Coup-coup-ca-choo

The grownups in the military take on the GOP psycopaths (no doubt recently graduated College Republicans) who scripted Bushco's latest Kafkaesque foray into the hitherto unexplored (in this country, at least) realm of faith-based criminal justice. As in, "you're guily 'cause I say you are."

Top Military Lawyers Oppose Plan for Special Courts

The military's top uniformed lawyers, appearing at a Senate hearing yesterday, criticized key provisions of a proposed new U.S. plan for special military courts, affirming that they did not see eye to eye with the senior Bush administration political appointees who developed the plan and presented it to them last week.

The lawyers' rare, open disagreement with civilian officials at the Pentagon, the Justice Department and the White House came during discussions of proposed new rules for the use of evidence derived from hearsay or coercion and the possible exclusion of defendants from the trials in some circumstances.

[snip]

The proposed legislation has not been formally released because of the administration's inability to persuade the military lawyers to accept it, even after two meetings with Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales.

The basis for the lawyers' concerns about administration policy, which they first articulated in private memos in 2002 and 2003 for top Defense Department political appointees, is that weak respect for the rights of U.S.-held prisoners eventually could undermine U.S. demands for fair treatment of captured U.S. service personnel.

"The United States should be an example to the world, sir," [we are after all, in the immortal words of Rep. Jean Schmidt, the kindest, most generous nation in the history of the world] Maj. Gen. Scott C. Black, judge advocate general of the Army, told Sen. Russell Feingold (D-Wis.) at the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. "Reciprocity is something that weighs heavily in all of the discussions that we are undertaking as we develop the process and rules for the commissions, and that's the exact reason, sir. The treatment of soldiers who will be captured on future battlefields is of paramount concern."

But Dubya and his chickenhawk cadre don't give a flying fuck about how Our Troops^TM are treated. They're no more than props to be used to maximum political advantage.

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