Quote:
Originally Posted by seashore
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What's new at BORDC:
Obama to Revive Military Commissions
On Friday, May 15, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would restart the military commissions he halted in the first days of his presidency. BORDC strongly opposes this decision. Read BORDC's statement on the revival of military commissions:
"On Friday, May 15, 2009, President Barack Obama announced that his administration would restart the military commissions he halted in the first days of his presidency. BORDC strongly opposes this decision.
The use of military commissions is
not, contrary to its portrayal in the media, a partisan issue.
[Keep us fighting amongst ourselves.] Many conservatives, including BORDC Advisory Board member Bruce Fein, are opposed to these unconstitutional trials. Military tribunals are an inherently flawed system, and regular courts are already suited to situations like this with systems set up to handle intelligence issues and classified information. This is evidenced by the successful prosecutions of terrorists—over 120 of them, including Jose Padilla and Zacharias Moussaoui—in the regular courts. Broad existing laws and regular federal courts are already more than sufficient without needing to resort to legally and practically dubious trial systems.
Chip Pitts, president of BORDC’s Board of Directors put it this way: “The only reason that the administration would want to continue to go the military commissions route is to keep people detained when the evidence isn’t there or adequate—a course of action that is in
direct violation of basic fair trial standards of the U.S. Constitution and international human rights and humanitarian law.”
Obama, during his campaign, spoke out against the Military Commissions Act that established the most recent version of this trial system and vowed to use “our courts” to try detainees. Now he
has reversed course. BORDC understands that dealing with Guantánamo detainees presents a unique dilemma. However, though politics is the art of compromise, one should never compromise on issues of fundamental principle. Due process and fair trial standards, as opposed to trial by fire and torture, have evolved over millennia precisely because they are better, more principled methods of seeking truth and justice. The costs of continuing to legitimize the reversed presumption of innocence and departures from the rule of law—costs that include increased threat of terrorism and decreased U.S. standing internationally—are almost certainly likely to outweigh any short-term benefits from indefinite detention of suspects whose involvement in terrorism we can’t legitimately prove."
[emphasis mine]