LarryD #50

I was only quoting those who think that the military tribunals are improper. That is their criticism, or measure of success, not mine. I have no idea what convicting someone caught in a war means, unless it is for specific war crimes.

It is true that the military has reviewed many if not the majority of people sent to Gitmo and in many cases concluded they had captured the Fuller Brush Man making his rounds or something of that sort and not an real combatant and let them go. In a fairly high percentage of cases that proved to be a mistake. But I am not sure you need a formal tribunal to do even that much.

And if the legal versus illegal combatant status of the people in Gitmo were the issue we would not have Gitmo. They are either the innocent Fuller Brush Man scooped up in a military dragnet or are illegal combatants, period. The issue is what to do with those that are not innocent.

In my opinion the NYC trials were meant for the legal industry to assert, publicly and with great publicity, that its approach to fighting the war was superior to that of the knuckle dragging military. 9/11/01 was a horrible shock to those who had come to believe that the nasty dirty business of fighting and killing and rescuing and digging bodies out of rubble was in the past and all could be handled by proper courtroom procedure and nobody’s hair had to get mussed. People started looking up to those who got their hands dirty. And the Legal Industry wanted that implicit belittlement of their profession stopped.

Anyway, I resubmit my question to anyone who can actually answer it. Have the military tribunals failed to do their job and if so why?

By the way, according to Fox News, as the plan for the trials in NYC falls apart, the possibility of going back to military tribunals is back on the table.