U.S. Fires Guantanamo Defence Team

A team of military lawyers recruited to defend alleged terrorists held by the US at Guantanamo Bay was dismissed by the Pentagon after some of its members rebelled against the unfair way the trials have been designed, the Guardian has learned.

And some members of the new legal defence team remain deeply unhappy with the trials - known as "military commissions" - believing them to be slanted towards the prosecution and an affront to modern US military justice.

Of the more than 600 detainees at the US prison camp at Guantanamo, none has been charged with any crime, and none has had access to a lawyer, although some have been in captivity of one kind or another for two years.

But the US has repeatedly promised that at least some of the prisoners will be charged and tried by military commissions, an arcane form of tribunal based on long-disused models from the 1940s.

more…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/guantanamo/story/0,13743,1098618,00.html

God, I would love to see Bush in the Hague.

that's just so pathetic.

I'll bet that news won't see the light of day in our "free press" society.

Got a problem with that? OK, no trial . . . and you're fired!

:shrug:

Just execute the prisoners. Thats whats going to happen anyway. They are going eventually hire and fire themselves to some defense lawyers who are willing to "get with the program" and cede all arguments to the prosecution.

What a novel idea.

Will they try to "dispose" (I don't use the world lightly) of the prisoners before the elections? Can't imagine they'd leave the possibility of a Dem shedding light on the whole set-up (don't use that term lightly either).

I should, when I am more lucidly paranoid (i.e. earlier in the day) post a thread about this--between unfinished business in looting Iraq, and all the potential for repercussions from Gitmo, they need to sew it up by Nov. or finally face consequences. Or, the paranoid part, they cannot envision losing so therefore have no such plans.

In any case, I'd like to know what Dem front runners have to say about Gitmo. Maybe they have weighed in and I missed? Probably. But if not, I encourage folks to get your candidates to address the extra-judicial happenings there. IMO, it is as critical an indicator of what's wrong as anything with Iraq.

They can only spin more yarns.

I do pity the next president.

wouldn't the transition team have to inform a new administration about where all the 'undisclosed locations' (ie undisclosed prisoners) are?

I hope everyone understands what that means.

hey, who needs justice? it's inconvenient. justice, in this case, might send the message that we are a just nation, and that doesn't fit with the bush model of America. anything that would reduce violence and hatred is out of the question. injustice, violence, hatred, intolerance, all of these things are necessary for perpetual religious war, and that is exactly what bushco wants, because the bush method is to make money off war, and war is never really profitable until you get it going 24/7 for decades on end.