This may make for some awkward moments around the WaPo water cooler,
Does Gerson actually have to show up at theWaPo to deliver his column? I can't imagine him rubbing shoulders with the "liberals" at the Post, much less hanging at the watercooler. He'd probably send George Will's quote boy to fetch him a glass of water.

Marcus concludes that Gerson's screed went "beyond the pale."

But the WaPo editorial board obviously had no problems with publishing it.

Darn "liberal media"!

I can't stop thinking that Marcus is still just a hack. She's the one who recently wrote that "What if Bush went after MSNBC?!" column in a misguided attempt to razz on the Obama "crusade" against Fox. And when several people, including Mr. Benen, pointed out that Bush had done precisely that, Marcus' follow-up was to claim that her critics were over-sensitive.

At least, it is nice to see that she actually does have an upper limit on her tolerance of wankery.

the WaPo "water cooler" usually dispenses kool-aidâ„¢ -- marcus offers a remarkable bit of sanity in a looney bin of a 'newspaper'

Can anyone imagine a long term strategy against terrorism that doesn't at least partly rely on criminalizing it?

Here's what I don't understand: If the conservatives are so upset about Obama not going the military tribunal route....why didn't Bush do that while he was in office? He had what...6 or 7 years where he could have done the trial at Gitmo, had the hanging or whatever, and be done with it. What am I missing?

Just wondering: Is there some sort of "FOIA" to learn what these scribblers are paid by the WaPo?

And, ditto Pat Buchanan's paycheck from MSNBC. . .

Some months ago Marcus wrote a column arguing that the Bushies who ordered torture and the underlings who committed the torture should not be held accountable for their crimes. Perhaps, by doing this, she is trying to restore her reputation a bit.

I think Gerson is just confused because he's not used to a justice department which is not dependent on the executive for its daily operating instructions and talking points.
The alternative is that Gerson is just a dimwit, an alternate explanation I prefer because it is simpler to understand, given that Gerson is a republican (Occam's razor).

Here's what I don't understand: If the conservatives are so upset about Obama not going the military tribunal route....why didn't Bush do that while he was in office? He had what...6 or 7 years where he could have done the trial at Gitmo, had the hanging or whatever, and be done with it. What am I missing?

The fact that, among contemporary conservatives, Bush never happened. He wasn't president. He didn't exist. Clinton was president on 9/11, and then Obama let all the terrorists go. The chronology is actually quite simple.

I'm still wondering why all of these conservatives are quaking in their boots that KSM will showboat at his trial. Yes, he probably will. So what? Why should we care? Charles Manson made all kinds of crazy statements at his trial, and yet he didn't get hundreds (or even dozens) of new converts by doing so.

Or is what they're afraid of is that KSM will talk in detail about how the US tortured him? If so, tough noogies. If you didn't want the guy to complain about being tortured, you shouldn't have tortured him, dumbass.

gop 2009: we have nothing left to lose..

You want a really, really big, really, really hard thing that makes everybody mad Claire.....how about a LOT of them:

A massive India/Pakistan war over water rights from the Himalayas because glaciers there are melting away and serious drought is likely to ensue?

How about massive expenditures on a global scale for food relief because of expanding desertification in Saharan Africa and elsewhere around the globe due to global warming?

How about repeated multi-billion dollar disaster relief charges, equal to or exceeding Katrina because of increasingly powerful hurricanes and typhoons caused by global warming.

Sure Claire.....just sit there and ignore the problem.....life will be a lot easier for you....and maybe someone else can get themselves bent out of shape once you leave office and once business has managed to stall things even more to avoid facing the music over environmental pollution and use of carbon fuels at a massive ratae.

I forget, did we try Tim McVeigh as a terrorist in front of a military tribunal or a criminal? Did the FBI investigate 9/11 or was it strictly a military operation?

Of course, I know the answer to these questions. They are the easiest and most obvious answers in the world, confusing only to people who fear the answers a trial would produce and those whose intellectual honesty counts for as much as a fart in the wind.

I saw the Marcus column pop up after Gerson's screed yesterday as well and I gave her a shout out in Gerson's own comment string. Glad to see that WaPo editors have had enough when the paper's space gets misused for such obvious hackery. And Gerson is one of the worst because he shares that same sickening sanctimony that Joe Lieberman has -- where he thinks we should all get along and love one another by doing exactly what Lieberman wants 100% of the time.

I always knew modern Republicans only talked tough to cover up for the fact that they are utter cowards - sheep in wolves clothing. And this is a prime piece of evidence for that.

