Civil Court: cases about contracts, damage to property, divorce, etc.

Criminal Court: murder, robbery, assault, etc.

But, that is not the whole of the American court system.

There is a third type of court with which most Americans never have contact, Military Court.

Also a Court of Impeachment.

American justice should give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed et. al. a fair trail, but not in a criminal court. He is not an accused criminal; he is a solider who attacked the United States. As such, the proper place for him to meet justice is in a Military Court.

Although commonly referred to as the Nuremberg Trials, they were actually a series of Military Tribunals. We did not seek to bring the Nazis to the United States and try them in Criminal Court.

According to the liberal New York Times (30 April 2009):

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates suggested on Thursday that as many as 100 detainees at the prison at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba would end up housed on American soil.

At a hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Mr. Gates said that he has asked for $50 million in a supplemental request to this year’s Pentagon budget in case a new cell block needs to be built quickly for the detainees…

In January President Obama ordered the prison closed, but his administration is still working on what to do with the detainees…

“What do we do with the 50 to 100 — probably in that ballpark — who we cannot release and cannot try?” Mr. Gates said…

It is not a referendum on the Iraq War, or Gitmo, or even the Bush administration. It is about basic Constitutional law.

According to the Washington Post: “17 Chinese Muslims, all Uighurs, have been held at Guantanamo Bay since 2002. In October, a federal judge ordered the men released into the United States after the government presented no evidence to justify their detentions.”

“The question here is not whether petitioners should be released, but where,” Judge A. Raymond Randolph wrote in an 18-page opinion. “Never in the history of habeas corpus has any court thought it had the power to order an alien held overseas brought into the sovereign territory of a nation and released into the general population.”

What does President Obama do now? He wants to close Gitmo. He is going to have to make a tough decision:

• Say he did not want to release them into the U.S., but the court ruled he had to – Oops, that excuse just went away.
• Release the prisoners from Gitmo into the United States – Certainly, not a popular move with the public.
• Send these prisoners back to China – It is assumed they would be tortured and killed; not a great option for a Democratic liberal President (or any president of the U.S.).
• Get another country to accept them – Probably the best domestic option, but who will take them and risk angering the Chinese who want them in China?

Once again this brings into focus the difference between running for office and being in office.