. We could try bin Laden before a Military Commission. FDR, as President and Commander-in-Chief, issued an Order on July 2, 1942, directing it to try captured Nazi would-be saboteurs for offenses against the law of war and the Articles of War. The Order also provided that the defendants were to be denied access to the courts. In a unanimous decision (Ex parte Quirin, 317 U.S. 1, 63 S.Ct. 1 (1942)) the Supreme Court of the United States held the Order valid, despite the Commission not being a "court" in the conventional sense and its procedures providing far fewer constitutional safeguards than would apply in a normal tribunal. Although the Quirin defendants were hanged, they might not have been. It is an open question whether, had they not, the Nazi government in Germany would have tried to exchange them for American prisoners, military and/or civilian.. We could, because he committed crimes against the United States, bring bin Laden here and try him in a federal court — assuming, of course, that an impartial jury could be found. In such a trial, where classified material would be at risk, he would be entitled to all usual constitutional protections — due process, non-self incrimination, no use of illegally obtained evidence, confrontation by his accusers — and doubtless he would be represented by a Simpson-like "dream team." We have done this before, indeed very recently in the trials of those involved in the first bombing of the World Trade Center and our African embassies. Although the death penalty could be imposed, if it were not we would face the same problems of support and rescue posed by choices 1, 2 and 3.. We could turn bin Laden over to a U.N. court, much like the one now convened in The Hague. The problems with such a tribunal are well known, and again there would be the post-conviction problems of care and security.. We could try to convene a Nuremberg-like tribunal using comparable legal principles — e.g., "crimes against humanity" — which would have to include our coalition partners as judges and/or jurors. However, many of their legal systems are totally different even from that created for Nuremberg — let alone from our own — and most of those systems are opposed to capital punishment. As in Choice 1, following conviction other problems would arise.. Because bin Laden would be a prisoner of war, we could summarily incarcerate him for as long as we wished, because as a non-citizen, non-resident alien, captured abroad in a military campaign, he would have no rights under the United States Constitution, and few if any rights under international law. This treatment of military prisoners was not unknown in the Twentieth Century. The disadvantage, however, would be that as long as bin Laden lived he would have to be supported by the American taxpayers, and efforts to free him, which might well succeed, would doubtless be launched by his comrades.

an American citizen indisputably captured while fighting as an "enemy combatant" can be detained indefinitely by our military authorities is an extremely important ruling.

It is but a short step from arm-twisting, choking, and death threats to the use of torture.

v. Bush. On July 13, 2004, the wire services reported that "The Pentagon yesterday began informing detainees at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, that they could challenge their captivity before newly created military tribunals." This notice was sent by the government as a consequence of the third Supreme Court War-on-Terrorism case—engineered by the America-hating Center for Constitutional Rights, preeminent defender of the ruthless radicals who would destroy this country.