Controversy Over Torture Photos and Military Commissions Heats Up in Washington

By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted May 16, 2009.

Davis laid bare just how rigged the process is, as evidenced by a conversation with the Pentagon's then-General Counsel William J. Haynes II (who famously told him that when it came to the proceedings at Guatnanamo, "We can't have acquittals. We've got to have convictions.")

Nevertheless, by the end of the week, the reviving of the military commissions was a foregone conclusion. And by Friday afternoon, it was official.

"Military commissions have a long tradition in the United States," President Obama said in a statement released Friday. "They are appropriate for trying enemies who violate the laws of war, provided that they are properly structured and administered."

Citing flaws in the version created by his predecessors, which has "only succeeded in prosecuting three suspected terrorists in more than seven years," Obama promised that his will "reform the military commission process" to ensure that:

First, statements that have been obtained from detainees using cruel, inhuman and degrading interrogation methods will no longer be admitted as evidence at trial. Second, the use of hearsay will be limited, so that the burden will no longer be on the party who objects to hearsay to disprove its reliability. Third, the accused will have greater latitude in selecting their counsel. Fourth, basic protections will be provided for those who refuse to testify. And fifth, military commission judges may establish the jurisdiction of their own courts.

"This is the best way to protect our country, while upholding our deeply held values," Obama said.

But human rights activists and lawyers -- many of whom endorsed Obama during the presidential primary precisely because of his position on military commissions -- are hardly convinced. "These military commissions are inherently illegitimate, unconstitutional and incapable of delivering outcomes we can trust," Anthony Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU said in a statement on Friday. "Tweaking the rules of these failed tribunals so that they provide 'more due process' is absurd; there is no such thing as 'due process light.'"

"In this case, President Obama would do well to remember his own infamous words during his presidential campaign: you can't put lipstick on a pig."

The coming days will see no shortage of "analysis" on Obama's decision to preserve the discredited and abusive military commissions process and as with the torture photos story, it is likely to be cast in hopelessly simplistic partisan terms. The danger in this is that, like torture, the waging of war, and other life and death issues, it completely obscures the radical nature of what has actually occurred. As Glenn Greenwald wrote on Friday, "What makes military commission so pernicious is that they signal that anytime the government wants to imprison people but can't obtain convictions under our normal system of justice, we'll just create a brand new system that diminishes due process just enough to ensure that the government wins."

This sounds a lot like the Bush administration's practice of doing something illegal -- warrantless wiretapping for example -- and, upon being discovered, crafting legislation to legalize it. Of course, on that issue, too, Obama changed course, a long time ago.

See more stories tagged with: guantanamo, abu ghraib, barack obama, nancy pelosi, glenn greenwald, military commissions, michael goldfarb, torture photos, chris cillizza

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