'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Raised in small-town Oklahoma, I continue to live its values. I am fiercely patriotic, making national security of paramount importance to me. I served in the military for more than a decade, and my friends still deploy in harm’s way. I am also the mother of young children. What mother doesn’t want a safe world for her kids?
Perhaps because of my love of history, I have been more than a little surprised at the vociferous opposition of my fellow conservatives to treating these foreign terrorists as we have treated their counterparts for decades. No one suggested trying the Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, the Lockerbie conspirators or the original World Trade Center bombers in military tribunals. In fact, we usually clamor for other countries to extradite terror suspects to the United States for trial.

-- Our colleague Michelle McCluer (below left), Executive Director of the National Institute of Military Justice, in an op-ed entitled "Civilian court best spot for terror trials," published in The Oklahoman newspaper on Monday, the 15th anniversary of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. (credit for above-right photo of Daniel Patrick Moynihan U.S. Courthouse, Manhattan) Michelle, who's observed GTMO military commissions proceedings along with other NIMJ'ers (including IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman and yours truly), ended her excellent commentary on this succinct note:

Trying detainees in a system that has yielded proven results doesn’t show a lack of understanding of our national security interests; rather, it is a recognition that terrorists are not above the Constitution for which our military members fight. Conservative values demand that terrorists be tried in civilian court, saving taxpayer dollars and providing justice to the victims.

Go On! Women in the military

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia and other events of interest)

"Women in the Military: Fighting For Their Rights" is the title of a program to be presented from 12 noon to 2 p.m. this Thursday, March 25, at the American University Washington College of Law, 4801 Massachusetts Avenue, Washington, D.C. Sponsors are the National Institute of Military Justice, on whose boards IntLawGrrls Elizabeth Lutes Hillman, Beth Van Schaack, and I proudly serve, as well as the law school's Women’s Law Association and Veterans Law Student Association.

Featured panels:
► Current Issues Affecting Women In The Military. Speaking will be Captain Lory Manning, Director of the Women in the Military Project for the Women's Research and Education Institute; Commander Carol Stundtner, Gender Policy Advisor, U.S. Coast Guard; and Captain Kari Crawford, Attorney, Criminal Law Division, U.S. Army JAG Corps. Michelle M. Lindo McCluer, NIMJ Executive Director, will moderate.
► Addressing Sexual Assault In The Military. Brigadier General (ret.) Thomas R. Cuthbert, Senior Technical Advisor for the Defense Task Force on Sexual Assault in Military Services; and Janet Mansfield, Attorney, Criminal Law Policy Division, Office of the Judge Advocate General, U.S. Army, and Legal Advisor to U.S. Army Sexual Harassment/Sexual Assault Response and Prevention Program.

The event is free. Details and registration here.

Fantasy on Island of Cuba

Fifty-five years ago American moviegoers escaped with matinee idol Gene Kelly across The Pond to the fantasy world of Brigadoon, a highland town that disappears for a century at a time. That exotic image does fitting service as metaphor in the newest National Institute of Military Justice account of proceedings at the "brig" across the water where the United States continues to detain hundreds of noncitizens, a small handful of whom it's charged with crimes to be adjudicated by military commission.
Telling of his adventures in an account entitled "Brig-adoon: Report from Guantanamo" is our colleague Gene Fidell, NIMJ's cofounder and president who'd served as a judge advocate in the Coast Guard from 1969-1972 and is currently Senior Research Scholar in Law and Florence Rogatz Lecturer in Law at Yale Law School. He's also the co-author, along with Dwight Sullivan and IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman, of a casebook on military justice.
Fidell repeats concerns raised in reports by prior NIMJ observers, including yours truly (all reports are available here): among others, the persistent problem that the law governing GTMO proceedings remains very much in flux. He stresses too the "sheer time, effort, and expense involved" in periodically transporting an entire trial apparatus to and from U.S. military base on the island of Cuba. He questions the "administrative complexity" of bringing in and retraining personnel, and expresses concern that some proceedings are "rehearsed at length behind closed doors," thus "shortchanging the public." A key paragraph:

Is it possible to dispense justice under these circumstances at such a distant location? Yes. The courtroom is entirely acceptable .... Proper decorum is carefully observed. But I have to say, as a taxpayer, that the arrangements are, overall, wildly inconvenient. I am not persuaded that the reasons for conducting military commission proceedings at Guantanamo, assuming they ever had any force, today come even close to justifying the expense in human resources and sheer out-of-pocket costs. If, as the Administration has decided, military commissions should continue to be employed, let it be done on the mainland.

