To the Editor:
Re “Undoing the Damage” (editorial, July 12):
Our federal courts and military courts-martial have demonstrated great proficiency in conducting criminal and war-crime trials.
Each of these complementary systems has elaborate procedures and abundant precedents consistent with our basic constitutional principles and the rule of law.
These time-tested resources could more than adequately conduct trials of people accused of committing crimes or military offenses in the Iraq or Afghan wars or elsewhere in the faux “global war on terror.”
Ignoring those resources and continuing the ill-conceived effort to concoct an alternative ad hoc military commissions system for prosecuting those people is foolish and should be discontinued.
Ed Martin
New York, July 14, 2009
Note from KBJ: "Faux"?
Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D. 