Torture Is Out--Coercing Is in

May 11, 2008

News Analysis

Judge’s Guantánamo Ruling Bodes Ill for System

  By WILLIAM GLABERSON   A decision by a military judge on Friday to disqualify a top Pentagon official from any further role in a Guantánamo war crimes case was a major new challenge to the Bush administration’s legal approach to the war on terrorism. The ruling, in the case against Salim Hamdan, a detainee who was a driver for Osama bin Laden, transformed what had been something of a Pentagon soap opera over how to prosecute detainees into a formal ruling that gave new force to critics’ accusations of improper political influence over this country’s first use of military commissions since World War II. . . . Under the Military Commissions Act, evidence derived through torture is inadmissible, but prosecutors can build cases with evidence obtained through coercion. --read entire article-- ______________________________________________________________ In the running joke that has become American military justice, …