Hi Gautam. I read the first and last article but the second, the one you said you agreed with the most was a broken link, do you have access to it elsewhere?
In the first article it speaks of the 8 German infiltrators you discuss below and there are a few things that differentiate it from the present situation. First, the plot by the Germans was revealed by one of their own, so that there was probably never any real doubt about their guilt. We are presently incarcerating hundreds of people many of them (from what I understand) with little or no evidence of their guilt. To try these people secretly with no checks on whether or not they are being treated fairly goes well beyond the secret trial of a handful of indisputably guilty saboteurs. You also don't note, as the first article does, that the "Supreme Court justices had serious misgivings, but were swayed by pressure from the administration and an emotional private appeal from Justice Felix Frankfurter, who argued that anything but a unanimous verdict in favor of the president would undermine U.S. military morale." Thus their decision may have been based not on it's legal merits, but on the the possible ramifications of basing the case on those same merits. The ends justified the means. Gautam wrote: A large number of lower-ranking German > soldiers were tried by military tribunals, however. Even that, however, was > not at all what I was referring to - I'm sorry I didn't make it more clear. > In 1942 a group of Nazi soldiers (one of whom may have been a citizen of the > United States) were captured in the United States itself attempting to > commit acts of sabotage - terrorism, in other words. Franklin Roosevelt > decided to try them using a military tribunal. They petitioned for writs of > habeas corpus charging that they were not subject to the jurisdiction of > military tribunals. The Supreme Court denied their petition in _Ex parte > Quirin_, holding that they were fully subject to trial by military tribunal. > A friend of mine actually wrote a book about the incident. > > This is actually the exact opposite of moral relativism. That would hold > that the complaints of the terrorists against the United States had some > sort of moral weight - who are we to judge? and similar nonsense. But you are addressing these people we have detained as "the terrorists" when nothing of the sort has been firmly established (as far as I know, anyway). In any case, from my viewpoint you have already tried and convicted them _just by calling them "the terrorists"_. And if these tribunals are conducted in secret, who is to determine the degree of fairness? -- Doug email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.zo.com/~brighto Irreverence is the champion of liberty. Mark Twain - Notebook, 1888
