[Southack]

"The problem here is that you don't know what you're talking about. The military tribunals we're talking about are not courts-martial under the UCMJ, follow different procedures, have different rules of evidence, and so on. We're not talking about trying them in regular military courts."

Actually, what you and others (who have criticized President Bush's EO on military tribunals) have suggested is that foreign warriors must be tried in U.S. civilian courts instead of regular military courts. You act (above) as if GWB's new military tribunals are defective because they aren't regular "courts martial", as if that somehow bolstered your contention that military tribunals of any sort aren't allowed for foreign warriors.

That's simply wrong. Be they U.S. soldiers or foreign soldiers (even religous jihad holy warriors), once they violate either the UCMJ or American lives/assets in acts of war or terror, they are subject to military jurisdiction. Whether the military uses regular courts martial or other forms of military tribunals is immaterial to the legal jurisdictional question. We aren't talking about setting up a new military court system to try foreign warriors for civil crimes such as jaywalking; we are talking about trying people who have attacked the U.S.

Sabotage, terrorism, and other acts of war by foreignors or members of the military are subject to military justice.

Historical examples ABOUND that support this point, including the famous Nuremburg Trials. Albert Speer, for instance, was even a civilian who was tried for war crimes at Nuremburg (and no one complained that the freaking sky was falling and that American rights were being violated by those military tribunals, either).

But what you and other chicken littles ARE calling is for is an unConstitutional shift of jurisdiction from military tribunals under the Executive Branch to civilian trials under the Judicial Branch, which is akin to Alan Dershowitcz suing President Truman to shift the Nuremburg military tribunals to our civilian federal court system.

[A.J.Armitage]

You're full of it. I'm not talking about in Afghanistan. I'm talking about the use of military tribunals in America. The order Bush signed allows non-citizens in America be tried by tribunal. There's nothing whatsoever in the Constitution to require anyone in the United States to be tried by the executive.

If you had suggested to one of the Founding Fathers that making the president commander in chief of the armed forces meant that some trials in America had to be done by the executive, what common law principle would they think of? Surely this can't be very hard for a legal expert such as yourself.