Our President has started out as a lawyer, he should know better than that! Obama is setting out to have terrorists, enemy combatants, tried in a criminal case instead of military tribunal. Military Tribunal law in the USA meets or exceeds all international laws and protections, it has a variety of protections against abuse set out by congress over more than 200 years in this country. Every country has military courts, criminal courts, and civil courts that are separate entities, and for a good reason too.
The decision to try those terrorists in our criminal courts sounds innocuous enough: "give them equal human rights". But it is not about human rights, it is about LEGAL rights; and the total destruction of our legal system.
So what is the problem? The criminal court system works on precedence, it has a variety of requirements such as the right to face the accuser, the right to make the methods and individuals involved in the investigation public, the requirement to be read your miranda rights, the requirement against self incrimination (which is constitutional btw), and waterboarding is certainly not a legal thing for the police to use, there is also the potential of double jeopardy.
If they are tried in civil courts several things can happen:
1. The case is immediately dismissed and they walk free, because they were not read their rights when "arrested", they were waterboarded, they will not face their accuser, etc etc. There are at least half a dozen PROCEDURAL TECHNICALITIES that will set them free, that would have never been done had anyone actually EXPECTED them to stand a civil trial instead of military tribunal like every other war prisoner.
2. It will be a media spectacle kangaroo court where a conviction is predetermined. It will set precedents for ignoring a variety of rights afforded to american citizens, which will then infest the criminal law system.
3. It will be one of the above two, but as an extra harm, we will be forced to reveal crucial secret information. Such as informants, investigators, methods, etc.
What galls me the most is that Obama is a damn lawyer! He has been teaching law in harvard for crying out loud. How could he perform such a malicious attack on the judiciary system? How could he undermine our legal system in such a horrible way?
Don't tell me he didn't know, if he didn't know than what was he teaching in harvard law school?