Moving proceedings Stateside, Fidell notes, would both make attendance much easier for victims' families and ensure greater coverage by media, whose shrinking staffs and budgets make trips to GTMO ever less frequent.

Fidell concludes by predicting that in the next decade the commissions will be shut down and "the whole shebang will revert to Cuba" and become "a magnificent resort area, with regular direct flights from New York."
Time will tell.

(credit for AP/Mark Wilson photo of Guantánamo at sunset)

All our best to Diane Orentlicher as she heads to State's Office of War Crimes Issues

It is IntLawGrrls' great honor to announce that one of our longtime members, Diane Orentlicher, has just started as Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, at the U.S. Department of State!
An internationally renowned expert in international criminal law, Diane will work with Stephen J. Rapp, the former Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone who assumed his duties as Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues at the beginning of September. (prior post) She'll be an integral player in the work of the office, which, as stated on its website:
► "advises the Secretary of State directly and formulates U.S. policy responses to atrocities committed in areas of conflict and elsewhere throughout the world";
► "coordinates U.S. Government support for war crimes accountability in the former Yugoslavia, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Cambodia, Iraq, and other regions where crimes have been committed against civilian populations on a massive scale"; and
► "works closely with other governments, international institutions, and non-government organizations, and with the courts themselves, to see that international and domestic war crimes tribunals succeed in their efforts to bring those responsible for such crimes to justice."
Diane will be leaving her position as Professor of International Law and Co-Director of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law, Washington College of the Law, American University, Washington D.C., which has posted on her appointment here. She's also served inter alia on the boards of the Open Society Justice Initiative and (along with IntLawGrrl Beth Hillman and yours truly) of the National Institute of Military Justice. Diane served as an independent expert on combating impunity by September 2004 appointment of then-U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
We at IntLawGrrls will miss our colleague-turned-guest/alumna, whose transnational foremother, "Beatrice," was the inspiration for our Women at Nuremberg series. We look forward to all good things at State.
To all of us, Diane writes:

'It's been an honor to be a small part of an incredible project. I've learned so much from the smartest 'Grrls around -- and will remain an avid reader of IntLawGrrls' sensational posts.'

Heartfelt congratulations, Diane!

'Nuff said

(Taking context-optional note of thought-provoking quotes)

Although this genre of military commissions may disappear, as such, a national debate looms within government and outside among the press and public: should al-Qaeda adherents and other terrorists accused of war crimes against the United States be tried in our regular civilian courts or military courts-martial or instead be relegated to military commissions or to special 'national security courts' which would operate under different rules as to openness, use of classified information, availability of privileges against self-incrimination and admissibility of evidence secured by coercive methods? Before giving serious consideration to the creation of a separate and less restrictive system of criminal justice for one group of defendants, we would do well to look at how this military commission experiment has played out so far and what if any lessons can be learned from its initial phase.

-- Patricia M. Wald (below left), in her Foreword to the Military Commission Reporter, available here and reprinted in the new edition of Green Bag 2d. Her essay introduces the newest publication service of the National Institute of Military Justice: the 500-plus-page Military Commission Reporter, volume 1 -- 1 M.C. -- a compendium of decisions of rulings issued between October 2006 and June 2009 by the Guantánamo commissions. (image credit) (The 1st issue of volume 2 is available online here.) Wald's foreword draws on her experience as the Judge on the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and as Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in evaluating the operations so far of the Guantánamo commissions. A sample nugget:

'... I was struck by the almost hopeless lopsidedness of the process.'

On the Job! National Institute of Military Justice fellowship

(On the Job! pays occasional notice to interesting intlaw job notices) A nongovernmental organization on whose board IntLawGrrl Elizabeth L. Hillman and I both serve, the National Institute of Military Justice, is seeking 1 or more persons on law firms' deferred-associate program to serve a year as NIMJ Fellows. NIMJ's based at, and affiliated with, Washington College of the Law, American University, Washington, D.C.
Duties may include:
► Helping to advance NIMJ’s advocacy work by researching and drafting amicus curiae briefs in military justice and military commission cases, and, periodically, traveling to Guantánamo to observe and provide commentary about commission proceedings (its 1st published NIMJ Reports from Guantánamo includes dispatches from observers including yours truly);
► Assisting the NIMJ to develop commentary and analysis on proposed military justice reform and military commission law through various media; and
► Providing support for the Cox Commission on Military Justice, an independent body charged with proposing reforms in military justice.
Applicants should submit a resume and writing sample to Jonathan Tracy, NIMJ Assistant Director, by e-mail at jtracy@wcl.american.edu or via snail at 4801 Massachusetts Ave., N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016. Applicants with questions about the post or process may call 202-274-4322.
Further details here.

