Pentagon now set to conduct witch trials

I don't claim any intimate knowledge of the Salem Witch Trials, but my understanding is that suspected witches were subjected to various forms of torture until they confessed, and then those confessions were taken as evidence of their guilt and they were executed, often by fire.

Here's the 21st century version, courtesy of the Bush White House and the Military Commissions Act of 2005 -- a measure certain to be viewed by history with the kind of opprobrium given the Alien and Sedition Acts and the internment of innocent Japanese-Americans during World War II …

The Defense Department has drafted a manual for trying detainees at the Guantanamo, Cuba, jail that would allow terror suspects to be imprisoned, convicted and executed on the basis of hearsay evidence or coerced testimony. [...]

The manual, sent to Congress on Thursday and scheduled to be released later by the Pentagon, is intended to track a law passed last fall in which lawmakers restored President George W. Bush's plans to have special military commissions try terror suspects. Those commissions had been struck down earlier in the year by the Supreme Court.

The Pentagon manual could spark a fresh confrontation between the Bush administration and Congress, now led by Democrats, over the treatment of terror suspects.