David Cay Johnston & Matthew Rothschild ...
www.airamerica.com/clout/node/167/535#comment-535

The purpose of having a trial is really to seek two things: truth and justice. With this military commission process set up by the government, you’re going to find neither. There’s going to be neither truth nor justice. These commissions are based on the use of secret evidence, of evidence obtained by torture and by abusive tactics. And it’s based on hearsay, the idea that you can convict someone based upon what someone else said someone else said. And these are very clear—there are very clear prohibitions against secret evidence, torture, and hearsay evidence in a normal trial setting, but this is going to be the currency of this particular process.

Initially, the military commission process was set up by executive order by George Bush, and a fellow by the name of Salim Hamdan, who was charged under that commission, filed a lawsuit, went to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court said that the President didn’t have the authority to do that; Congress had to authorize it. And then, with the Military Commissions Act passed last year, Congress authorized the military commissions, and the process was essentially set up by the Pentagon.

There is room for appeal in this process, as they’ve defined it. But, you know, General Hartmann is really misleading the American public about what’s happening here. One of the things that he said—it wasn’t in your clip, but I thought was really interesting—one of the great rights that he said that these detainees were going to have was a right to remain silent at trial. Let’s just sort of think about it for a second. What that means is, they didn’t have the right to remain silent when the government was torturing them and interrogating them and abusing them, and so they have—they can sit idly by during this commissions process and listen to the stream of evidence that was brought in against them through torture, and they have a right not to say anything about it, and it is an illusory right.

There’s another point that is really important here. It’s not—part of the process is what happens when you’re convicted, but the other part of the process is what happens if you’re not. Military officials have said that even if these men are found not guilty, the government has no intention of letting them go. So the absolute best they can do—the best you can do in this military commissions is to remain in jail for the rest of your life illegally. And, of course, the worst you can do is to be executed. These are sham show trials, and there is nothing about this that comports with due process. ...

www.democracynow.org/2008/2/12/torture_due_process_denial_mar_capital#mi...