Military Lawyers Challenge Bush on Guantanamo Detainees
Here’s an item from Salon that is worth sitting through the one-day-pass commercial: A legal black hole. Seems the military lawyers tasked with defending the rights of detainees at the Guantanamo detention facility see something familiar in the Bush administration’s latest arguments:
In the Declaration of Independence, the American colonists listed their grievances against King George: He had attempted to “render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power,” he had deprived the colonists “of the benefits of trial by jury,” he had “made Judges dependent on his Will alone,” and he had transported colonists “beyond Seas to be tried for pretend Offences.”
In an extraordinary brief filed with the United States Supreme Court this week, five experienced U.S. military lawyers have leveled precisely the same charges at another would-be King George: the current president of the United States. Only this time, the oppressed citizens aren’t American colonists; they’re detainees being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.
