WP: Top Military Lawyers Oppose Plan for Special Courts

Top Military Lawyers Oppose Plan for Special Courts
By R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, August 3, 2006; Page A11


"The United States should be an example to the world, sir," testified Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, judge advocate general of the Army. (By Dennis Cook -- Associated Press)

The military's top uniformed lawyers, appearing at a Senate hearing yesterday, criticized key provisions of a proposed new U.S. plan for special military courts, affirming that they did not see eye to eye with the senior Bush administration political appointees who developed the plan and presented it to them last week.

The lawyers' rare, open disagreement with civilian officials at the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House came during discussions of proposed new rules for the use of evidence derived from hearsay or coercion and the possible exclusion of defendants from the trials in some circumstances....

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The basis for the lawyers' concerns about administration policy, which they first articulated in private memos in 2002 and 2003 for top Defense Department political appointees, is that weak respect for the rights of U.S.-held prisoners eventually could undermine U.S. demands for fair treatment of captured U.S. service personnel.

"The United States should be an example to the world, sir," Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, judge advocate general of the Army, told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Reciprocity is something that weighs heavily in all of the discussions that we are undertaking as we develop the process and rules for the commissions, and that's the exact reason, sir. The treatment of soldiers who will be captured on future battlefields is of paramount concern."...

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Perhaps the sharpest point of disagreement concerned a provision that would allow a military judge to decide that classified evidence could be used at the trials by providing it to a military defense lawyer but not to defendants. Maj. Gen. Jack L. Rives, the Air Force's judge advocate general, said: "It does not comport with my ideas of due process for . . . defense counsel to have information he cannot share with his client." The other lawyers agreed with Rives....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/02/AR2006080201652.html

The military brass which usually will try to go along with policy makers in DC and the Pentagon civilians are voicing opposition. Shrub can't say he "listens" to his Generals while at the same time they are telling him to do something else.

These brass need to stick to their guns and do what they think is right. You know you are screwed as a President when your own military is starting to publically diagree with you.

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Black and Rives, the very models of modern major generals.

We need to make sure people know of the proposed law and the danger it poses to our democracy.

The biggest mistake of Cheney and his merry band of chickenhawk neocons is that they believed everyone had their same twisted instincts, that anyone would just say yes to their dismantling of law and order.

Some folks like to follow the rules. Some folks, thankfully, still believe in a sense of law and order.

This development is great news, actually.

Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black to retire and then find a another yes man like he always does since 2001.

Is there a way to do that? Alert John Murtha?

since when did this government care about whether their actions were legal?