The AP has today fallen into and is unfortunately promoting the fallacy that the Guantanamo Military Tribunals, that have started with the case against Salim Hamdan, are War Crime trials.
It is not easy to describe them, in fact, as late as yesterday the AFP described them as "special "war on terror" military tribunals". But make no mistake, they are not War Crimes Trials.
America as a whole is extremely interested in how this case is being brought forward. The Supreme Court has four times refuted the bush administration's policies for how the tribunals can legally proceed. I am honestly confused, as many of you probably are, about the legal avenues now being used to hold and now prosecute the "unlawful enemy combatants" at Guantanamo, and for that matter around the globe.
But I am not confused, and no one else should be, about what the bush administration itself declares this process to be. This administration is proceeding with a form of legal court called military tribunal. Who is tried under this type of court? Well, according to our current executive branch, with the help of our past legislative branch, and with the warnings and restrictions of our current Judical branch, these people can.
The full AP article can be here. http://ap.google.com/...
The AP writes:
The judge in the first American war crimes trial since World War II barred evidence on Monday that interrogators obtained from Osama bin Laden's driver, ruling he was subjected to "highly coercive" conditions in Afghanistan.
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A little context: It is not up for interpretation that the bush administration has actively sought to avoid the jurisdiction of international law in this "War on Terror", and by those means has avoided marking these prisoners with the status of "Prisoners of War". That is a fact, unchallenged by the bush administration itself. The bush administration has not put up for interpretation the definition of War Crimes and War Crimes Trials like they have for, now infamously, the definition of Torture. And it is not up for interpretation what the bush administration is accusing Salim Hamdan of doing. He is not accused of one or many counts of committing War Crimes. He is accused and on trial for two charges: "conspiracy" and "material support for terrorism".
Repeat: Hamdan is not accused of committing war crimes, and the trials at Gitmo are not intended to or set up by our government for the purpose of conducting war crimes trials. The AP on Tuesday the 22nd of July 2008 has given unwarranted commission and in my opinion undue credibility to current proceedings and court in Guantanamo. I fear this will be picked up by our US media on a whole, where it will become part of our historical vernacular, never to be corrected, and we must set out to fight this.
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This diary was put together this morning and I wish that I had much more time to fully develop it. Others will and should bring this forward adding their own areas of expertise to this argument.
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