Bush’s Plan for Secret Tribunals

Re “Bush’s Secret Court: Legal System in a Burka,” Commentary, Nov. 15: Bravo for professor Jonathan Turley’s incisive critique of what I’d call the Bush Quasi-Star Chamber! Even though President Bush’s executive order specifically exempts American citizens from its draconian terms, little imagination is needed to see how even our own citizens--especially those suspected or accused of being too friendly and chummy with suspected foreign-born terrorists--could be dragged into such proceedings.

A moment’s more thought convinces me that such an odious development will occur as an inevitable result. Have we not experienced enough in the way of Cold War-type closed hearings to have learned better?

Horace Gaims

Los Angeles

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I am glad to see that President Bush is doing something for the recently unemployed. There must be many former workers at the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice who are now out of a job since the Taliban is no longer running the show in Kabul. These folks should be perfect for taking care of the secret tribunals Bush has planned. They’ll feel right at home with the secret proceedings, lack of any appeal and easy imposition of death sentences.

I have heard Bush and Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft justify this nightmarish idea as a necessary measure during wartime, but we are not at war. No matter how many times they or anyone might say it, we are not at war and will not be until Congress declares war, as the Constitution gives it solely the right to do. This “war” that people keep talking about is no more a war than the war on poverty or the war on cancer.

Alan Weiss

Carpinteria