It’s not just the U.S. civil-justice system that often winds up serving counterproductive ends, but also our criminal and national security legal systems. And just like with, e.g., our tort system, it sometimes seems like everyone knows this except us Americans.
Consider this, from the Times‘ detailed account of the interrogation of 9/11 planner Khalid Sheikh Mohammed:
Mohammed met his captors at first with cocky defiance, telling one veteran CIA officer, a former Pakistan station chief, that he would talk only when he got to New York and was assigned a lawyer–the experience of his nephew and partner in terrorism, Ramzi Yousef, after Yousef’s arrest in 1995.
Apparently, KSM was somehow privy to an advance copy of Boumediene. . .
One Comment
Wow, I expect better from this site. Does Boumediene even remotely suggest that Miranda will be applied to terror suspects apprehended in foreign countries?
The ruling allows for some access to the Courts (which may turn out to be very minimal) to assure that there is some evidence supporting detentions of those accused of being enemy combatants. The ruling, whether it is right or wrong in its particulars, responds to a very serious issue: where large numbers of people are being seized, not just on the field of battle in uniform, but on the streets and in their homes, what should we as a free society do to make sure we’re not making mistakes? How far should we go to make sure we’re not ruining innoecent lives based on bounty-hunting or vengeance by local informants, or recklessness by our own government?
Thoughtful and serious people may have different answers to these questions. Mr. Grossman’s snark is not thoughtful or serious. Again, on such a serious issue, I expected more from this site.