The Economist on Unjust, unwise, unAmerican:
YOU are taken prisoner in Afghanistan, bound and gagged, flown to the other side of the world and then imprisoned for months in solitary confinement punctuated by interrogations during which you have no legal advice. Finally, you are told what is to be your fate: a trial before a panel of military officers. Your defence lawyer will also be a military officer, and anything you say to him can be recorded. Your trial might be held in secret. You might not be told all the evidence against you. You might be sentenced to death. If you are convicted, you can appeal, but only to yet another panel of military officers. Your ultimate right of appeal is not to a judge but to politicians who have already called everyone in the prison where you are held “killers” and the “worst of the worst”. Even if you are acquitted, or if your appeal against conviction succeeds, you might not go free. Instead you could be returned to your cell and held indefinitely as an “enemy combatant”.
Military tribunals are the coward's way out for those who don't have sufficent evidence. Many civil libertarians signed onto letter campaigns and statements opposing this tactic for almost two years, but we have failed. Of course, let's not forget the Attorney General's plan to violate attorney-client privilege within the borders of the United States. This is a dark moment in our nation's history and I, for one, won't forget who was at the wheel. A truly free society has no need to resort to such totalitarian tactics as railroading suspects through judicial farces like military tribunals. But then, we aren't really a truly free society – are we?