GOP Senators Differ With President on Military Trials

[cal04]

Terrorism Suspects' Right To Information Is at Issue
Key Republican senators have drafted a legislative plan for special military trials of suspected terrorists that diverges from a recent Bush administration plan by granting defendants rights that the White House has sought to proscribe, government officials said yesterday.

Under the lawmakers' plan, any future military trials of the nearly 200 eligible U.S. detainees held in military prisons at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and other locations around the world would be governed by a law that explicitly ensures that defendants have the right to know the evidence against them.

The Bush administration has long maintained that no law is needed to establish a system of military commissions, as they are known, for trials of terrorism suspects, but the Supreme Court ruled otherwise in June. The administration still contends that military prosecutors should be able to present sensitive evidence to military judges but withhold it from defendants.

But the sponsors of the legislation -- Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.), Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) -- disagreed. They have embraced the view of senior uniformed military lawyers that blocking defendants' access to evidence would violate long-standing due-process standards and set a dangerous precedent for trials of captured U.S. military personnel.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/05/AR2006090501200.html

[William769]

1. How many of these GOP Senators are up for reelection?

[TomInTib]

2. And then there is this

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060905/ts_nm/security_guantanamo_bush_dc_1

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President George W. Bush plans to unveil proposed legislation on Wednesday to set a structure for conducting trials of foreign terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo Bay, White House officials said.

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The White House declined to give details about the legislative proposal. Unveiling of the proposal will coincide with a speech Bush is to give at the White House on terrorism, the third in a series on the topic he began last week.

White House spokesman Tony Snow said the speech will discuss the proposed legislation but also touch on broad issues about how the United States should handle terrorism suspects.

"It raises the question, how do you operate, how do you conduct appropriate detention and justice exercises in the wake of the Supreme Court's decision? And what is it we need to do? What are the stakes involved?" Snow said.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has said the administration would propose trying enemy combatants based on military court martial procedures -- although with a number of key changes such as admitting hearsay evidence, limiting rights against self-incrimination before a trial and limiting defendants' access to classified information.