From: "Rich Gauszka" 

No Gary - Navy Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift's a military layer assigned to
DEFEND Hamden. What would you have him do roll over and play dead like a
good neocon?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0603290179mar29,1,2440889.st
ory?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Justice Anthony Kennedy, usually a swing vote on the court, worried that
"if the president can do this . . . he can set up commissions in
Toledo . . . and pick up an alien and not have any trial at all except
before that special commission


"Gary Britt"  wrote in message
news:442ab662{at}w3....
> 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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