The Obama administration is considering a change in the law for the military commissions at the prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that would clear the way for detainees facing the death penalty to plead guilty without a full trial.
The provision could permit military prosecutors to avoid airing the details of brutal interrogation techniques. It could also allow the five detainees who have been charged with the Sept. 11 attacks to achieve their stated goal of pleading guilty to gain what they have called martyrdom.
Or maybe I should have said, He's no better than Dick Cheney, since Cheney recently argued that some Gitmo detainees should simply be killed.
The idea that we would take detainees, charge them with capital crimes based on evidence we won't show, and then allow them to plead guilty and be executed without a trial represents the full circle breakdown of our society being a government of laws and not of men.
There really isn't room for equivocation on this one, but I'm sure we'll hear it--or just silence--all the same.
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