9/11: The Supreme Court, KSM, and the War on Terror

What's most interesting is what's absent from this discussion. It has all been about reinventing the wheel to the Left, rather than working with precedent and facts. In 1942, 6 of 8 German saboteurs, caught dry-foot on US soil were executed within 8 weeks of their capture. They were denied habeas corpus, tried by military commission and then shown the electric chair. What's also notable is that none of these enemy spies hurt a fly nor did they destroy any property, they simply had the means and intent to do so outside the rules of the Geneva Conventions and Law of Land Warfare. They were convicted as unlawful combatants and then suffered the consequences. Every detainee who was in or remains at the US military detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is at least an unlawful combatant and could have been lawfully shot dead on the battlefield. The 2009 Military Commissions Act, which is still in effect, gives unlawful combatant Islamists who want to kill us and who are accused of war crimes virtually the same rights you or I would enjoy in a federal court of law. We need to respect the effective precedent set in 1942, remand the 2009 MCA and revert to how the law is written and try enemy combatants accused of war crimes under the UCMJ, the same code that governs our own military justice system. Sincerely, Montgomery J. Granger, Major, US Army, Retired; former ranking US Army Medical Department officer with the Joint Detainee Operations Group, Joint Task Force 160, Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Author: "Saving Grace at Guantanamo Bay: A Memoir of a Citizen Warrior."