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Friday, February 22, 2008

Now we really ARE a banana republic
Posted by Jill | 9:59 PM
Complete with rigged show trials:

Secret evidence. Denial of habeas corpus. Evidence obtained by waterboarding. Indefinite detention. The litany of complaints about the treatment of prisoners at Guantánamo Bay is long, disturbing and by now familiar. Nonetheless, a new wave of shock and criticism greeted the Pentagon's announcement on February 11 that it was charging six Guantánamo detainees, including alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, with war crimes--and seeking the death penalty for all of them.

Now, as the murky, quasi-legal staging of the Bush Administration's military commissions unfolds, a key official has told The Nation that the trials have been rigged from the start. According to Col. Morris Davis, former chief prosecutor for Guantánamo's military commissions, the process has been manipulated by Administration appointees to foreclose the possibility of acquittal.

[snip]

When asked if he thought the men at Guantánamo could receive a fair trial, Davis provided the following account of an August 2005 meeting he had with Pentagon general counsel William Haynes--the man who now oversees the tribunal process for the Defense Department.

"[Haynes] said these trials will be the Nuremberg of our time," recalled Davis, referring to the Nazi tribunals in 1945, considered the model of procedural rights in the prosecution of war crimes. In response, Davis said he noted that at Nuremberg there had been some acquittals, which had lent great credibility to the proceedings.

"I said to him that if we come up short and there are some acquittals in our cases, it will at least validate the process," Davis continued. "At which point, [Haynes's] eyes got wide and he said, 'Wait a minute, we can't have acquittals. If we've been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.'"


Now before our wingnut trolls get their panties in a twist, no one is saying that Khalid Sheikh Muhammad is a swell guy that we'd want to have over for, oh, say, an Oscar® night party. But once upon a time, not too long ago, the United States stood for law and justice and fairness. Then a bunch of power-mad lunatics looked the other way while a man whose family does business with the president's family bankrolled an attack on U.S. soil, and continued to look the other way while the attack was carried out. Then they proceeded to exploit a nation's fears by destroying the American ways of justice, fair trials, the right to be left alone by the government, and the very documents on which this country was founded.

Now we have a banana republic-style dictatorship that has show trials for its enemies with convictions already rigged. We have a Soviet-style government that regards its own citizens as potential terrorists and criminals that require constant surveillance of every aspect of their lives. We have a government that has its own Praetorian Guard that's deputized to kill and rape and run amok -- and still get paid.

Perhaps Bill O'Reilly will send a lynching party after me, but no, Mr. O'Reilly, I am NOT proud of America. And I won't be until every last fucking member of the Bush Administration is sent to the Hague to be tried for crimes against humanity...in fair trials that require evidence. I'm confident that the evidence will be sufficient to convict.

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3 Comments:
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Oscar night party? Oh no.
At my house we're watching 60 Minutes take one step closer to to the day that Karl Rove goes to jail.

With popcorn and schadenfreude.
2/23/08, 1:14 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
No aspect of this story fails to make me sick with fear.

Haynes' complete misunderstanding of the meaning of Nuremberg is should terrify us all.
2/23/08, 10:32 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Jail? Rove? Surely you jest!

We won't -- can't -- see the pardon until after November elections. After all, a "pardoned felon" working in the Repub campaigns wouldn't look all that good. But you can be sure no one is going to indict or convict any of the Bushies.

W has until noon on January 20, 2009 to pardon all of them. Indeed, I'm suggesting that he will pardon them all about 10AM, resign, and Cheney will then pardon HIM!!! [No approval is necessary for the sitting Vice President to become President. And if I understand correctly, the changeover is immediate and automatic.]

Ruin his legacy. But he'll have to decide what an honest trial would do to it...
2/23/08, 11:53 AM  
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