"It will never be judged to be legitimate, not by those who despise us . . . [ and] not by our staunchest allies . . . A military judge, a military prosecutor and defence team and essentially a military jury." These comments by Jack Cloonan, a former FBI agent with the Osama bin Laden team in the New York field office, go to the heart of what is wrong with the decision by the US defence department to bring capital charges in a military tribunal against six men being held in Guantánamo prison for the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington.
It would be better by far if they were given a free and fair trial by US federal courts rather than relying on this questionable evidence and legal process.
Despite several interventions by the US Supreme Court which have reduced the military thrust of the tribunal proceedings, they are still severely compromised in all these respects. This is the wrong way to try these men for what is undoubtedly one of the worst crimes against the US state and its citizens. Those who adhere to the rule of law and depend on that legitimacy are diminished by adopting the lower standard of which Guantánamo prison has become such an unacceptable example.
It was deliberately designed to avoid international legal obligations, including those set out in the Geneva Conventions on prisoners of war. Its 400-plus (now 275) prisoners have been held without charge since 2001. Most are held in solitary confinement and many have been repeatedly beaten, shackled, humiliated, deprived of sleep, subjected to "waterboarding" interrogation or otherwise tortured.
An administration effort to defend such techniques will only deepen the determination of opponents to reject them. The same applies to false analogies drawn between this trial and the Nuremburg trial of Nazi leaders at the end of the second World War. The crimes involved are not of the same order or magnitude.
That Guantánamo has become a byword internationally for uncivilised revenge against an inhuman atrocity is a mark of how US standing has been reduced around the world, taking the spotlight from the original attacks.
It is to the great credit of people like Mr Cloonan and the dedication of many US lawyers who have insisted on reaffirming their country's legal integrity against such an arrogant use of executive power. Defence teams are expected to challenge virtually every aspect of the prosecution, delaying the substantive proceedings possibly for years.
The decision to press for capital punishment only serves to deepen the gulf between the US and most of its allies, especially in Europe, as well as with those of its own citizens who reject that punishment. Leaving aside the ethical issues involved there is the additional prudential danger that any such verdict by a military court and its subsequent application would make martyrs of these men and thus bolster their cause, not shame it. That would make a mockery of this ill-considered trial.