D_Tully Tunnelrat
Experimental Member
Giving poor legal advice may not be illegal, but redefining torture, and then saying you did not commit it might be. This was clearly an attempt to re-write laws, which were inconveniently in the way.
I posted this in the NP thread, but some of it is relevant here...
Perhaps you have never heard the expression: "One man's terrorist, is another man's freedom fighter." The only reason John Walker Lindh is serving a 20 year sentence is that he took a plea bargain from US Justice attorney M. Chertoff. If he had not, he might have walked on the basis of his torture testimony, which the government sought to suppress, hence the 20 term plea bargain vs. a life, or death sentence. Had he publicly testified about how he, an American citizen was tortured by his own government, his trial would have been thrown out. That's how torture taints all testimony so inspired under accepted legal systems, even military tribunals. This is why Cheney's policies are a disaster.
The Supreme Court agreed in Hadan v. Runsfeld (Hamdan v. Rumsfeld - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) which threw out the Guantanamo Military Commission trials as they did not conform to the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Uniform Code of Military Justice - UCMJ
The UCMJ adheres to the principals that the accused has the right to know the evidence against them; they have a right to protect themselves against self-incrimination; they have a right to legal counsel; they have a right to have the witnesses against them cross-examined, and that evidence may not be obtained by coercion, just the same as in the criminal courts. The Bush Admin. DOD tried to make up their own definition of torture, and then ruled they were not using it as they defined it. This is the proverbial fox guarding the hen house.
This is not about protecting terrorists, it's about remaining true to your core legal principles even under adversity, and when those principles force the Gov. to worker much harder to prove their case.
From what I read, the Obama Admin is attempting to reconvene the tribunals, but under previously accepted legal rights, and definitions. I disagree with the conculsion in the following WSJ ed. (mainly because they skirt the whole redefining torture issue, which was the primary basis for the Guan. MT as constituted under the Bush Admin.), but they offer a summation of some how the tribunals will now be better equipped to perform in accordance with our legal system.
Obama's Military Tribunals - WSJ.com
