carrying out attacks or intending to carry out attacks, you wouldn’t want to compromise the ability to go after them by what might be found out in a trial of law. This, again, is an extreme circumstance. It would be used in extreme circumstances. The president is simply trying to give himself an option to protect the American people by continuing to disrupt these terrorist cells of foreigners who came to this country with the express purpose of killing Americans.
For fear of offending anyone that can not read, may I suggest that everyone take some time, sit down and have someone read the Constitution of the United StateS to you. Look back to the Ex Parte Merryman case of 1866 when the SCOTUS decided even in a time of congressionally declared war(although it was a bit shady after the fact declaration) that Lincoln had overstepped his Constitutional boundries in setting up military tribunals against certain groups. Yes it was citizens, but we are only a stone's throw away from that
Sometimes I don't know why I waste my breath, we're in an undeclared war, the POTUS is chopping off Amendments to the Constitution faster than you can say BBQ, the federal government has just taken control of the nation's airports(for all intents and purposes) and all I see anywhere I turn is a bunch of sheep bleating for more.
Tell me, when the POTUS after Bush or the one after that somewhere in the future declares himself Emperor, is anyone going to notice as long as he is a Republican?
Just to show how extreme they are, the moral-liberal ideologues out there would fight for the right of terrorists to have and own weapons of mass destruction, just so long as they don't poop in their neighbor's yard or prevent their neighbors from pooping in their own. Sheesh.
We have more trust in the American people and their common sense than the ideologues do, apparently. Didn't you read where Nazi saboteurs were so handled in secret military courts in the 1940's, when the Democrats were in power? And where, pray tell, were German saboreurs or anyone else continuously persecuted during the subsequent 5 decades? Sheesh.
"Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order . Tomorrow they will be grateful! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond, whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. The one thing every man fears is the unknown. When presented with this scenario, individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."---- Henry Kissinger
They're patient, up to a point. I believe the patience has been called off.
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