05 June 2007

War Crimes and Missteps

Let me see if I get this right. In 2006 the Bush Administration doesn't feel it has the latitude necessary to prosecute detainees of the "Global War on Terror" who are currently held at Guantanamo, and introduces the Military Commissions Act. This act effectively sidesteps questions of human rights and habeus corpus and gives the administration the go-ahead to try detainees outside the framework of the traditional military court-martial.

Yesterday, however, two military judges reviewing the cases of two detainees scheduled to appear on war crimes charges before military commissions dismissed those charges due to linguistic technicalities regarding the terms "enemy combatant" and "unlawful enemy combatant."

So even when the Bush Administration writes the rules it still can't seem to abide by them. Here's hoping there are more Americans who continue to see the failures of the Bush Administration's rhetoric and logic and who will act to restore credibility where much has been lost.