Making Promises He Can't Keep

U. S. Homeland Security Secretary Chertoff promises that the Guantanamo prisoners charged in connection with the 9/11 bombings will receive fair trials and full due process. That's nice. It brought to mind Bush saying that Saddam Hussein would be given a fair trial and then hanged, but there was something else here that struck me as just plain wrong: these people will be tried by military tribunal. The U.S. military reports to the President through the Secretary of Defense not the Secretary of Homeland Security. So, Chertoff, who has no authority in the matter, has no right to promise anything in connection with it. He is, in fact, just advancing Bush Administration propaganda which is meant to take the edge off the arguments against this new surge to murder.

Anyone who has become even lightly acquainted with U.S. military justice through experience or study knows that there is little to no fairness in it and little to no justice. Military courts are more susceptible than any other U.S. court to producing the results desired by those in power.

Trials?

Some prisoners at Guantanamo Bay are to be tried by the Pentagon on charges of "Conspiracy, murder in violation of the law of war, attacking civilians, attacking civilian objects, intentionally causing serious bodily injury, destruction of property in violation of the law of war, terrorism and providing material support for terrorism". Aside from having these murderers tried by our murderers in one of our least free, just, and accountable institutions, there is the problem that the charges listed above sound an awful lot like what the Bush Administration has been doing for at least the past 4-5 years. So when will all of our lying, murdering slugs be tried?