Your Honor, I Move for a Bad Court Thingie

The Wall Street Urinal has an interesting article about the military tribunals that are trying "enemy combatants" at Guantanamo Bay. Apparently some of the "law-talking guys" involved in the trials don't think fixed fights are fair.

Two Air Force prosecutors quit last year rather than take part in military trials they considered rigged against alleged terrorists held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Seems like it would take a lot to make a prosecutor quit because his job was too damn easy. Unless of course the lawyers had, you know, ETHICS, like these guys.

Maj. John Carr, then a captain, and Maj. Robert Preston accused fellow prosecutors of ignoring torture allegations, failing to protect exculpatory evidence and withholding information from superiors. Altogether, the actions "may constitute dereliction of duty, false official statements or other criminal conduct," Maj. Carr wrote in a March 15, 2004, email summarizing his complaints to the then-chief prosecutor, Army Col. Fred Borch.

You mean the secretive military trials run by the U.S. Government might not be on the up-and-up? I'm shocked! Shocked, I say! But never fear! It's John Roberts to the rescue!

The Bush administration hopes to restart the military commissions trying Guantanamo prisoners as soon as next month, after a federal appeals court in July found the proceedings lawful. The ruling, by a three-judge panel that included Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., reversed a lower court that halted the proceedings in November on the grounds that they violated due process and U.S. obligations under the Geneva Conventions.

It’s time to get back to the indiscriminant, permanent jailing of Middle Eastern guys who may or may not be terrorists. Why bother finding out who is and who isn't? Jail 'em all, let god sort 'em out!

Defense Department officials say several reviews, including one by a Pentagon inspector general, found nothing to substantiate the Carr and Preston allegations. "We found absolutely no evidence of ethical violations, no evidence of any criminal misconduct," says Air Force Brig. Gen. Thomas Hemingway, legal adviser to the military commissions' appointing authority, as the administrative arm of the trials is called.

Awesome! A Defense Department investigation! Rumsfeld's on the case! I'm sure Rummy will get to the bottom of this, right? Right?!

Gen. Hemingway acknowledges personality differences and "an awful lot of miscommunications" in the prosecution office, but says organizational problems have since been corrected.

Translation: we've "taken care of" anyone who might have supported those guys' claims, move along, nothing to see here, terrorist alert orange everyone!

Still, military lawyers assigned to defend accused terrorists say the emails buttress longstanding complaints about the proceedings' fairness. They say they want to review the investigations of the former prosecutors' allegations but haven't been given access to the findings.

Hmmm, so both the prosecutors and defense lawyers report that the trials are rigged against the defendants? Uh, maybe we want to, uh, take another look at this thing? Anybody? General Hemingway? Soon-to-be Justice Roberts? Rummy? Anyone? No? Okay. I guess we don't really need fair trials in this country, do we? It's not like it's, you know, a vital component of a democracy or anything...