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JAG Lawyers Critical of Tribunal Rules

Opposition to the military's rules for trying enemy combatents and detainees is coming from an unusual source: Military lawyers. The Wall Street Journal reports (paid subscription required):

In November 2001, when President Bush authorized the first U.S. military tribunals since World War II, the process drew fire from human-rights groups and some legal experts. Now the critics have an unexpected set of allies: the detainees' five military lawyers, who have launched a surprisingly vigorous assault on the system that hired them.

The five JAGs -- as members of the Judge Advocate General's Corps, the military's legal arm, are known -- have attacked the tribunals as inherently unfair, contrary to international law and susceptible to political influence. In a brief they submitted to the Supreme Court, Cmdr. Swift wrote a section comparing the president with King George III and likening the treatment of tribunal defendants to the injustices that helped spark the American Revolution.

Here's how the tribunals will stack the deck against the detainees. Here are some concerns we all should have about Guantanamo.

[WSJ link via Patriot Watch and reader Cliff.]

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