They act all chauvinistic about how great America is and want to spread democratic institutions. But this just shows they obviously have little respect for our system.

They act all tough on terrorism, but then sit and act all scared about the accused on US soil basically saying that they have no respect for the law enforcement officials tasked with holding them.

They also obviously have little respect for American citizens to talk like this to them.

And sadly they don't have any pride because if they did they wouldn't act like scared little children.

Modern day Republicans need to man up and pull on the grown-up panties. Talking tough is no substitute for being tough, being a grown-up, and being confident. Talking tough is camouflage at best, and not good camouflage at that because it is so obvious and so thin.

As I've said, most of us realize the elephant in the room for why many Republicans really don't want public terrorist trials: they would expose incompetence of the Bush [mis]Administration.

I have no problem with trying Mohammed in the Southern District of New York, but if you're going to bring Mohammed into federal court, you should also try the other Guantanamo detainees in federal court as well.

However, the administration has left the military commissions framework in place, and plans to try al-Nashiri, the mastermind of the USS Cole bombing, before a military commission.

How these two decisions are reconciled - much less worked into a comprehensive legal and public policy framework - is beyond me.

It can only lead to more incoherence and ad hoc decisionmaking.

Either try these individuals in the military commissions, or try them in federal court. Half-pregnant measures like these will only perpetuate the legal and policy ambiguities.

George Bush 2006:

"Terrorists Should Be “Tried In Courts Here In The U.S.”

The Washington Post is a neo-con/liberal-hawk outfit. It's nice to see pushback against obvious bullshit, but I don't think anyone writing there does not share and propagate the fundamental neo-con assumptions. It's all just discussions over tactics after that - like Mark Steyn and Micheal Ledeen arguing if they should nuke the middle east, invade, or try some smallpox blankets.

IOW, just because some at the WaPo/NYT have hitched their wagon to Obama's team, doesn't make them any more trustworthy.

politico: The lynchpin of the apparent-contradiction you noticed is that captured enemy soldiers *can* be tried by military tribunals. There is plenty of precedent for that.

So the real question is: Can any of the prisoners in Guantanamo really be considered enemy soldiers under the jurisdiction of the Military Code of Justice?

I would say no, for several reasons (the biggest one: legally, we aren't at war, so classifying them as, for all practical purposes, Prisoners of War is problematic). I believe that we should just seperate out the actual accused-terrorists, try them in federal court, and release everybody else.

But I'm not a lawyer, neither civil nor military, so I'm not really qualified to decide how legal or even possible that is.

Shorter Marcus: For God's sake! Even I'm too smart for this newspaper!!

Shade,

I am a lawyer and I wrote about the Military Commissions Act in law school, but I'm by no means an expert.

The distinction, historically, has turned on whether the act committed was deemed a war crime. With regard to the prisoners in Guantanamo, it's a difficult question to answer, and you'll find people occupying the same part of the ideological spectrum reaching very different conclusions. With regard to those prisoners captured in Afghanistan - yes, because they were captured in the context of an armed conflict (i.e., the conflict between the U.S. and Afghanistan). Re: Mohammed, it gets a bit thornier, but those who argue yes do so on the theory that Al Qaeda has perpetuated a self-declared war against the U.S., or, alternatively, that Mohammed was captured in the context of the global war on terrorism. Either way, not as theoretically clear cut as with those captured in Afghanistan.

Now, with regard to the UCMJ and, also, the Geneva Conventions - there is a distinction between soldiers captured on the battlefield and those, like al Qaeda, who aren't really soldiers and don't observe international humanitarian law.

The central policy question - which we still, 8 years after 9/11, are no closer to answering - is how to classify the Mohammeds and the al-Nashiris, and what rights we should confer on them. Everyone agrees we must provide some protections; the only question is how much.

However, in terms of the acts al-Nashiri (who will be tried before a military commission) committed vs. those Mohammed committed, I don't see one as any more (or less) indicative of a war crime than the other - hence the inconsistency.

"More important, even if Mohammed were somehow acquitted, it's not as if he would saunter off to brunch in Tribeca. He'd no doubt be indicted and held on other charges, or preventively detained. [...]"

Doesn't it bother anyone that we're going to get Mohammed either coming or going? If I were from a mid-eastern country and heard the above quote, I'd scoff at our justice system. It sounds like a rigged deal.

So, while we say we're not afraid of a public trial by holding court in NYC, it seems like all it really is is a political show. Isn't that how, say, North Korea, would hold a trial?

Teh Broken Clock is right two times a day, as they say....and so it is with this column by Ruth "Broken Clock" Marcus...

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