Soon after the September attacks in the United States captured hundreds of suspected al-Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and around the world By the following January the first of these prisoners arrived at the US militarys prison camp in Guantanamo Bay Cuba where they were subject to President George W Bushs executive order authorizing their trial by military commissions Jess Bravin the Wall Street Journals Supreme Court correspondent was there within days of the prisons opening and has continued ever since to cover the US effort to create a parallel justice system for enemy aliens A maze of legal political and moral issues has stood in the way of justiceissues often raised by military prosecutors who found themselves torn between duty to the chain of command and their commitment to fundamental American valuesWhile much has been written about Guantanamo and brutal detention practices following Bravin is the first to go inside the Pentagons prosecution team to expose the real-world legal consequences of those policies Bravin describes cases undermined by inadmissible evidence obtained through torture clashes between military lawyers and administration appointees and political interference in criminal prosecutions that would be shocking within the traditional civilian and military justice systems With the Obama administration planning to try the alleged conspirators at Guantanamoand vindicate the legal experiment the Bush administration could barely get off the groundThe Terror Courts could not be more timely.
