Victor’s Justice

In what will be the Pentagon’s first war crimes trial since World War II, the U.S. will go forward Monday in trying Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan. Unknown still is the trial date for Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the government cabal that also may have committed war crimes.

The L.A. Times:

In a victory for the Bush administration in its protracted quest to prosecute terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, a federal judge in Washington on Thursday rejected defense attorneys’ appeals to halt the trial of Osama bin Laden’s former driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan of Yemen, and it will get underway Monday.

Hamdan’s lawyers had argued before both U.S. District Judge James Robertson and the military judge hearing pretrial motions at Guantanamo, Navy Capt. Keith J. Allred, that the trial should be delayed until civilian judges weighed the constitutionality of the tribunal’s rules and procedures.

Robertson said that those challenges could be brought during or after the trial and that he would respect “the balance struck by Congress” when it created the war-crimes tribunal with the 2006 Military Commissions Act.

Allred rejected defense contentions that Hamdan was entitled to constitutional protections beyond the right of habeas corpus upheld June 12 by the Supreme Court.

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The Nuremberg Palace of Justice, where World War II’s war crimes tribunals were held. The trials were criticized by some for holding only the Axis powers accountable to wartime conventions.