Another socialist blog

The Bush government is fond of giving lip service to the rule of law. And when they give something lip service, they really give it lip service. These are people who know how to stick to the script. Just today we have comments in support of the rule of law from Bush himself, from Condoleeza Rice, and from State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey, to pick just a few low-hanging examples. There could hardly be a better example of doublespeak. These people who claim to love the rule of law hold it in utter contempt. There are so many examples, but the atrocity of the detainee tribunals in Guantanamo, the Combatant Status Review Tribunals, will be the example of the day.

NPR reports on a study of 393 tribunal transcripts. The study reveals the tribunals to be empty of actual due process.

• In 100% of the cases the detainee was eventually found to be an enemy combatant.
• In 100% of the cases the government presented no witnesses at all.
• In 96% of the cases the government presented no evidence at all, relying instead on secret evidence that detainees were not allowed to see.
• In three cases there was a unanimous finding that the defendant was not an enemy combatant. The Defense Department ordered re-hearings in each case. In two of the three re-hearings the defendant was found to be enemy combatants. In the third, the tribunal again found unanimously that the detainee was not an enemy combatant, so the Defense Department orded a re-re-hearing for that prisoner. At this point the tribunal apparently got the message and found that, by golly, he is an enemy combatant after all.
• Detainees have a nominal right to call witnesses, but the only witnesses actually available to them are their fellow detainees. The U.S. State Department, which is responsible for producing witnesses from other countries on request, have produced none since the tribunals started.

It’s Kafkaesque. The government’s secret evidence is presumed to be reliable. The defendant, who has the burden to prove he is not an enemy combatant, has the right to rebut the government’s evidence. But without being able to see the evidence, he cannot know what there is to rebut, and cannot even get access to witnesses who might be able to take a stab at it. And finally, even if the prisoner is found not to be an enemy combatant, the result of the tribunal is simply vetoed by the Pentagon.

Americans should be deeply ashamed to be associated with this kind of injustice, and doubly ashamed and the hypocrisy of their leaders.