Go On! Civilians & courts-martial

(Go On! is an occasional item on symposia of interest) The National Institute of Military Justice will host "Public Trials? Lifting the Veil on Military Courts-Martial," from 12 noon-1:30 p.m. April 14, 2009, at American University Washington College of Law, 4801 Massachusetts Avenue N.W., Washington, D.C.
Speaking on the panel will be: Lucy Dalglish, Executive Director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press; Nayna Malayang, the NIMJ Dean's Fellow and an LL.M. candidate at American University Washington College of Law; and Commander Stephen McCleary, Chief, Office of Military Justice, U.S. Coast Guard. Moderator will be NIMJ Executive Director Michelle M. Lindo McCluer.
The program will analyze the theoretical openness of military courts-martial versus the reality that most courts-martial have few, if any, civilian spectators. Panelists then will suggest ways of remedying shortcomings.
Registration for the free program is here.

GTMO present

The world waits to see if detention at Guantánamo will end once Barack Obama takes the Presidential oath at high noon tomorrow. Media are rife with queries and commentaries on same -- among them IntLawGrrls' prior Guantánamo posts and a couple that I wrote last week here and here. This post offers my own glimpses of the naval base as it has been post-9/11 and, for at least a few days more, still is.
At this writing I imagine that a new crew of reporters, lawyers, and NGO observers has crossed choppy water in vessels called "vipers" -- envision very sleek, very fast versions of the boat in the movie "The African Queen" -- to "Camp Justice." Why? Today's pretrial hearing in the case of Omar Khadr, the best-known among the alleged-child-soldier cases pending before GTMO military commissions. Trial of the Canadian-born Khadr, 15 at arrest (right) and now 22, is set for next Monday. (Carol J. Williams' excellent Los Angeles Times article on the law of Khadr's case is here.)
Camp Justice is the name given to a cluster of quonset-like tents (below left) and tiny trailers. It's situated on the tarmac of an abandoned airfield on the windward side of a base that sprawls for 45 square miles, twice the size of Manhattan. This cluster stands next to the walls and razor wire surrounding a new and hypersecure court complex. On a hill sits a much older courthouse. Farther away lie camps that, as of Saturday, still hold 244 noncitizens seized as terrorism suspects. Farther yet is the compound of cages into which the 1st detainees were put. Now closed, that Camp X-Ray compound crumbles beneath creeping vines, yet remains intact by order of a U.S. court that's hearing challenges to detention.
Camp Justice is the place where last month another such crew -- among them myself, observing on behalf of the National Institute of Military Justice -- was installed. We were there for proceedings in Khadr, which took place in the hilltop courthouse, and, in the new courtroom, in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al., the 9/11 case about which I wrote here.
Ever escorted, on occasion we NGO observers ventured elsewhere on the base. There's the outdoor Starbucks, the Subway nestled next to the NEX, or Navy Exchange, a supermarket that offers most of the foods and otherstuffs found at any neighborhood SuperTarget, and, at night, a dim room lined with barstools and booths that bills itself "the only Irish pub on Communist soil." No off-base adventures, neither for us nor for anyone but the 3 aging men who for a half-century have done the daily commute to and from homes in Cuba to work at GTMO. On account of the border, or "fence line," that separates the U.S. base from the rest of Cuban soil, GTMO's isolation is palpable.
It is an otherworldly place, where a beautiful natural landscape has given way both to the banality of government-issue structures and the brutality that the government itself admits occurred within prison walls. Eerily unfamiliar are elsewhere-familiar offerings like premium coffee. Odder still is GTMO kitsch, T-shirts, toys, and trinkets like those at top. It's the kind of stuff found in any souvenir shop anywhere -- even, oddly, in the few such shops scattered about this near-yet-far outpost of U.S. power.

Just back from GTMO ...

... where I spent last week observing the military commission proceedings in Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et al., the 9/11 case, and in Khadr, the case about which Naomi Norberg posted yesterday. I was an NGO observer for the National Institute of Military Justice, on whose Board of Advisors I serve.

My Miami Herald op-ed on the strange turn of events in the 1st case may be found here, and a Washington Post quote from me on same may be found here.

Hope to post more on this extraordinary visit in due course.