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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (104627)	7/11/2003 2:30:00 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 281500

For years we've been warned about the threat of terrorism, rogue states, and WMD. No one really took it very seriously. Now we get bit in the ass and start taking it seriously, and some people act like this is all the mad ravings of a lunatic extremist cabal. It's all "perspective" I suppose. Derek

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (104627)	7/11/2003 2:33:08 AM
From: KLP	Respond to of 281500

Justice will be done at Guantanamo---Ruth Wedgwood, International Law from Yale-Johns Hopkins reminded us again today that Al Qaeda on 9-11 actually tried to decapitate the US Government. I listened to her today, and then looked up some info about her and any articles she had written...Here's one.. Justice will be done at Guantanamo By Ruth Wedgwood Jul 9 2003 19:16 To the operatives of al-Qaeda, war against the west is not a metaphor. On September 11 2001, the group tried to decapitate the US government: using aircraft as missiles, it hit the Pentagon and sought to strike the White House or Congress. It toppled the World Trade Center towers in New York, terrorising the city and nearly killing 30,000 commercial workers. Only rapid evacuation limited the death toll to 2,800. Al-Qaeda acted as a saboteur military force. America's right to return fire against its declared enemy was recognised by Congress, Nato and the United Nations Security Council. US forces took to the field under the laws of war, and captured and routed Taliban and al-Qaeda combatants. Under the usual protocols of armed conflict, captured fighters can be interned as enemy combatants until hostilities are over. Some have challenged America's right to do this, pointing out that this is a war that may never have a definitive end. And indeed, a different stage has now begun. The Pentagon announced on July 3 that six of the captured combatants currently residing at Guantanamo Bay may be prosecuted for war crimes in an initial round of trials. Some may plead guilty in plea bargains that impose limited prison terms in return for co-operation in exposing al-Qaeda's operations. Others may be tried on charges such as training with al-Qaeda or recruiting other terror network members. Two of the group are apparently British citizens and another is Australian. From the chatter of certain British ministers, one might think this was a great surprise. In fact, the US has been consulting with the British government for months on the question of how to make the trials work well. Some complaints are manifestly ill-founded. The use of military tribunals is preferred under the Geneva Conventions even for prisoners who are lawful combatants. The rationale is that military fact-finders will understand and share the interest in a protective law of war. So, too, the Geneva treaties allow criminal proof involving sensitive operational information to be presented behind closed doors. The rules of evidence under Geneva also permit the consideration of any relevant evidence. The procedural rules for the Guantanamo war crimes trials were debated for 18 months in the light of the Geneva principles and the particular problems presented by al-Qaeda's "learning organisation", which has proved adept at exploiting disclosures of US intelligence methods. The basic framework was settled only after Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, sought the advice of bipartisan wise men (people who might once have been called elder statesmen). These included Lloyd Cutler (White House counsel to President Bill Clinton), Bernard Meltzer (a Nuremberg prosecutor and University of Chicago law professor) and William Webster (a judge, and chief of the Federal Bureau of Investigation under President Jimmy Carter and of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Ronald Reagan). There was a hubbub, to be sure, when the White House issued a preliminary order on enemy prisoners in November 2001. But the subsequent rules were written with a sensibility that takes full account of modern standards of international humanitarian and human rights law. They have been published for scrutiny by all-comers at the Department of Defence website.* The rules respect the common law's presumption of innocence in favour of the defendant, burden of proof on the government, right to cross-examination of witnesses, right to call defence witnesses, mandated disclosure of any exculpatory evidence and requirement of proof beyond reasonable doubt. A defendant is given his choice of military counsel and can engage any civilian counsel who qualifies for security clearance. Any finding of guilt must be rendered by a two-thirds vote. All convictions will be reviewed by an independent appellate panel - with one or more civilian members endowed with authority to reverse judgments for serious errors of law. Members of the press are entitled to witness the full trial proceedings, except when classified or sensitive information is presented. In ordinary civilian trials, there is no significant cost to sharing everything the government knows. But this does not hold against the background of al-Qaeda's stated ambition of mounting new attacks. In partial concession, the tribunal rules provide that discrete pieces of evidence may be presented in closed court and, indeed, may need to be examined by the military defence counsel rather than the defendant. This is not ideal and there may be good reasons for delaying some trials until the operational backbone of al-Qaeda is broken. But the call for timely trials must make its peace with the equal right of civilians to be guarded against al-Qaeda's violence. As Winston Churchill aptly noted in October 1940: "I do not relish laying bare to the enemy all our internal resources." There will surely be practical adjustments to the procedure as problems are encountered. Working through these will depend on the good-faith efforts of military judges, zealous defence counsel and fair-minded prosecutors. The president's order for military tribunals has one guiding principle: to provide a full and fair trial for any accused, while upholding the laws of war. * www.dod.mil/news/Mar2002/d20020321ord.pdf The writer is a professor of international law at Johns Hopkins, and was one of the advisers to the Department of Defence on implementing rules for the military tribunals

To: Hawkmoon who wrote (104627)	7/11/2003 2:34:42 AM
From: KLP	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

A bit more about Ruth Wedgwood... The author is professor of international law at Yale and Johns Hopkins University. She is a former federal prosecutor. pbs.org Legal experts debate what the US government should do with the hundreds of Afghan and al-Qaida detainees in Camp Delta, a new US military base in Guatanamo, Cuba. Background Report Interview with experts - May 1, 2002 88888888888 law.yale.edu February 04, 2002 "Why They're Outlaws, Not POWs"--A Commentary by Prof. Ruth Wedgwood (This essay originally appeared in the February 4, 2002, edition of Time magazine. Follow the link at the bottom of the page to read a longer essay by Prof. Wedgwood that was published in the Financial Times of London.) 8888888 law.yale.edu January 30, 2002 "Prisoners of a Different War"--A Commentary by Prof. Ruth Wedgwood (This essay originally appeared in the January 30, 2002, edition of the Financial Times of London.) Prisoners of a different war: The Geneva convention applies to conventional soldiers, not to the terrorists being held at Camp X-Ray. By Ruth Wedgwood, professor of law at YLS