From: "Gary Britt" 

The Bill of Rights IS IRRELEVANT when it comes to enemy combatants captured
on the battlefield.   As justice Scalia pointed out to some pointy headed
EU
trash in Switzerland recently, Germans brought not to a base OUTSIDE the
USA but directly to prison camps INSIDE the USA did NOT have rights to any
kind of trial or hearing in USA courts.  It would be "crazy" to
assert otherwise.

If these few military lawyers brainwashed by the liberal educations they
received (and who likely became military lawyers because they couldn't cut
it in the real world) don't like the military acting like the military,
they should get the hell out of the military and go to work for scraps for
some public interest legal group or the ACLU.

The Bill of Rights applies to citizens and in a fairly limited context to
non-citizens present in the country.  It does NOT apply and has NEVER
applied to prisoners of war and enemy combatants.

Gary

"Rich Gauszka"  wrote in message
news:442a8c21$1{at}w3....
> "If you believe that these are full and fair trials, you believe that the
> Bill of Rights is irrelevant," Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed defense
attorney,
> Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, declared on the front steps of the
> marble-columned courthouse.
>
> http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/politics/14208166.htm
>
> "The commission is operating in totally uncharted waters; it's charging a
> violation in a stateless, territorial-less conflict, something which the
> full laws of war have never applied," replied Katyal, a Georgetown
> University Law Center professor who was a clerk for Justice Stephen Breyer
a
> decade ago.
>
> Uniformed American military officers were scattered throughout the
gallery,
> among them lawyers from all four services - Marines, Air Force, Army and
> Navy - who in effect mutinied against their commander in chief by alleging
> that Bush's commissions strip foreign captives of fundamental rights.
>
> "If you believe that these are full and fair trials, you believe that the
> Bill of Rights is irrelevant," Hamdan's Pentagon-appointed defense
attorney,
> Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, declared on the front steps of the
> marble-columned courthouse.
>
> Retired military officers, civil liberties lawyers, former diplomats and
> international law experts all filed briefs on behalf of the 36-year-old
> Yemeni with a fourth-grade education, arguing that the Bush administration
> went too far by creating a commission outside an explicit framework set
out
> by Congress and ignoring many of the protections of U.S. military justice,
> which has a provision for tribunals.
>
> The justices seemed especially intrigued with the nature of the crime
> alleged, conspiring with al-Qaida. At least four justices asked questions
> related to the charge.
>
> Katyal called the conspiracy charge so broad and unfocused that "a little
> old lady in Switzerland who donates money to al-Qaida, and that turns out
to
> be a front for terrorist acts ... might be swept up within this broad
> definition. That's why international law has so rejected the concept of
> conspiracy."
>
> Clement argued that the court shouldn't even be considering the case
because
> Bush had signed a law Dec. 30 that effectively stripped Guantanamo
captives
> of pre-commission habeas corpus challenge.
>
> Some justices focused on whether Congress intentionally or inadvertently
> suspended the Writ of Habeas Corpus for captives in Cuba; Clement argued
> that Congress' intent was irrelevant, an argument that seemed to find
favor
> from Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Clement once clerked.
>
> Hamdan claims through his lawyers that he never joined al-Qaida, wasn't a
> warrior and was merely a civilian driver who earned $200 a month driving a
> pickup from bin Laden's private farm. His lawyer said Afghan militiamen
> captured him along the Afghan border in 2001, after he evacuated his
> pregnant wife and 2-year-old daughter to Pakistan, and turned him over to

> U.S. troops who sent him to Guantanamo.
>
> Breyer asked what would stop the president from "picking up an
alien" and
> holding the same type of trial in Toledo, Ohio.
>
> Justice Anthony Kennedy questioned whether Hamdan wasn't "uniquely
> vulnerable," and therefore not entitled to certain prisoner-of-war
> considerations under the Geneva Conventions.
>
> "I don't think he's protected by the Geneva Conventions, but that's
largely
> because he chose not to comply with the basic laws of war," Clement said.
> "Nobody has a claim here that they were part of the uniformed al-Qaida
> division that complied with all of the laws of war such that they are
> entitled to POW status."
>
>

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