Obama and Holder's big mistake
...There is much more between the ...s.The five main problems:
* Military commissions are the appropriate venue for trials of unlawful combatant. The US military seized these terrorists on foreign battlefields -- and so didn't read them Miranda rights. The evidence against them was collected by soldiers under war-fighting conditions -- not with sterile gloves and clear plastic bags. And much of the best evidence against them is classified, because making it public would compromise the sources and methods of US intelligence gathering.
In short, these cases do not fit the mold of a typical murder trial in a civilian court.
Military commissions were designed for this purpose. They provide a secure environment that allows for the introduction of classified evidence without making it public. Yet the accused still enjoys the right to an attorney, the right to make his case in full and all of the fundamental rights of due process.
The commissions are also the ideal forum for trying unlawful combatants-belligerents who make war without following the law of war. One of the central tenets of the law of war is that civilians must never be attacked. Since terrorists shatter this rule completely, they are appropriately tried before military commissions.
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* The administration is again blurring the line between ordinary crimes and acts of war. Likening terrorists at war with the United States to common shoplifters is wrongheaded. These are not members of our society who refuse to obey our laws: They are enemies of the United States, engaged in war against America and all that it stands for.
* The administration has offered no clear criteria for deciding which terrorists will be charged as criminals in federal court and which ones will face military commissions. Attorney General Holder, in announcing the decision, suggested that the five cases were appropriate for civilian trial simply because the evidence against the terrorists is so strong that they'll surely be found guilty.
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* A very real safety threat exists when a terrorist like KSM is tried in an urban area: The city becomes an enticing target for terrorists around the world.
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*Finally, the trial will take many years to complete. Indeed it may not even start for five years or more.
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I suspect the criteria was whether the justice department thought they could wrangle a guilty verdict in a civilian court. If that is the criteria, then they have given the ones staying in the military tribunals a big chit for their appeal.
But, the biggest mistake is opting for the failed lawfare system of dealing with terrorist. It did not work in the pass and it will not work now and we will be giving al Qaeda a bonanza of intelligence data in the meantime through the discovery process.
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