The Amnesty International site offers some background to their opposition and criticism of the Bush administration’s detainee program:

On June 29, 2006, the Supreme Court issued a sweeping decision that found the commissions as currently constructed to be invalid. The Court held that the President did not have the authority to convene military commissions that deviated so far from established procedures without specific Congressional authorization. In addition, the Court ruled that the commissions must be in line with the due process protections found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice and Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions, which prohibits “the passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court affording all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by civilized peoples.�

Recently, President Bush announced that 14 “high value detainees� who had been in secret CIA prisons, including the purported masterminds of the September 11 attacks, had been transferred to Guantanamo and were awaiting trial by military commission. President Bush has also sent Congress draft legislation to authorize military commissions very similar to those already struck down by the Supreme Court. In addition, he is asking that Congress to retroactively strip habeas corpus and to provide immunity from prosecution for civilians, CIA agents and administration officials who may have violated the War Crimes Act. Amnesty International will continue to insist that any legislation meets the basic fair trials protections and standards for treatment required by the Supreme Court and US and International law.

I am shocked (no pun intended) that anyone would really consider military tribunals without fair representation as a valid system. We have the means and the opportunity to try terrorists successfully in a court of law, with International backing. Instead, by attacking the system of justice and working in a partisan manner to undermine Constitutional and International human rights provisions, the American president has his aim pointed in the wrong direction. Like Cheney shooting his friends in the back in pursuit of some other objective, Bush will do more damage than good to the US and actually foment more opposition at home and abroad through his proposed detainee program.

Just as disturbing is the political foundation of the system implemented to try Saddam Hussein himself. Again, the Bush administration has shown that its aim is to toss aside concepts of justice in search of political expediency. The Case School of Law’s blog explains:

The US managers of Iraqi post-conflict justice who were at the NSC, Department of Defense (DoD) and Department of Justice (DoJ) failed to see that “special� tribunals have the connotation of exceptional tribunals, which are in violation of international human rights law and thus smack of illegitimacy. Not only the name, but other aspects of the IST’s statute which remained unchanged in the modification brought about in the IHCC in 2005, are in violation of international principles of legality, which Iraqi law also embodies. This applies to the definition of the crimes within the jurisdiction of the tribunal and also to several other provisions of the statute. The statute that US drafters developed was so influenced by American thinking that it had the fingerprints of the foreign occupying power all over it. It also had glaring violations of Iraqi law. This was followed by a decision to establish the IST through the Governing Council, a politically-appointed body by the US – a foreign occupying power in Iraq. Moreover, the selection of judges, investigating judges, and prosecutors by the GC was in violation of Iraqi laws on judicial appointments. All of this cast a dark shadow on the tribunal’s legitimacy and legality, which continued even though a name change and minor modifications occurred in 2005.

Since Iraq was subject to the exclusive control of the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) run by US Ambassador Paul Bremer, the [Iraq Special Tribunal] statute was promulgated by Bremer on December 10, 2003, by CPA Order No. 48, thus confirming the “made in America� label of the institution. Moreover, the IST judges, investigating judges and prosecutors were formally approved by Bremer. The US, acting through the Department of Justice and its Regime Crimes Liaison Office (RCLO), controlled the Tribunal, conducted and directed its investigative activities, collected and stored the evidence, directed its operations, funded it, and had the seat of the Tribunal within the “Green Zone.� In time, the judges, investigating judges, and prosecutors whose salaries were paid by the RCLO moved into the Green Zone where everything was concentrated under US protection. There was little doubt about who owned the IST. Some things changed after 2005, particularly, the Iraqis taking ownership of the process, but the rest remained as it was.

The choice of this post-conflict justice modality was dictated by US political considerations, supported by Iraqi expatriates. It is the right choice, though by no means should it have been limited to a tribunal, and certainly not to one whose statute had so many infirmities. The Administration and its Iraqi expatriate collaborators approached the tribunal’s drafting of the statute without enough knowledge or respect for the Iraqi legal system, and without much experience in international criminal justice precedents. More importantly, they ignored the first lesson of post-conflict justice, namely, to keep politics at a minimum and make sure the legalities are at a maximum. In the IST’s case, it was the reverse.

As we often say in security, it is very dangerous to adopt a “Fire. Ready, Aim.” approach to governance and management. This is even more the case when considering the effects of friendly fire (e.g. taking pot shots at an Internationally recognized system of rights and laws).

pot shot
noun

a careless shot taken without regard for hunting law or rules, often at a close-range or defenseless object, in order to fill a prize or cooking pot