What is the real reason behind the "military tribunals"?

[kentuck]

Uh..I mean "terrorist tribunal"?

Are they meant to keep secret information from the terrorists when they go to court? Does that mean they will actually get a hearing before a judge? Or just a few officers doing the bidding of Rumsfeld and Bush?

Or are they meant to protect our own troops from being charged with crimes against humanity, such as torture and secret imprisonment, without notice to groups such as the Red Cross?

Or are they meant to protect the leaders that gave the orders to the troops that committed the torture and moved the "prisoners" to secret prisons, not even known to our Congress? What is the real reason behind these "tribunals"? Something makes me ill just thinking about it...

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Precedent for when they start arresting and "trying" civilians. n/t

[acmavm]

2. Getting everything all set up for when they declare martial law

and put all of us on trial.

edit: may sound drastic but I don't doubt it for a minute.

[SteppingRazor]

3. I think the answer's pretty simple...

there's not enough evidence to convict these people in a civilian trial, so a new type of military tribunal has to be ginned up to give the prosecturos a chance at conviction

[Crazy Dave]

4. And so they can make up new rules as they go along n/t

[SteppingRazor]

6. Exactly! (see The Trial by Franz Kafka) n/t

[sui generis]

5. In Pakistan they called these "extra-judicial trials"

the purpose was, civil jails were too crowded and the court dockett was too full, so the military volunteered to manage criminal cases.

The upshot was that they also dispensed with time-consuming protocols such as rules of evidence, right to representation, right to hear the charges you were facing, right to an appeal, and added summary punishment to their powers, which essentially meant that if you couldn't pay their bribe they could take you out in the alley and execute you.

It didn't start out that way . . . it started out just like this, with more and more reasons for extra-judicial ("military tribunal") courts to become involved.

[WinkyDink]

7. Bushco is deliberately and successfully making the U.S. into a

military state.
And it is doing so with our full approval. We are military-worshippers.

The miltary will protect us = wars.
The military will save us = troops in the flooded streets.
The military will judge us = extra-judicial tribunals using non-Constitutional "laws" and extra-legal punishments.
The military will maintain the domestic peace = torture devices for "crowd control".

This is why the insistence by Bush on his being OUR---not just the military's, as is actually the Constitutional case---"Commander-in-Chief".

The first sitting President to don a military uniform.

My respect for Italians and Romanians has increased immensely.
If you know what I mean.

[longship]

8. Kangaroo Courts

That's what they want. They just call them tribunals.