Thomas Friedman’s column from Sunday’s NY Times, Rights in The Real World, really hits the nail on the head with these two paragraphs:
The host was a serious Arab journalist, who was partly playing devil’s advocate
The ACLU has issued a letter to Congress concerning the military tribunals authorized by President Bush’s executive order. It’s about time. The ACLU accepts the constitutionality of military tribunals under specific circumstances, but not the blanket usage authorized by the President. They explain their reasoning in a longer memorandum.
The New York Times has a strong editorial today arguing against the Bush administration’s multiple front war against civil rights: War and the Constitution. It’s important to note that this editorial was unsigned, it’s not an op-ed piece but rather a piece that reflects the official editorial position of the Times. It also ran solo in the editorial slot – major papers usually run two or three editorials a day. The Times has definitely been the leading paper when it comes to covering civil rights issues post 9/11.
New York Times: Tribunal Comparison Taints Courts-Martial, Military Lawyers Say
According to a former Taliban official who has switched sides, Osama bin Laden gained influence over the Taliban the old fashioned way – he paid for it with cold, hard cash. (By the way, check out the picture at the bottom of the article. It has nothing to do with the article’s subject, so I can only assume that the photo editor at the BBC loved the picture so much that he just had to use it somewhere.)
One of the 80 injured and partially drowned Taliban to emerge from the basement of Qalai Janghi (as MSNBC spells it) is a 20 year old American. Newsweek has an exclusive interview (link via Ethel) with Abdul Hamid (who refused to give his American name to the interviewer). In it he explains how the prison revolt began, and admits that he supported the 9/11 attack on the United States. I wonder if he’ll be tried in one of Bush’s military tribunals – you forfeit your citizenship if you serve in the armed forces of a foreign country. (CNN also has a story on Abdul Hamid, whose real name is apparently John Walker.)
For more on the prisoner uprising at Qalai Janghi, check out this National Geographic interview with Robert Young Pelton (the author of Dangerous Places), who’s on the scene.