Arrrgh! And you wonder why people don’t trust lawyers. Lots of people writing in to say the last reader wasn’t persuasive at all. A couple choice examples:

Jonah:
The Stanford Teaching Fellow who wrote to you on this subject omitted key provisions of HR 6066.
Section 948b(a), which defines the purpose of the military tribunals generally, provides:
“(a) Purpose- This chapter establishes procedures governing the use of military commissions to try alien unlawful enemy combatants engaged in hostilities against the United States for violations of the law of war and other offenses triable by military commission.”
Section 948a(3) defines “alien” as follows:
“(3) ALIEN- The term `alien’ means a person who is not a citizen of the United States.” You cannot, as the Stanford Fellow apparently does, fairly construe the definition of “unlawful combatant” in a manner that is inconsistent with the rest of the Act, including the defined purpose of the subject of the Act. In sum, the tribunals have nothing to do with American citizens.

And:

Jonah,
Like most making overwrought statements on the
subject, your seemingly “fairly persuasive” emailer is
wrong. I am a working lawyer, and an expert at
statutory construction and interpretation, and I know
what I am talking about. (Heh) I used Thomas to look
up HR6166. As your emailer acknowledges, an American
citizen cannot be tried by a military tribunal under
this bill, so he fantasizes that Bushitler must have
some nefarious plans for citizen UECs. Get real. A
US citizen can fall within the definition of a UEC
because a US citizen can be a UEC. A US citizen can
be a UEC because a US citizen can go to Afghanistan
and join Al Qaeda and fight for the enemy, which makes
him a UEC under international law regardless of the
fact he is a citizen of the power that captured him.
I defy you to draft me a definition of an unlawful
enemy combatant that excludes American citizens who
are captured in the act of unlawfully conducting
hostilities against the U.S. The question is, can a
UEC who is an American citizen be tried under this
bill? No. The bill passed yesterday does not apply
to him.
As to your emailer’s point that anyone is a UEC if
the military says so, that is more hyperbole. A
person is a UEC if a Combatant Status Review Tribunal
says he is. CSRTs are established under Article 5 of
the Third Geneva Convention to determine the status of
persons who have committed belligerent acts and
“fallen into the hands of the enemy.” The GC requires
that if there is any doubt that a person is a UEC, he
is to be treated as a protected person until
determined to be a UEC by a competent tribunal.
Interestingly, if he is a UEC, he is not a protected
person. He can be lined up against a wall and shot.
Anyway, the point is that generals can’t just walk
down the streets of Berkeley and declare people to be
UECs. A CSRT or “similar competent tribunal” as
defined in the bill passed yesterday exists only to
determine the status of people who have been captured
on the battlefield, not anyone that the current
fascist government doesn’t like. Get more sleep,
Jonah.