Sen. Graham Sounds off on Military Tribunals

Unlike most members of Congress, SEN Graham (R-SC) has actually donned a uniform in his life. He appeared on
FoxNews talking about military vs civilian trials for terrorists, and some important legal distinctions. Ignore the fact he keeps referring to his military lawyer experience; the quotes were pulled from a transcript and you repeat those things a bunch on TV when you wouldn't otherwise.

So the fact that he's talking must mean he has something more to know. But this is not a system, this is blind luck. We need a system that would allow this guy to be interrogated by our military without a lawyer intervening. You can do that under the Law of Armed Conflict. So I hope he is talking. But we need not repeat this mistake again.

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I used to be a military lawyer, a defense lawyer. I used to be a definitely lawyer in the civilian world. I wouldn't let my guy talk until I knew it was to his benefit. And that's what's wrong with the law enforcement model. We're not prosecuting crime. This guy was fresh off the battlefield. He's not a common criminal, he's part of al Qaeda. He should have been turned over to the military, questioned about his intelligence, what he knew about the enemy. We're trying to win a war, not fight crime, and that was a mistake to read him his Miranda rights, and if he talks, it's just blind luck.

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I've been a military lawyer for 25 years, and what military commanders want when they capture an enemy prisoner is not about prosecution, it's about, one, I want him off the battlefield, and two, I want to know what he knows about the enemy so I can protect my soldiers. And if you want to prosecute him, you do that later in a military tribunal.
So this whole criminalization of the war is really going to make us weaker and less safe. And I hope the president will reconsider putting these guys in civilian court. We've never done this in any other war, and it's a bad precedent and it's just -- it's unnerving the nation.

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Military tribunals are set up understanding we're at war. There are better procedures to protect classified information in a military tribunal. The blind sheik trial back in the '90s, the guy who tried to blow up the World Trade Center the first time, was put in civilian court. We had to give to the defense the unindicted co-conspirator list as part of civilian law discovery. Usama bin Laden's name was on that list. It wound up in his hand (ph) in the Sudan, and he knew we were following him back in 1995.
In a military tribunal situation, the defendant is given a lawyer, presumed to be innocent, proved beyond a reasonable doubt, but the military judge can protect classified information much better. And so this is the way we've tried other enemy prisoners.

What sayeth y'all?

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By: Brant