Very quickly but very important: three years or so after being proposed by President Bush, two years after issuing procedural rules so heinous that military defense lawyers protested, , the military tribunal process was characterized as "grossly unfair" by a federal judge.
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Judge Green found that the methods of the Combatant Status Review
Tribunal, created under orders by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz nine days after the June Supreme Court ruling to decide which
prisoners deserved the "enemy combatant" label, were grossly unfair."
Notwithstanding the presence of "personal representatives" to assist
the detainees in preparing their claims, "the procedures provided in
the C.S.R.T. regulations fail to satisfy constitutional due process
requirements in several respects," Judge Green determined.
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True, she was only talking about the quickie panels that screen for
the big-cheese trials -- after which those not deemed worthy of a
tribunal were placed in indefinite hold. But it was deeply
encouraging that she
addressed so directly the stacked deck handed defendants in these cases -- stacked so blatantly that the military-appointed counsel has protested.
Not surprisingly, Green was appointed by Jimmy Carter, the president who tried to honor human rights while the government Nixon built was funding death squads in El Salvador. Richard Leon, the judge who ruled two weeks ago that detainees have no such rights, was appointed by Bush in 2002: graphic evidence that the federal bench <matters. And given the conflict at the Circuit, the Department of Justice has already signaled its intent to appeal Green's decision.
So: Gonzales will be arguing to limit the legal rights of people he declared nonpersons three years ago-- agreeing with a judge who's been a Bush crony as much as he.
Ain't that America.
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