Bush faces Republican revolt over terror trials --Guardian

[Demeter]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,,1868462,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=12


· Worries over treatment of Guantánamo detainees
· Defendants to be barred from seeing evidence

Suzanne Goldenberg in Washington

President George Bush yesterday faced growing opposition from his fellow Republicans to a pillar of his war on terror: his plans to prosecute detainees at Guantánamo at military commissions.
Mr Bush had hoped to use the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on Monday to shift the focus of November's congressional elections away from the war on Iraq to national security. But the strategy misfired with key Republicans balking at a White House proposal for legislation on military tribunals that would deny Guantánamo detainees the right to see classified evidence against them.

"It would be unacceptable legally in my opinion to give someone the death penalty in a trial where they never had heard the evidence against them," Lindsey Graham, a former military judge and a Republican senator from South Carolina who is a member of the armed services committee, told the New York Times yesterday. "Trust us, you're guilty, we're going to execute you, but we can't tell you why'? That's not going to pass muster."

Military law experts have also lined up against the proposal. "I am not aware of any situation in the world where there is a system of jurisprudence that is recognised by civilised people where an individual can be tried and convicted without seeing the evidence against him," Brigadier General James Walker, the staff judge advocate to the marine corps commandant, told the armed services committee.

Mr Graham and other high-profile Republicans such as Senator John McCain of Arizona have produced their own draft legislation on military tribunals which would guarantee suspects the right to see all evidence against them, and bar evidence obtained through torture.

[napi21]

1. I rarely agree with Lindsey, but I have heard him stand against

this admin. and many of his fellow Pubs several times. That's a lot more than you can say for most of 'em!

[Jackpine Radical]

2. Reminds me of the old line--"What's the difference betw a neocon & a rat?

There's some things you can't get a rat to do.

[otherlander]

3. Maybe this is why * admitted there were secret jails

So the other Republicans could pretend to object, and make themselves look good. I wouldn't be suprised.

[Art_from_Ark]

5. The old "good cop, bad cop" routine?

I wouldn't be surprised, either.

[0007]

4. I wish they'd get all these rat faced motherfuckers that are into torture

and lock 'em up for life.


junior's mentality sucks