El Opinador Compulsivo

Para la sección "esto no van a leer en Clarín":

The war on terror is easily the most litigated war in history, and on the evidence so far the lawyers are winning. They may yet succeed in killing military commissions, despite their long U.S. history and a law duly passed by Congress and signed by the President.

The latest legal battle concerns the Pentagon's attempt to try the perpetrators of 9/11. You'd think this would be easy compared, say, to trying the eight Nazis who secretly landed on Long Island and Florida in June 1942. Those Nazis didn't kill any Americans. Yet they were captured within days and convicted by military commissions established by FDR; most were sentenced to hang within two months. The Supreme Court validated the action in Quirin. But today, nearly seven years after 9/11, the U.S. still hasn't tried the conspirators who planned the deaths of 3,000 Americans...

...The larger game here, among many lawyers and most of the press, is to give the impression that military commissions are unworkable. The critics want to delay the trials long enough to push them into the next Administration, which they hope will then abandon commissions. Their ultimate goal is to get terrorists tried like any other defendant in civilian courts or regular courts-martial – fully aware of how daunting the chance of convictions would be.