Burned Out
Expect some light posting over the rest of this week. I’ve got plenty of things rolling around in my head but, believe it or not, it does take some effort to plunk them down with a reference and make something coherent.
I just don’t have it in me right now.
With that said, here’s something to munch on for a while. There seems to be, just as with the NYT SWIFT terrorist financing story, a bit of, shall we say, hyperventilating on the conservative side of all media outlets. Take, for instance, this post by Emperor Darth Misha I.
Our Supreme Court recently decided that the animals who commited those gruesome atrocities [ed: recent beheadings of two US soldiers] against helpless, unarmed prisoners, are entitled to every protection under the Geneva Conventions, including the protections of articles that our legislative branch never ratified, including protection against being “humiliated†in any fashion, “humiliation†to be defined later by our unelected, dictatorial judiciary branch, no doubt.
I understand the outrage, but emotion is taking over on this issue I believe.
I could be entirely wrong. Misha is a very intelligent man and he may have looked into the arguments more than I have.
I listened to a portion of the Hamdan arguments and it seems that the defense was largely centered around the actual charge that Hamdan was held for. It was referred to as “conspiracy” in the arguments, but I suspect the full name of the charge is “conspiracy to commit terrorist activities.” You see, Hamdan was “only” a driver for bin Laden. He ferried the guy around for money likely knowing full well what bin Laden was up to.
OK, that does not make you a nice guy by any stretch of the imagination but it’s a far different charge than actually separating a US soldier’s head from his body.
As far as I understand things the ruling said that because Congress has not authorized military tribunal tries for the charge of conspiracy that they have to go through the regular US Justice system unless Congress gets off their ass and passes a law allowing it.
Now, the primary reason, again, as I understand it, that the Executive branch wants to use military tribunals to convict folks like Hamdan is because they’re afraid that a regular trial would reveal sensitive information that is better kept secret. Apparently, Congress has not yet decided that a charge as small as conspiracy warrants using the secretive courts. I call the secretive because the US public won’t know the details of the trial and the defendant won’t either.
Basically there needs to be a line in the sand drawn (and there already was one, but the Executive branch didn’t like it) that determines when a crime against the United States warrants a military tribunal that won’t show you the evidence against you and a crime that allows you access to the entire justice system.
All Congress has to do is draft up a law, and pass it, to allow the charge of conspiracy to be tried under a military tribunal. Problem solved, at least for the folks that think like Misha.
To the best of my knowledge there is still no restriction on the Executive branch with regards to using the military tribunal courts for more serious charges, like aiding and abetting terrorist activities. Providing funds, manpower, or equipment to terrorist agencies is different in a court of law than taking funds from a terrorist organization for your non-terrorist related services.
Further, this ruling is not good news for guys like Hamdan; at least not entirely. Sure, he’ll get his proper day in court unless Congress increases the number of charges that can be brought in front of a military tribunal, but this also means that the War on Terror has to end before he can be brought to trial to keep national secrets secret.
You know, that war that we’ve been told may last decades. Possibly even a hundred years.
In my opinion Hamdan didn’t do much, but it showed us something that should has been becoming rather obvious: This whole War on Terrorism is a really confusing matter.