The dysfunctional tribunals

June 5, 2007
The dysfunctional tribunals

The Bush administration could have saved itself a lot of grief, and the United States a lot of embarrassment, by adhering to the Geneva Convention and other treaties on the treatment of prisoners of war.

But, instead, the administration decided that prisoners taken in the war on terror, principally in Afghanistan, would be tried by a special process it threw together for that purpose. The first try was nothing but a kangaroo court. Since then, the system has been through several refinements and, five years later, it still doesn't work.

There has been only one conviction, and that a plea bargain leading to the defendant's serving a nine-month sentence in his native Australia.