{"id":3150,"date":"2006-12-17T10:33:59","date_gmt":"2006-12-17T17:33:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/17\/iraqi-justice-coming-to-usa\/"},"modified":"2006-12-17T11:06:02","modified_gmt":"2006-12-17T18:06:02","slug":"iraqi-justice-coming-to-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/2006\/12\/17\/iraqi-justice-coming-to-usa\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqi Justice coming to USA?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The New York Times<\/a><\/strong> has a great piece today on sham justice in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 The US military now holds almost twice as many Iraqi detainees as it did when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.\u00c2\u00a0 The U.S. set up a Central Criminal Court in Baghdad that usually has a Soviet-like disregard for due process.\u00c2\u00a0 The system reduces paperwork burdens by routinely excluding defense lawyers. The Times noted, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153 One American lawyer said that in 100 cases he handled, not one defense lawyer had introduced evidence or witnesses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 The U.S. military is heavily involved in prosecutions – but even when an Iraqi judge finds a defendant not guilty, the U.S. sometimes refuses to release him.<\/p>\n

What is the standard used for holding Iraqis (for as long as two years)?<\/p>\n

The Times noted:
\nThe military conducts reviews in the camps to screen detainees for release. Many have been swept up at the scene of bombings or other violence, and the detention camp boards have recommended releasing as many as 60 percent of the detainees whose cases they reviewed.
\nOfficials have sought to tighten the evidentiary standards used in deciding whether to detain suspects. Last year, for example, Maj. Gen. William H. Brandenburg, then the task force commander, became concerned about a swipe test that soldiers used on suspects to detect gunpowder. The test was so unreliable that cigarette lighter residue and even a common hand lotion would register as gunpowder.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Iraqi courts are sentencing people to hanging based on often flimsy evidence. Iraqi courts have relied on tortured confessions in some cases.<\/p>\n

Remember how Bush brags about having brought the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rule of Law\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to Iraq? Remember that Bush also brags about the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Rule of Law\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in America.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rather than bringing American-style justice to Iraq, Bush is more likely to bring Iraqi-style justice to America.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 The Military Commissions Act is a harbinger of things to come.<\/p>\n

Comments on this entry are welcome at my blog here<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n

\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The New York Times has a great piece today on sham justice in Iraq.\u00c2\u00a0 The US military now holds almost twice as many Iraqi detainees as it did when the Abu Ghraib scandal broke.\u00c2\u00a0 The U.S. set up a Central Criminal Court in Baghdad that usually has a Soviet-like disregard for due process.\u00c2\u00a0 The system […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":45,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[676],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-3150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-antiwar-movement"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/45"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3150\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3150"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=3150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}