For the Duration

The Bush Administration seems confident that either they’ll get their Supreme Court-invalidated military tribunal scheme revalidated by Congress, or that they can simply do whatever the heck they want about Gitmo detainees.

US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales said the US government could “indefinitely” hold foreign ‘enemy combatants’ at sites like the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. “We can detain any combatants for the duration of the hostilities,” said Gonzales, speaking to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “If we choose to try them, that’s great. If we don’t choose to try them, we can continue to hold them,” he said.

Though we are to to take comfort that the US government doesn’t want “to remain the world’s jailers indefinitely.” Which I assume means that they’ll be subcontracting the work out (on a no-bid basis) any day now.

The AG seems sure that Congress will rubber-stamp whatever the Administration proposes.

Gonzales said he was waiting for a green light from Congress to reinstate military tribunals to try war-on-terror prisoners at Guantanamo, Cuba.

Gonzales has proposed minor modifications to rules that inmate attorneys have decried as violating the rights of their clients. The proposed rules would allow hearsay evidence to be introduced, including evidence obtained under duress, unless a military judge considers it unreliable, Gonzales said.

Assuming, of course, that the military judge was given accurate information as to what sort of duress had been used.

The irony, of course, is that there is a military justice system in place already, endorsed by eleventy-dozen present and past JAGs as adequate to the job — but that the Administration is willing to bypass the parts it doesn’t like and, for now, claim it trusts the parts it does.

The Washington Post, quoting anonymous Bush administration officials, reported Wednesday that the White House also hopes to allow the secretary of defense to add crimes at will to the military court’s jurisdiction.

Senators did not question Gonzales directly about this, though the attorney general gave assurances that no US citizen would face these courts.

Which fills me with great confidence. I don’t suppose the AG would give me his cell phone number, so I can contact him on the off chance that some federal or military official in the future changes its mind about that …

At the risk of sounding like some left-wing kook, I simply cannot wait for 2009 — on the assumption that practically anyone who is likely to be elected President, regardless of party, will have an administration that does a better job of not constantly sounding and acting like wannabe tyrants.