yeah Spence this is great...did you read any of what you posted?
Acquittal in terror case shows justice system's strength
Thursday, November 18, 2010; 8:44 PM
THE STUNNING verdict in the first civilian trial of a Guantanamo detainee is an embarrassment for the Obama administration, but it should not deter officials from considering federal court prosecutions for others being held at the U.S. naval base.
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fairly pervasive myth that military commissions represent the tough option, while federal courts represent the soft, wussy option. You know the trope:" is this legal lingo?
and this guy sounds balance and fair and "separated from politics"
A Fair Trial, Without Torture's Taint
Updated November 19, 2010, 07:58 AM
David Cole is a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, and the
author, most recently, of “The Torture Memos: Rationalizing the Unthinkable.”
Right-wing commentators, always eager to say “I told you so,” have jumped on the verdict in the criminal trial of Ahmed Ghailani as proof that we cannot try Al Qaeda terrorists in civilian courts.
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Andy McCarthy has been very good on this throughout...
Coercion Is Not Torture
November 19, 2010 12:05 P.M. By Andy McCarthy
I empathize with commentators on legal matters. There usually isn’t enough airtime or print-space to explain adequately complex issues. So commentators naturally take shortcuts. Often, the shortcuts do a real disservice. That is consistently happening in the Ghailani coverage, in which experts are conflating two very different things: coercion and torture.
The issue comes up because Ghailani’s confessions were not offered into evidence and a key witness identified during interrogation was not permitted to testify. Ghailani was subjected to enhanced interrogation tactics by the CIA in 2004. He repeated what he’d told the CIA to the FBI under the latter’s gentler questioning methods in 2007. Commentators are saying that the witness was barred and the confessions were not introduced because Ghailani was “tortured.”
This is not true. It is also a slanderous allegation, and I’m surprised to hear normally careful people throw it around so casually.
That’s undoubtedly why the Obama Justice Department has never prosecuted anyone over it, despite ceremoniously reopening torture investigations against the CIA. In any event, while we can stipulate that Ghailani was made very uncomfortable, there is no colorable evidence that he was “tortured” in the legal sense of that term
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and offers a compromise...something in here for everyone I think
How Should Terrorists Be Tried? - Andrew C. McCarthy - National Review Online
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